What do you think of this fact?
Picture a forest in Utah: tens of thousands of pale aspen trunks, leaves trembling in the wind. Now forget what you know about forests. Pando is one single organism, a quaking aspen clone with more than 40,000 trunks and an estimated weight of about 6,000 metric tons.
One root system, thousands of trunks
Pando grows in Fishlake National Forest in Utah. According to the US Forest Service, it originated from a single seed and spreads by sending up new shoots from its expanding root system. So every trunk you see is a sprout of the same plant. EarthDate adds that genetic analysis has shown the entire forest is one single male individual.
The scale is absurd. Pando covers 106 acres, about 43 hectares. EarthDate compares that to 80 American football fields and says it is twice the size of the next largest aspen clone. Its weight has been estimated at 13 million pounds, roughly 6,000 metric tons. EarthDate calls it the heaviest known organism on Earth, and the Forest Service says it is believed to be the largest organism ever found.
Old roots, young trunks
How old is Pando? Nobody knows for sure. The Forest Service estimates it got started at the end of the last ice age. EarthDate says its root system is believed to be 80,000 years old. So the estimates are far apart, but either way, it is ancient.
The trunks are youngsters by comparison. EarthDate gives them an average age of 130 years. Fitting name, by the way: when Pando was discovered, scientists picked a Latin word that means “I spread.”
The problem: hungry deer
Lately, Pando is struggling. According to the Forest Service, the lack of regeneration is thought to be due to over-browsing by deer and other ungulates. I Love History, a site of the Utah Historical Society, notes that few small or middle-sized shoots are replacing the older generation, with deer, elk and cattle eating the young shoots.
Fences help. According to EarthDate, young aspen saplings thrive once they are fenced, increasing nearly tenfold in number.
Pando’s nickname is “Trembling Giant”: a distinctive, flattened leaf stem makes its leaves quake even in the gentlest breeze.
Some forests have a lot of trees. Pando has exactly one.