Pando, the largest living being in the world

At the beginning of last year we talked about the tallest trees on Earth, but today we discover Pando, thegreatest living being of all!

It lives in the United States and is more than 10,000 years old, it is truly a living curiosity, so let’s get to know it a little better!

An entire forest of aspen

Seen from afar, Pando would simply appear to be a forest made of American aspen (Trembling people) not to be confused with the European aspen (The people were trembling). This expanse of trees is beautiful, no one would think it was a single large living being, but it is.

Pando, identified in 1976 by Jerry Kemperman and Burton Barnes, is what is called a clonal organism of a single plant, a male Populus tremuloides, which has spread, enlarged and now it has 47,000 trunks. It would really look like a forest but all these trunks, in reality, share the same genetic markers.

But how can it be that Pando is so big and has so many trunks?

Because these plants are typically of sucking plants like many others.

A sucker is a stem that emanates from the root system of the plant that emerges on the surface and grows at a certain distance from the other trunks and this means, as we have seen, that Pando may initially appear to be a forest composed of several different plants. Already the first researchers, at the beginning of the 70s, had noticed that there were some great morphological similarities between one trunk and another. In 2008, scholarly research took DNA samples from all these stems, confirming the initial idea that it was a single large individual.

Pando is the largest individual by mass, so there is nothing else on Earth that has the mass of Pando, mass estimated to be around 6,000 tonnesoccupying an area of ​​half a square kilometre.

Posidonia, Pando’s competitors

There is someone who actually comes close to breaking Pando’s record, in fact he might even surpass it! Let’s talk about Posidonia, the types of aquatic plants. In particular there is a large monoclonal colony, therefore an expanse of 200 square kilometers was generated from a single plant. This colony might outnumber Pando in mass but it’s hard to calculate underwater 😉

Pando is more limited in scope but still counts 43 hectares of a single individual and it is beautiful to observe it, particularly during autumn, when the leaves of these poplars all turn yellow. To be able to admire this incredible spectacle you will have to go to the western edge of the Colorado plateau, in the Fishlake National Forest of Utah, about 600 m from the shores of Fish Lake, the largest freshwater mountain lake in Utah, located in Pando.

An individual with perfect coordination

All the individual Pando is connected by a very extensive root system which coordinates its regeneration, defenses, absorption of nutrients and also the distribution of energy. It is a single entity whose components act in a collective and coordinated manner.

Unlike other identities such as woods where many interconnections are recognized through mycorrhizae (here is an article that explores this topic in depth), Pando is precisely the root system of the same, single plant.

Where is the first Pando?

It is probably dead, as these plants live from 40 to 100/130 years (sometimes even 200), but certainly the first Pando trunk is no longer therewhat remains original is the root system which has continued to expand and launch new stems which are born, grow, die and are progressively replaced.

One of the first things we tried to estimate was Pando’s age, obviously dendrochronology is not applicable and therefore an estimate was made based on reasoning, taking into account that he could not have survived one of the last glaciations that occurred on the American continent (which occurred around 14,000 years ago). The estimated age of Pando is therefore between 10 and 15 thousand years.

Pando’s existence is at risk

Pando is not a name chosen by chance, in fact it comes from the Latin «I expand» and under its branches a complex ecosystem that includes 68 species of plants and animals. Unfortunately, however, Pando like the living beings that depend on him, find themselves in danger. The worst enemies of the largest organism in the world are the drought (caused by global warming), the wildlife (in particular deer, elk and other fodder animals which, due to the disappearance of predatory animals in the area, have spread in excessive numbers) which eats new shoots, livestock and sheep farming. Another big problem is the illnessesUnfortunately, like humans, genetically similar plants are more likely to develop certain diseases. Pando is genetically identical, so this phenomenon manifests itself even more severely. Another thing that challenges Pando is the fire controlto us this control seems like a super thing because it actually protects us, but in nature fire has a regenerative character. The Pando stems that were burned stimulated the root system to grow new shoots, thus expanding this forest.

Associations were born, such as Pando’s friends and also of public bodies that seek to preserve this large and extraordinary one-of-a-kind organism through large fences, controlled fires and many other essential mechanisms.

Curiosity

On the association’s website Pando’s friends you can find a series of 3D videos that allows everyone, without having to take a plane to America, to virtually visit the forest.

Aspen, also known by the English term “aspen”, is one of the famous “Bach Flowers”, a collection of 38 natural cures created by the British doctor Edward Bach. Bach attributed properties to this tree inspired by ancient Celtic and Greek beliefs, which connected it to the otherworldly realm. According to Bach, taking aspen essence would be indicated for those who experience fears related to darkness, face sleep disorders, as well as for those involved in visions and other paranormal phenomena.