While bioluminescence has long allowed more exotic plants to glow, such as ocean plankton, researchers at South China Agricultural University are now bringing that glimmer to common houseplants, with glow-in-the-dark succulents.
The Chinese team injected light-emitting compounds into the plants, allowing the succulents to produce a brilliance comparable to a night light. Since bioluminescence can be recharged simply by exposure to sunlight, the innovation may serve as a tool to create inexpensive, sustainable lighting systems based on living plants.
Expanding Bioluminescence
“Picture the world of Avatar, where glowing plants light up an entire ecosystem,” says first author Shuting Liu of South China Agricultural University. “We wanted to make that vision possible using materials we already work with in the lab.”
“Imagine glowing trees replacing streetlights,” Liu said, offering one of many possibilities for the use of these novel plants.
While the core concept of inducing bioluminescence in plants has been attempted previously, the team’s recent approach is unusual. Typically, such schemes involved challenging and expensive genetic engineering, with limited success, producing only a faint green glow.
The new research instead relied on afterglow phosphor particles, essentially the same types of substances that enable common glow-in-the-dark toys to function. The phosphor particles absorb light from their environment, retain it, and then slowly release it over time, producing an enduring glow. One of the most precise elements of the team’s work was developing particles of just the correct diameter to balance easily traveling inside the leaf structures with producing a light of sufficient brilliance to be useful. Eventually, they hit on 7 micrometers as the optimal size, about the same as the red blood cells traveling through human veins.
“Smaller, nano-sized particles move easily within the plant but are dimmer,” says Liu. “Larger particles glowed brighter but couldn’t travel far inside the plant.”
Testing Glow Plants
After hitting upon the perfect particle size, the team tested their glow-in-the-dark injection across a variety of plant species, even including the popular Chinese vegetable bok choy, in addition to the previously noted succulents. However, only the succulents proved capable of producing the desired amount of glow, thanks to the narrow, uniform, and evenly distributed channels within their leaves, which facilitated the even distribution of phosphor particles. With only a few minutes of sunlight or LED light exposure, the researchers timed the plants’ glow, which lasted as long as two hours.
“It was really unexpected,” says Liu, who initially believed plants with airy tissue structures would perform better. “The particles diffused in just seconds, and the entire succulent leaf glowed.”
Rather than simply proving they could produce an even and bright glow, the team expanded their efforts toward experimenting with a variety of phosphors, resulting in green, red, and blue glows depending on the particle. Additionally, the researchers successfully crafted a reading light by lining a wall with 56 glowing succulents. From the combined glow of the plants, nearby objects were clearly visible, and the researchers could even read texts.
“Each plant takes about 10 minutes to prepare and costs a little over 10 yuan (about $1.4), not including labor,” says Liu.
The Future of Sustainable Lighting
The team still has several hurdles to overcome before their work can be used to develop practical lighting installations. One issue is that the succulents’ glowing power fades over time, with another concern being the long-term health effects on the plants themselves of injecting the phosphor, which remain unknown.
Despite these lingering questions, the team remains confident that their work may be the answer to sustainable, low-intensity lighting with applications for pathways, gardens, and even indoor use. For the next stage of their research, the team is examining how their work can be applied to enhance additional plant varieties.
“I just find it incredible that an entirely human-made, micro-scale material can come together so seamlessly with the natural structure of a plant,” says Liu. “The way they integrate is almost magical. It creates a special kind of functionality.”
The paper, “Sunlight-powered Multicolor and Uniform Luminescence in Material-engineered Living Plants,” appeared in Matter on August 27, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.