The largest living thing on Earth is mostly hidden from view
- Oct. 8, 2016, 1:00 PM
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Armillaria
ostoyae
Rocky
Houghtby/Flickr
The world's largest living thing is even bigger than a blue whale (the largest animal living now).
Meet Armillaria ostoyae, or, as it's nicknamed, the Humongous Fungus.
It's an organism that covers 2,385 acres (almost 4 square miles) of the Malheur National Forest in Oregon.
But it's a lot more harmful than the nickname might suggest: The Amarillia grows by feeding off of tree roots, leaching off of them and actually killing them, causing them to decay. So, in a forest, it has a good shot of growing to a massive size (at the cost of a few thousand acres of trees).
The fungus has a huge network of roots, called mycellia, that permeate below the ground of the forest. What shows up above ground are the mushrooms that get produced about once a year, according to the USDA. They usually pop up around the base of infected or newly-killed trees.
Here's a map showing just how big the Humongous Fungus, highlighted in red, is compared to other, less humongous Armillaria (in yellow).
USDA
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