Armillaria Ostoyae Earth's Largest Living Things

 Armillaria Ostoyae Earth's Largest Living Things - Largest living organism ever found has been discovered in the American forest. Armillaria ostoyae, popularly known as the honey mushroom, started from a single spore too small to see without a microscope and has been weaving its black shoestring filaments through the forest for an estimated 2,400 years, killing trees as it grows. Now about 880 hectares of the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon is filled with mushrooms.

Transverse length of the fungus 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) and into an average of three feet (one meter) into the ground. The discovery came after Catherine Parks, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in La Grande, Oregon, in 1998 heard about the death of a large tree root rot in the forest east of Prairie.

By using aerial photographs she marked the area around the dead trees. She then identified the species of fungi in the DNA test.

She compared the elements of 12 fungi and she saw that the 61 samples derived from the same organism. This means there is a fungus that grows so large of what human beings have ever imagined. The early growth of mold on the surface that can be seen is a group of fungi that appear in the middle of the golden autumn rain. "They are edible but not tasty" said Tina Dreisbach, a botanist and mycologist with the Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon. "unless given lots of butter and garlic on it."

Digging the roots of trees that died of fungus that contained something resembling white latex paint. This layer is called the mycelium, which draw water and carbohydrates from the tree to feed the fungus and interfere with the absorption of water and nutrients to the tree so that over time the tree will die. Then there rhizomorphs that stretch into the soil invade tree roots through a combination of pressure and enzyme action. In 1992 this type of fungus is also found in Washington state covering 1,500 hectares near Mount Adams, making it the largest known organism at the time. "We just decided to leave to seek a bigger" said Gregory Filip, assistant professor of integrated forest protection at the University of Oregon and an expert in Armillaria things. "Not because of anything is measured by a scientific technique that has shown any plant or animal to be greater than that", he said that scientists want to learn to control Armillaria because it kills trees, but they also realize that it has become a natural event.Armillaria Ostoyae World's Largest Living Things. - Armillaria Ostoyae Earth's Largest Living Things

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