You gotta love it.
Every time we think we’ve got a handle on who’s really running the show “behind the curtain,” something else pops out and blows the whole game wide open all over again.
This time it is “mycelium.” That’s right fungi, mushrooms, mold, that creepy, icky, nasty mold that grows in your shower stall, or behind walls from leaky roofs that can eventually rot out your home.
Let’s face it, “mold” or a “fungus” is not anywhere near the top of our list of “some of my favorite things” now is it?
And now I’m saying that far from being such a “low life” (pun intended- the largest organism on the planet is Armillaria ostoyae a one cell thick fungi mat described in a Scientific America article “…that covers over 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf…”) And that this most ancient form of life is what really “rules the world”?
(You can read the entire article at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus)
Don’t take my word for it. Go watch this video presented by mycologist Paul Stamets at the March 2008 Ted conference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY
This is a screen capture of the Armillaria ostoyae fungi mat in East Oregon from Paul Stamets video.
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