Sometimes the most amazing things exist literally beneath our feet, occupying a subterranean space unseen in day to day life on the surface. We do see the fruiting bodies of these fungal mats and call them mushrooms, but the actual entity is the connected life-form living in the soil.
One such fungal mat discovered in Oregon is being thought of as the largest single organism on the planet, occupying over 2300 acres of soil — nearly 3.6 square miles. It also may be nearly 9000 years old. Imagine a single genetic individual organism that large that has lived so long.
Pictures of the connected filaments, or mycelium, of fungal mats bear a striking resemblance to the network of neural cells we carry around in our heads. I wonder if, in its way, this great being has been dreaming there in the dark all these millennia, arriving at truths beyond our grasp? What language, what songs, what memories?
whoisfenton 