Wednesday, June 01, 2022
Big plants
Speaking of megaflora, there's a new candidate for world's largest plant, a meadow of ribbonweed sea grass (Posidonia australis) found off the west coast of Australia which seems all to have grown from one seed, perhaps over 4,500 years! And it's vast. Pando, the 43 hectare stand of quaking aspen in Utah, pales in comparison with its 20,000 hectares (though Pando is probably older), as does the 965 hectare spread of Armillaria ostoyae fungus in Oregon. But I confess that these aren't charismatic to me the way the world's largest tree canopies are, banyans in India known as Thimmamma and the Great Banyan, much smaller and younger but, I guess, more human-scaled.