31 October 2025
Tonight’s the night for jack o’ lanterns and Trick Or Treat. Carved pumpkins glow on front porches and in the woods, far from city lights, a mushroom with the same name glows in the dark.
On my bird walk last Sunday we passed the site at Schenley Park golf course where there used to be jack o’ lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus illudens). They grew on an oak tree stump which I noted in 2021 below, but this year the stump and the mushrooms are gone, ground up and removed.
Here in town we wouldn’t have seen the mushrooms glow because of city lights, but in parts of western Michigan there is very little light pollution. West Michigan’s WOODTV featured them in the video below.
And yes these mushrooms are poisonous. Learn more in this vintage article:
Happy Halloween!
Every year since we cut down our diseased oak trees, we have had these mushrooms growing in our front yard. This year there has been multiple crops of them. I think they are beautiful, but not my wife, who regularly digs them up!
I remember showing my Scouts these on night hikes at Todd.