Monday, September 01, 2008

Fascinating fact #5: World's oldest colonizing plant

According to the Internet's tubes, Pando, a quaking aspen colony (or clone), lives right here in good old Utah near Fish Lake. Pando is estimated to be anywhere from 80,000 to 1,000,000 years old, depending on which scientist (q.v. citation 18 & 19) you believe (or in this case, which Wikipedia article you believe.) Pando is also probably the world's heaviest plant/organism, with a estimated weight of 6,615 tons. Pando was, therefore, commemorated by the US postal service (scroll down).

I need to go back down to Fish Lake to photograph the great Pando, I think.

1 comment:

  1. if this is the same largest living organism that made headlines several years ago, there was a hilarious david letterman 'top ten little known facts about the largest living organism.' The only one I remember was: nickname: Debbie.

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