Utah's forest is actually one huge tree
Turns out this whole forest is just one giant, ancient organism. Wild, right?
A massive forest of forty-seven thousand trees in Utah is actually…
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- Turns out this whole forest is just one giant, ancient organism. Wild, right?
- Because every trunk is part of the same individual, they all act in unison.
- Today, the giant is shrinking.
Pando looks like a massive grove of Quaking Aspens, but if you could peel back the soil, you would find they are all connected to a single, massive heart. Every one of the 47,000 "trees" is actually a genetically identical clone growing from a massive underground root system that has been alive for at least 80,000 years.
This makes Pando the heaviest organism on the planet, weighing in at 13 million pounds. It is three times heavier than a Blue Whale. When one trunk dies, the root system simply sends up a new sprout nearby, making the organism effectively immortal as long as the roots remain healthy.
Because every trunk is part of the same individual, they all act in unison. In autumn, the entire 106-acre forest turns the exact same shade of yellow at the same time. They share water and nutrients through their veins, meaning a tree on a sunny ridge can keep a struggling tree in the shade alive by pumping sugar across the forest.
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