pando plant

8/11/2019 Pando Plant

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Pando, the Single Largest Living Organism onEarth

By Kaushik Thursday, November 18, 2010 Nature 9 comments

Pando or The Trembling Giant is an enormous grove of Quaking Aspen that is an entire forest

out of a single organism. This colony of a single male Quaking Aspen is located in the Fishlake

National Forest in Utah, in the US. Each of 47,000 or so trees in the grove are genetically

identical and has been determined to be part of a single living organism all sharing a single

massive underground root system. Pando is truly massiveit covers an area of 43 hectares,

weighs 6,000 tonnes and is more than 80,000 years old.
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Quaking aspen reproduces via a process called suckering. An individual stem can send out

lateral roots that, under the right conditions, send up other erect stems which look just like

individual trees but rather clones of single tree.

Pandos age is often debated. Some experts speculate that less well-studied Quaking Aspens

elsewhere in the world could extend more than 80 hectares and be one million years old.

Others estimates puts Pando's age closer to 1 million years.

Pando was discovered by Burton V. Barnes of the University of Michigan in the 1970s. Barnes

had described Pando as a single organism. In 1992 the Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development called Pando the world's most massive organism.


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Central Utah's Pando, world's

largest living thing, is threatened,scientists say

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ByJohn Hollenhorst,Deseret NewsPublished: Thursday, Oct. 7 2010 11:06 p.m. MDT

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About 75 percent of the canopy trees are dead in some parts of the Pando clone, scientists say.

Paul Rogers, Utah State UniversitySummary

Utah scientists are trying to organize an emergency rescue effort to save the largest living thing everdiscovered, anywhere on Earth. It's known as Pando, a single organism living in central Utah, that somescientists say could also be the world's oldest living thing.

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Utah scientists are trying to organize an emergency rescueeffort to save the largest living thing ever discovered, anywhere on Earth.It's known as Pando, a single organism living in central Utah, that somescientists say could also be the world's oldest living thing.

But Pando is dying and may have only a few more years of glory.
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It's a grove of quaking aspen trees spanning 106 acres near Fish Lake.Scientists call it an aspen clone, which is essentially a single plantcomprised of thousands of trees connected by underground roots. WhenPando was discovered a few decades ago, scientists named it with a Latinword that means "I spread."

An aspen clone starts with a single seed and spreads by sending outunderground sprouts that emerge to become trees. In the 1970s, scientiststentatively mapped Pando's boundaries. More recently, Utah StateUniversity geneticist Karen Mock wondered if Pando's reputation as theworld's largest known organism was overblown.

"So we set out to either confirm or deny that," she said.

Mock took DNA samples from 209 trees, mostly within that boundary.Her testing verified what was long suspected. "Genetically, in fact, Pando

is one enormous clone over 100 acres," Mock said, "probably over 40,000individual trees."

In all, Pando weighs about 13 million pounds, which makes it by far themost massive organism ever found.

"There may well be some larger clones than Pando out there," Mock said."But it's the largest organism that's been described" by scientists.

As Pando's fame spread, the U.S. Postal Service honored the Utahcuriosity as one of "40 Wonders of America." A postage stamp issued in2006 may have set some sort of a record for making something very small

out of something very big.

But now, Pando is in serious trouble, according to ecologist Paul Rogers ofUtah State University.

"I would call it a crisis, yes," Rogers said.

When he visited Pando two years ago, the clone seemed reasonablyhealthy. But when he went back with a team of forestry experts threeweeks ago, he was shocked. "We're looking at a situation," Rogers said,"where the whole clone could crash pretty quickly here, within the next

few years."The bark of Pando's mature trees shows they're dying from drought andbeetles. That's typical of aspen stands throughout the West and, by itself,is not especially worrisome. What is more disturbing is that small treesand sprouts have vanished from the area spanned by Pando.

"There was no regeneration and there was no mid-story tree," Rogerssaid. "So if you might think of those as the young ones and the juveniles,


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there's no young ones to replace those dying trees. So this set off alarmbells."

Rogers said there is an overabundance of deer and elk in the area, and hebelieves the wildlife is feeding on the young sprouts. He also said a small

amount of livestock grazing in the area is playing a minor role.Rogers wants to fence out the deer and elk. A small portion of Pando, lessthan 10 percent, is already fenced and is thriving and regenerating.

Some government agencies are looking into the emergency fencingproposal, but that strategy is sure to be controversial. Fences would haveto be quite high to be effective in holding out deer. At least one rancheralso has grazing rights in the area. Another complication is thatrecreationists may have concerns about a high fence in such a scenic area.A U.S. Forest Service campground adjacent to Fish Lake is actually within

Pando's biological boundaries.If Pando does die out, or becomes sharply reduced in size, it would beparticularly poignant because of the clone's presumed age. Pando isconceivably the oldest living thing ever studied. A recent study peggingPando's age at 80,000 years led to media coverage in Europe. But otherscientists are skeptical because there's no reliable way to determine theage of an aspen clone.

"People's estimates go from, you know, perhaps, low-thousands, up toeven a million years old," Mock said. "Nobody really knows, and we don't

have a very good way of asking that at this point, unfortunately."Rogers believes that if nothing is done, Pando may shrink to become anordinary, unspectacular remnant of its former glory.

"So we really need to hold on to this international treasure," Rogers said."But it's slipping away very quickly."

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