The largest organism on Earth is a honey fungus in Oregon
A single fungus quietly threads through nearly four square miles of Oregon forest soil.
The biggest known living organism isn’t a whale or a tree — it’s a fungus. Beneath the Malheur National Forest in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, a single individual of the honey fungus Armillaria ostoyae spreads across roughly 965 hectares (about 2,384 acres), nearly four square miles.
US Forest Service researchers proved it was one organism by collecting samples across the forest, testing whether they fused in the lab, and DNA-fingerprinting them. The cells turned out to be genetically identical, all part of one vast, connected body.
Most of it is invisible. The fungus lives as thread-like filaments and shoelace-like cords called rhizomorphs that creep through soil and kill conifers as it feeds, surfacing only as clumps of honey-coloured mushrooms in autumn.
Because it spreads slowly, its size implies great age: estimates for the largest patch run from 1,900 to 8,650 years old, making this humongous fungus one of the oldest living things known.
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