"Foxfire: Things That Glow in the Night"
Mysterious, magical, and terrifying things happen in the woods at night. Toadstools spring up, unfamiliar hoots and rustles issue from nocturnal creatures; fairies are abroad. Here and there, things are unaccountably glowing . . .
crescent moon—
foxfire glows in the hollow
of a decaying stumpEvelyn Lang, Woodnotes 13, 1992
“Foxfire” is the popular word used to describe several phenomena of things that glow eerily in the night. Properly “foxfire,” according to Encyclopædia Britannica, is a kind of bioluminescence shown by certain fungi that live on decaying wood—particularly, in the United States, the jack-o’-lantern (Clitocybe illudens) and the honey mushroom (genus Armillaria). Reportedly, the bluish or greenish glow of the healthy growing mushroom can be bright enough to read by. The bioluminescence is durable, too; the effect remains for hours or even days after picking. Sometimes the fungi have been used to mark paths through the forest or attached to people’s clothing to identify them in a dark forest. With no apparent relationship between glowing mushrooms and foxes, some specialists believe that the origin of the word may be the French faux feu, “false fire.” Foxfire is also sometimes called “fairy fire.”
Here are examples of how some top English-language haiku poets are using “foxfire”:
warm tints of fall—
foxfire flecks of the withered copse
in the dying lightH.F. Noyes, Modern Haiku 26:3, 1995
foxfires show along
an old mountain road
only revealed by themBrent Partridge, Frogpond 21:3, 1998
lanternless walk
through dark winter night
foxfire glowsL.Teresa Church, Simply Haiku 6:4, 2008
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