foxfire

noun

1. (US, uncountable)Bioluminescence created by some types of fungus, particularly those growing on rotting wood.

   “The foxfire,—as the country people call it,—glowed hideously from the cold and matted bosom of the marsh; and, far from us, in the depths of darkness, the screech-owl sat upon his perch, brooding over the slimy pool, and whooping out a dismal curfew, that fell upon the ear like the cries of a tortured ghost.”

   “Perhaps you've seen a foxfire in the woods. Well, in the dark, it looks like a live, burning coal; but when you go to it, and take it up, it's only a piece of rotten wood.”

   “People calls this "spunk," but it's foxfire. You see this hole in it? You see where I sawed it in two with the chain saw? See, this grows in hollow trees in a maple or a oak. No, it ain't mushroom; it's just really foxfire.”

   “The rain stopped falling. They passed, leaving a trail of foxfire shuffled up out of the wet leaves like stars plowed in a ship's wake.”

2. (broadly, uncountable)Wood exhibiting fungal bioluminescence; torchwood.

   “On the inside is fixed a Barometer, by which he can tell the depth he is under water; a Compass, by which he knows the course he steers. In the barometer and on the needles of the compass is fixed fox-fire, i.e. wood that gives light in the dark.”

   “The navigator steered by a rudder, the tiller of which was passed through the back of the machine at a water joint, and in one side was fixed a small pocket compass, with two pieces of shining wood, (sometimes called foxfire,) crossed upon its north point, and a single piece upon the last point. In the night, when no light entered through the head, this compass thus lighted, was all that served to guide the helmsman in his course.”

   “[An American university is] the house and home of American civilization—a dwelling place not lighted with foxfire tapers or artificial lights to disguise nature, as the institutions of learning in Europe are, but with the light inherent in nature's truths and in the revealed word of God, honestly translated and interpreted.”

   “There is still another method of night hunting by the salt lick. [...] When night approaches, the hunter finds a piece of phosphorescent wood or "fox fire," and places it on the ground, at a point which he has previously determined to be on a direct line of the aim of his gun. The "fox fire" is plainly seen from the tree, and as soon as it is darkened he knows that it is obscured by the deer, and he pulls the trigger and kills his game.”

   “[...] Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place.”