#largestorganism #pando #aspen
In the Mountain forests of fishlake national forest in central Utah lives what is one of the worlds largest and oldest organisms on the planet. Covering nearly 44 hectares, and probably weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million kilograms, this is Pando, a quaking aspen grove. Now you might be saying, these are different trees, and yes Pando is made up of nearly 40,000 different stems, but underground they are all interconnected with a single root system and all genetically identical, so the grove is really a single massive colonial male aspen. Cloning is the main way aspen spread over the landscape, with each individual clone stem having a lifespan of around 100 years, before being replaced by younger stems, thus in theory a single aspen grove is basically immortal. The dieback of old trees also makes aging Pando nearly impossible, as tree rings only work on the stems, not the ancient root system. Current thinking suggests that Pando germinated from a seed as glaciers retreated from the last glacial maximum, roughly 16,000-14,000 years ago, making Pando far older than any other tree, and older than human civilization itself. Pando though does have some fierce competition for the title largest and oldest organism; in Oregon an individual colonial Armillaria ostoyae fungus covers just over 900 hectare, but the dry weight of the threadlike mycelia, apparently don’t quite add up to the weight of Pando’s wood, roots, and leaves, and it is far younger. The only other major competitor for Pando’s title is a patch of Neptune Grass in the Mediteranean, that is apparently 5 kilometers across, and could be upwards of 100,000 years old.

sources
DeWoody, Jennifer; Rowe, Carol A.; Hipkins, Valerie D.; Mock, Karen E. (2008). ""Pando" Lives: Molecular Genetic Evidence of a Giant Aspen Clone in Central Utah". Western North American Naturalist. 68(4): 493–497. doi:10.3398/1527-0904-68.4.493. S2CID 59135424.
Ding, Chen; Schreiber, Stefan G.; Roberts, David R.; Hamann, Andreas; Brouard, Jean S. (2017-07-05). "Post-glacial biogeography of trembling aspen inferred from habitat models and genetic variance in quantitative traits". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 4672. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04871-7. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5498503. PMID 28680120.
Vince Patton (12 February 2015). "Oregon Humongous Fungus Sets Record As Largest Single Living Organism On Earth (7 minute documentary video)". Oregon Field Guide. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
Mihai, Andrei (9 February 2015). "The Heaviest Living Organism in the World". ZME Science. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
Ibiza Spotlight (28 May 2006). "Ibiza's Monster Marine Plant". Archived from the original on 27 August 2006. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
Rogers, Paul C.; Gale, Jody A. (2017). "Restoration of the iconic Pando aspen clone: Emerging evidence of recovery". Ecosphere. 8 (1): e01661. doi:10.1002/ecs2.1661.

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