Ghost Fungus mushrooms (Omphalotus nidiformis), found primarily in southern Australia and Tasmania and known for their soft green glow at night, have recently been spotted in Western Victoria by a local resident. Tisha Kavanagh has been walking along the Glenelg River for 20 years looking for them, found the luminescent mushrooms after hearing of sightings in Mount Burr, South Australia which is about 55 miles away. Recent wet weather is cited for the sudden surge in the mushroom's growth.
ABC News (Australia):
"So I came home very excited and spoke to my son and said, 'You know, I think we should go back after dark and just see whether they are ghosts mushrooms'."
Ms Kavanagh admits it took a little while to find them again in the dark.
"[But] as soon as we [turned our torches off], we just saw, not just this tree that I'd seen starting to glow and light up, but all the little individual mushrooms all in the scrub as well," she said.
"There was one tree that … must have [had] 20 clumps. And they were all around the bottom of it and all up the tree itself.
"There was just huge numbers of them."