By Michael Geer
The last two largest living organisms in the world offer startling metaphors for the two parties.
The Pando is dying after centuries of growth. It is no longer producing new trees. Meanwhile the Honey Mushroom is killing everything in sight by consuming it.
The Pando is 106 acres of mountain forest around Fish Lake, Utah. It was, for years, thought to be the world’s largest living organism. It is an Aspen grove. A single Aspen grove. Aspen look like trees but every grove shares a single root system, making it quite like a colony. This colony, with a single root, survives by sprouting new trees when older trees die off.
The giant honey mushroom in Oregon is now recognized as the largest single living organism in the word. It is a fungus. Its footprint covers nearly 3 square miles. The visible part is a white fungus that spreads up under the tree’s bark and rots its roots. It is parasitic. Its black advance agent “shoestrings” form as they move slightly underground and out of sight, working their way into trees and scrub and shrub, choking the life out of everything they touch, then consume. Where the black tendrils go, nothing grows except for the humungus fungus.........Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment