💥 The world's largest living organism isn't a whale, an elephant, or a tree. It's a fungus. And it's still growing.
Armillaria ostoyae. The Humongous Fungus. Malheur National Forest, Oregon.
2,385 acres. 965 hectares. A single, genetically identical organism.
Estimated age: 8,650 years. Older than the pyramids. Older than the wheel. Older than writing.
Estimated weight: 35,000 metric tonnes.
It was discovered in 1998 when researchers investigating a mass die-off of conifer trees noticed that the dead trees shared an identical genetic signature in their root tissue. DNA testing confirmed: it was one organism, connected entirely underground, that had been quietly killing trees and feeding itself for nearly nine thousand years.
Here's what makes it stranger:
The above-ground mushrooms — honey-coloured Armillaria fruiting bodies that appear each autumn — are just the reproductive moments of something that has been fundamentally invisible for millennia.
The organism itself is the root-colonising mycelium. When you walk through Malheur National Forest in October, you are walking over a single mind that has been alive since before the Bronze Age.
And it is still expanding. Approximately one metre per year at the edges.
Nothing we have ever built will outlast what is already there.
What is your mind doing right now? Because mine just broke completely again. 🌲 What's the fact that resets yours?
#MycelNet #ArmillariaOstoyae #Mycology #Fungi #Mushroom
