Natural Christmas lights: Fireflies illuminate the emerald forest

By MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Life Network Editorial Team
 
Other than summer, you can also see the romantic sight of twinkling lights in winter. The Daxue Mountain Forest Recreation Area covers warm, temperate, and cold forest zones, with abundant biological resources that nurture a variety of fireflies, visible all year round.

Most visitors assume fireflies only appear in spring and summer, but Taiwan has recorded nine species of autumn and winter fireflies, with eight species found in Daxue Mountain. Autumn and winter fireflies emit cooler-toned light, primarily green, often glowing continuously to form green light trails that adorn the winter Daxue Mountain as a green-light forest—like Christmas lights—welcoming Christmas and New Year’s.

The autumn and winter fireflies in the Daxue Mountain area are mainly the Sacred Tree Firefly. The adult Sacred Tree Firefly is nocturnal, emitting a continuous green light, and is a high-altitude firefly. Records show it can still glow and remain active even at temperatures as low as 6°C. Male fireflies have faint glowing trails, and in some regions, individuals may dim or briefly extinguish during flight, making their paths hard to track. Females often glow on earthen embankments beside forest roads or on clinging branches to attract males for mating, and their glow is noticeably brighter than that of the males.