What is the largest organism on Earth?
The largest organism by area is a honey fungus in Oregon's Blue Mountains, covering about 9.6 square kilometers underground. By weight, a quaking aspen colony in Utah called Pando may be the heaviest.
The fungus, Armillaria ostoyae, grows mostly underground as a network of threads called mycelium, spreading through the soil and attacking tree roots. Genetic tests showed that the huge patch in Oregon is a single individual, possibly thousands of years old.
Pando, meaning I spread in Latin, is a grove of about 47,000 quaking aspen trees in Utah that all grow from one root system. Together they weigh an estimated 6,000 tonnes, making it one of the heaviest living things known.
Other giants
The largest single tree by volume is General Sherman, a giant sequoia in California. The tallest is Hyperion, a coast redwood about 116 meters tall. The largest animal is the blue whale, and a seagrass meadow in Shark Bay, Australia, discovered in 2022, spreads over about 180 square kilometers from a single plant.
Did You Know?
Honey fungus gets its name from its yellowish-brown mushrooms, which appear above ground in autumn. Some species glow faintly in the dark.