Who Asked: Zachary
NaNo-Novel: Emerald Dust
Answer: This is a surprisingly controversial question in scientific circles, depending entirely on how you define the word organism. Some point out that the Great Barrier Reef is a sort of “superorganism.” Some argue that Earth itself is the largest living organism.
But one of the strongest cases has been made for a spreading armillaria ostoyae (commonly known as the honey mushroom) which resides in Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon. According to the Humungous Fungus article, the Oregon armillaria fungus is “up to 8,500 years old and carpet[s] nearly 10 square kilometers of forest floor.” Originally, each above-ground cluster of honey mushrooms was thought to be its own organism, but the whole thing connects underground through mycelia (spreading white filaments). According to A Fungus Among Us when the connecting mushrooms were tested, they were a DNA match, reacting as the same organism.
The downside of this huge fungus is that it destroys trees in the area through which it spreads (and cutting an infected tree only makes it grow faster. The good news (if you’re into that sort of thing) is the world’s largest organism is edible. However, never eat wild mushrooms unless you truly know what you are doing. Even mushroom experts can be fooled. Speaking of a mushroom expert, Celebrating the Wild Mushroom says, “Financially destitute during World War II, Schaeffer was known to disappear into the local German woods for days at a time, collecting specimens for study and subsisting on nature’s bounty. On one such occasion, Schaffer was found dead by a colleague, a pile of mushrooms by his side.”
So be careful! But nothing says your characters have to be . . . or that a fate such as Schaffer’s would (literarily speaking) have to be an accident.
Note: Some other ways of measuring the “largest organism leads to different results. By weight, the largest organism would be a stand of root-connected aspen trees in Utah. If multi-stemmed organisms are ruled out, the biggest thing left is the General Sherman Tree, a giant Sequoia. If you like your organisms moving, the largest animal is the blue whale.”
Happy noveling.
Thanks for playing Stump the Librarian!
Amber
Web Resources
- A Fungus Among Us (Remember that this site is a .com, which means it is commercial in nature and not verified by any outside source.)
- Humungous Fungus (Remember that this site is a .com, which means it is commercial in nature and not verified by any outside source.)
Largest Organisms (Please remember that anyone can add to or edit a Wikipedia article.)
Print Resources
- Celebrating the Wild Mushroom by Sara Ann Friedman