Largest living organisim?

If you guessed Blue Whale, that was my first thought.
The answer is here

However if you want a couple of clues--highlight to read

THE LARGEST living organism ever found has been discovered in an ancient American forest.

The discovery came after Catherine Parks, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in La Grande, Oregon, in 1998 heard about a big tree die-off .... in the forest east of Prairie City.

"We just decided to go out looking for one bigger than the last claim," said Gregory Filip, associate professor of integrated forest protection at Oregon State University, and an expert in Armillaria. "There hasn't been anything measured with any scientific technique that has shown any plant or animal to be larger than this."

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Where's the pictures? :thinking:

Isn't it supposed to be a grove of Aspen trees which are all connected at the roots so they are actually just one giant tree? Which is why nearly the entire mountainside changes colors simultaneously.

brucec said:

Isn't it supposed to be a grove of Aspen trees which are all connected at the roots so they are actually just one giant tree? Which is why nearly the entire mountainside changes colors simultaneously.

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Yeah, I heard that and also The Great Barrier Reef.

Wits' End said:

If you guessed Blue Whale, that was my first thought.
The answer is here

However if you want a couple of clues--highlight to read

Click to expand...

There was an episode of X Files about that kind of organism.

I also thought it was the great barrier reef? Any Australian CPF'ers that can clearify?

gsxrac said:

I also thought it was the great barrier reef? Any Australian CPF'ers that can clearify?

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Or, God forbid, you could click on the link in my previous post and do something novel....read the answer.

I guess we could nitpick and talk semantics about what "a living organism" is and isn't:

brucec said:

Isn't it supposed to be a grove of Aspen trees which are all connected at the roots so they are actually just one giant tree? Which is why nearly the entire mountainside changes colors simultaneously.

Click to expand...

Are these separate trees that at some point became connected? or is this a large stand of clones that sprouted from roots of an original tree (a bunch of "ramets")?

LuxLuthor said:

Yeah, I heard that and also The Great Barrier Reef.

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Some would call the TGB a "colony" (a group of individuals of the same species/growing close by).

...

/biogeek mode off

I haven't checked the link yet but my guess is a mold or fungus. I recall seeing something about some type of mold that was expected to extend over many acres or even square miles. Now that I have made my guess and possibly made an idiot of myself, I will check the link.

As to the reef, coral is a colony of tiny critters which are to some extent independent of each other so I don't see how this would be considered an organisim in a singular sense.

I haven't clicked either but I thought it was a mushroom (network)

greenLED said:

Are these separate trees that at some point became connected? or is this a large stand of clones that sprouted from roots of an original tree (a bunch of "ramets")?

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I think this is a single tree that has roots that grow underground and then sprout up a whole bunch of ramets. I found the Wiki site for an Aspen grove called Pando, which is supposed to be 6000 tons and 80,000 years old! I don't know, but my vote is for Pando over the mushroom thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organism