Oregon's Monster Mushroom is World's Biggest Living Thing
Posted by Unknown in Mushroom, News, Research and Technology on Friday, 25 January 2013
The largest living organism ever found has been discovered in an ancient American forest.
The
Armillaria ostoyae, popularly known as the honey mushroom, started from
a single spore too small to see without a microscope. It has been
spreading its black shoestring filaments, called rhizomorphs, through
the forest for an estimated 2,400 years, killing trees as it grows. It
now covers 2,200 acres (880 hectares) of the Malheur National Forest, in
eastern Oregon.
The
outline of the giant fungus stretches 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometres)
across, and it extends an average of three feet (one metre) into the
ground. It covers an area as big as 1,665 football fields.
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 from root rot in the forest east of Prairie City.
Using
aerial photos, Ms Parks staked out an area of dying trees and collected
root samples from 112. She identified the fungus through DNA testing.
Then, by comparing cultures of the fungus grown from the 112 samples,
she determined that 61 were from the same organism, meaning a single
fungus had grown bigger than anything anyone had ever described before.
On
the surface, the only evidence of the fungus are clumps of golden
mushrooms that pop up in the autumn with the rain. "They are edible, but
they don't taste the best," said Tina Dreisbach, a botanist and
mycologist with the US Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon. "I would put
lots of butter and garlic on them."
Digging
into the roots of an affected tree, something that looks like white
latex paint can be seen. These are mats of mycelium, which draw water
and carbohydrates from the tree to feed the fungus and interfere with
the tree's absorption of water and nutrients. The long rhizomorphs that
stretch into the soil invade tree roots through a combination of
pressure and enzyme action.
In
1992, another Armillaria ostoyae was found in Washington state covering
1,500 acres, near Mount Adams, making it the largest known organism at
the time.
"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."
He
said scientists want to learn to control Armillaria because it kills
trees, but they also realise it has served a purpose in nature for
millions of years.
This entry was posted on Friday, 25 January 2013 at 03:26 and is filed under Mushroom, News, Research and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.
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