Grow Magic Mushrooms On Your Desk With This Solar-Powered Lamp

Traditional office settings are stark and often claustrophobic. It’s not natural to stay cooped up in a cubicle all day under blinding fluorescent lights that seem to void the passage of time. To add some humanity back to the office setting, many people set up pictures of their family or a potted plant. But if your desk is already cluttered with stacks of paper, books, a phone, and a desk lamp, there might not be room for these mental health-boosting treasures.

Desk lamps are typically a dime a dozen with most sporting inefficient incandescent light bulbs that cast shadows and increase the heat in your already stuffy cubicle. Solar lamps can be a clever replacement but many require direct sunlight to gather a full charge. When they die, you’re out of luck. None can multitask like the Kinoko mushroom USB lamp, which is amusing, energy efficient, and versatile, all at once.

Powered by mini solar panels on its base, this lamp features three large, artificial mushrooms that are actually LEDs. The shrooms appear to be sprouting out of the pot’s neatly clipped grass and change colors throughout the day. There are also stemmed lilypad-shaped leaves and a cute, yellow/orange daisy-like flower that come with the lamp so you can let your inner flower arranger loose by rearranging them every day.

On a full charge, the mushrooms will stay lit for about eight hours, although the company’s specifications don’t indicate exactly how long it takes to charge the lamp completely. The good news is that if there’s no natural sunlight in your office or if you want to use the lamp as a child’s nightlight, it can also be charged via a USB cord. Watch a demonstration of the lamps hypnotic color changes:

06 Jun This entry was published on June 6, 2012 at 9:22 pm. It’s filed under Living, News and tagged solar lamp, usb. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.