RE: Largest living organism

Once you get into clones of genetically identical critters, the sky's the
limit.  In addition to the Michigan honey mushroom, there are huge fairy
rings of root-rot fungi in pacific northwest forests, and even larger,
probably older, clones among higher green plants.

Some clones of, for instance, creosote bush [Larrea tridentata] are
thought to be miles across, and some of box huckleberry [Gaylussacia] to
be several thousand years old. Even mosses and liverworts might be pretty
huge by this reckoning:  There are several bryophyte species which were
once sexual reproducers, that have only one sex [either male or female]
over a good stretch of North America, so reproducing asexually only.

I'd stay with our naive picture of an individual organism, and say that
the very biggest Sierra redwood is the winner!


loren russell, corvallis, oregon
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