Malayan Blue Lantern

The Malayan Blue Lantern is an exotic magical plant from the jungles of Southeast Asia. Discovered in the nineteenth century by a witch backpacking through Sarawak, the plant looks completely unassuming by day. It flourishes well in humid environments, but can adapt to colder, drier climates. Blue Lanterns grown in cooler temperatures have smaller fruits than their tropical counterparts, and grow fewer new leaves per year.

The plant is a slow grower and only starts fruiting after three years. It lives for about fifty years in the wild, forty in domestic environments. It can grow up to ten feet in length, and the leaves average on almost a foot in length.

Appearance

It consists solely of multiple dark green vines that grow broad, long leaves. The new leaves are usually white with a green middle vein, but over time they darken.

The plant itself glows at night, although only in certain areas. Mostly there is pale light at the stalks of each leaf, but the round fruits have white flesh that glow. The brown shell, marked with blue stripes running from the stalk down to the bottom of the fruit, is thinnest where the blue stripes are, so the fruit appears to glow blue. The leaves are often loosely wrapped around the fruit, causing the light to be reflected; this is where the plant earns its name.

The flowers are also white and glow blue at night. Their centres glow more brightly than their tips, possibly to attract fruitbats. Herbologists have noted that the source of light is from within itself; breaking off a stalk or cutting it in half shows that the stem within glows bright white. Even the dark vines have blue specks where old leaves have dropped off. Presumably the plant glows so that it can keep photosynthesising in the dark.

If a leaf or fruit is broken off, the leaf or fruit will cease to glow permanently since the source of the light is from the Blue Lantern itself.

Uses

• The glowing component is used as a harmless ingredient in glowing food and sweets, and is easily dissolved by the acid in the stomach.

• The fruit is poisonous, but the shell can be dried and used as decorative lightbulbs, provided there is a light source inside them.

• The plant has been used as a means of lighting on occasion. Some magical greenhouses in the US have it growing to the ceiling and along the walls to provide light at night, thus removing the need for lighting spells.

Predators

The plant has only one predator - the caterpillars of the Tropical Glitterwing Butterfly. Glitterwing caterpillars have red warning stripes that glow at night, and they need the glowing flesh from the Blue Lantern to show off their poisonous nature. Both the caterpillar and butterfly are poisonous; the butterfly itself has bright yellow markings. The poison is from the Blue Lantern fruit; once a Glitterwing caterpillar is ready to pupate, it eats out the fruit and pupates within it.

The Glitterwing Butterfly doesn't live in colder countries, thereby removing the one pest the Blue Lantern has had for years.

At Absit Omen

One specimen is mentioned to be in Morgana Hollingbury's flat in Making a List & Checking It Twice.

Lydia Hollingbury mentions having owned one in 30 and Onwards, although it was unfortunately destroyed when Mordecai accidentally hexed it. According to her, it's expensive to ship a cutting in and you have to wait for a few weeks for it.