Looks like a fun guy

December 9, 2017 9:02 AM

The largest living thing on Earth is a humongous fungus. via BBC Earth

More record breakers.

posted by dogmom (20 comments total)

Maybe I'm shallow, but I prefer the aspen grove.
posted by box at 9:09 AM on December 9, 2017 [9 favorites]

So you're saying there's a humongous fungus among us?
posted by leotrotsky at 9:19 AM on December 9, 2017 [19 favorites]

This must be why they're not worth many points in this game. Too common!
posted by Kitteh at 9:23 AM on December 9, 2017

If I don't comment here anymore, you'll know I went ahead and tried "honey fungus" as a term of endearment.
posted by pracowity at 9:36 AM on December 9, 2017 [9 favorites]

Looks like a fun guy

Quiet. Keeps to himself. Yup -- he's a serial killer.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:41 AM on December 9, 2017

Looks like a fun guy

Quiet. Keeps to himself. Yup -- he's a serial killer.

It's worse than that -- he's a serial decomposer. Lets others do the killing for him, then he gets rid of the bodies.
posted by rube goldberg at 9:55 AM on December 9, 2017 [6 favorites]

I been through that area, didn't see no gi-gantic mushroom. Fake news!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:12 AM on December 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Jeff VanderMeer was right.
posted by Boxenmacher at 10:52 AM on December 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

As a resident of Michigan, I am resentful of this Oregon fungus for usurping the "biggest organism" title from Michigan's Humungous Fungus.
posted by edheil at 11:32 AM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Looking at box's link, I'm wondering who exactly determines what constitutes the largest living thing. Have I been duped by Big Fungus?
posted by dogmom at 2:14 PM on December 9, 2017

Well, fungus has been known to mess with peoples' minds...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:24 PM on December 9, 2017

Malheur National Forest in east Oregon.


Isn't that the same area where a standoff happened between specific people (private citizens) that wanted to take over the land and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and USFS (US Forest Service)? Why can't they take a lesson from the giant fungus colony and all get along well enough to share the area (and the responsibilities)?

;) wink
posted by RuvaBlue at 4:25 PM on December 9, 2017

But what does this mass look like??? Are the mushrooms interconnected underground, essentially?
posted by cathycartoon at 6:23 PM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I would be completely here for a movie where armed sovereign citizens staked out a piece of wilderness land and were slowly devoured by an immortal fungus
posted by Countess Elena at 9:32 PM on December 9, 2017 [7 favorites]

Both this and the previous largest are in the US -- i.e. one of the most heavily-scienced places around.

So there are almost certainly larger fungi out there somewhere more remote, waiting to be discovered by an adventurous Mycologist. Siberia? The Amazon? Somewhere in Africa? If you're hankering to be a 19th-century-style explorer, mushroom-hunting might be your last available shot at glory.
posted by danohu at 1:00 AM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

But what does this mass look like??? Are the mushrooms interconnected underground, essentially?

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a fungus. They grow from the fibrous mycelium, which constitutes the "real" fungus.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:35 AM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yep – the bulk of the organism is underground, in the form of mycelium. We think of the toadstool-shaped organs that we see protruding above-ground as separate organisms, but they're all just parts of a single individual. This is true for many species of fungus, not just this one.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:58 AM on December 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

When the internet of things gets into the decomposing industry...
posted by numaner at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2017

Have they studied the US Congress? That might be a bigger fungus than this.
posted by Anne Neville at 10:09 AM on December 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

That one's actively malevolent, making it much more difficult to study.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:14 PM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]