Glow-in-the-Dark Firewood

There was a thunderstorm rolling in at about 2:00 a.m. this morning that woke me up, so I grabbed the camera and set it up hoping to get some shots of lightning. No dice, the lightning was up in the clouds lighting up the sky but no clear bolts. I stoked up the woodstove and sat on the couch for a while, and when my eyes adjusted I noticed a strange green glow by the firewood box. I wondered what the heck that was, as there were no electronics there with little lights that would cause the glow. I turned the light on and saw some pieces of firewood I had set beside the box. I turned the light off and let my eyes adjust, saw the green glow. Turned the light on and took the topmost piece and set it on the table and turned the light off. The piece of firewood was glowing. I set up the camera and took some long exposures of the glow. It is the bottom butt piece from a small dead tree that I had cut yesterday, the bottom end glows but not the top end. Must be some kind of fungus in the decaying wood, I'll have to investigate this further. The gnarly root piece is still (I think) out beside the firewood pile, I'll have to see if I can find it. It's too bad I don't know where I had collected this particular supply of wood, yesterday I had taken my little 16" chainsaw and went out the laneway, stopping in several places to collect small dead trees for firewood for our woodstove, things that had fallen over, "easy stuff" that I can gather on my own. This particular piece is 5 1/2 inches wide at its widest. I'll have to do some investigating on causes of phosphorescence in decaying wood.