What covers an area bigger than 20 football fields, weighs more than 10 tons and is at least 1,500 years old?
Answer: Armillaria bulbosa, a giant fungus in a northern Michigan forest that scientists officially named Thursday as the world's largest living organism.Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada reported in the British scientific journal Nature that the fungus has a greater living mass than either the blue whale, the world's largest animal, or the giant redwood tree, the world's largest plant.
Scientists had previously assumed that large masses of this type of fungus were made up of many different plants.
But the Canadian researchers, led by botanist Myron Smith, said they discovered through genetic testing that a huge area can be covered by one plant.