Talking Plants

Wikipedia ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ) An artist asked me recently whether there were any luminescent plants, plants that glowed in the dark. I gather she wanted to include them in an installation that would attract attention night and day.   There are certainly luminescent fungi, I said, such as ghost fungus, Omphalotus nidiformis . Then there are the famously phosphorescent dinoflagellates, planktonic alga that glisten and glow when disturbed by a boat, a wave or if you thrash about in the ocean. I mentioned the turquoise flowers of the jade vine, but admitted these were vivid rather than glowing. Later, I remembered that a few liverworts fluoresce, but only when exposed to ultraviolet light. As we’ve seen already, flowers present differently to animals that perceive ultraviolet light, so I wondered too if that might be a similar kind of phenomenon. Maybe my artist friend could set us some mood lighting at night to give visitors an insect-eye view of her floral installations. Would that...