Forget blue whales and giant redwood trees. The biggest living organism is over 2 miles across, and you'll hardly ever see it!
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| Photo by Ingo Doerrie on Unsplash |
Humongous Fungus
Italian chef Antonio Carluccio says it is delicious with spaghetti and red chilli. But to gardeners it is a menace that threatens their hedges, roses and rhododendrons.
The parasitic and apparently tasty honey fungus not only divides opinions; it is also widely seen as the largest living organism on Earth.
More precisely, a specific honey fungus measuring 2.4 miles (3.8 km) across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon is thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.
More facts on the Giant
- It's a tree killer,
- It is mostly common in the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere,
- The large clumps of yellow-brown mushrooms that appear above ground are the fruiting bodies of much larger organisms. They consist mainly of black bootlace-like rhizomorphs that spread out below surface in search of new hosts, and underground networks of tubular filaments called mycelia.
