Film title: World's largest organism
The largest living thing in the world is not an elephant, or a giant redwood tree, or even a whale shark....
The prize for being the biggest organism goes to...
...a honey mushroom.
honey mushroom
It lives in Oregon, USA.
It might look like lots of small individual mushrooms, but actually they are all part of one huge organism.
The honey mushroom is thought to be over 2000 years old, and it covers an area of 9 kilometres squared.
That's about the size of 15 football fields.
The honey mushroom is a type of fungus.
Fungi are not plants and they're not animals.
fungi
Fungi are classified in their own kingdom.
kingdom
There are around 1.5 million different species, or types, of fungi.
species
They include mushrooms...
mushrooms
Toadstools...
toadstools
And moulds.
moulds
These structures are the fruit of a fungus.
Using a microscope, we can see that they contain millions of tiny spores.
spores
In the same way that seeds can grow into new plants, spores can grow into new fungi.
A giant puffball mushroom contains around 7 trillion spores.
giant puffball
They are spread by rain and wind.
Many fungi rely on their spores to travel to new places, but the honey mushroom has a different technique of spreading.
Again, looking under a microscope, we can see that it is made up of millions of tiny threads, called mycelium.
mycelium
The mycelia grow along the ground and up inside trees.
They steal water and nutrients from the trees, feeding the honey mushroom so it can produce even more mycelia.
The invaded trees are slowly killed, but the honey mushroom marches on.
It's the largest living organism on the planet, and it's still growing!
fungi
mushrooms
spores
mycelium
The prize for being the biggest organism goes to...
...a honey mushroom.
honey mushroom
It lives in Oregon, USA.
It might look like lots of small individual mushrooms, but actually they are all part of one huge organism.
The honey mushroom is thought to be over 2000 years old, and it covers an area of 9 kilometres squared.
That's about the size of 15 football fields.
The honey mushroom is a type of fungus.
Fungi are not plants and they're not animals.
fungi
Fungi are classified in their own kingdom.
kingdom
There are around 1.5 million different species, or types, of fungi.
species
They include mushrooms...
mushrooms
Toadstools...
toadstools
And moulds.
moulds
These structures are the fruit of a fungus.
Using a microscope, we can see that they contain millions of tiny spores.
spores
In the same way that seeds can grow into new plants, spores can grow into new fungi.
A giant puffball mushroom contains around 7 trillion spores.
giant puffball
They are spread by rain and wind.
Many fungi rely on their spores to travel to new places, but the honey mushroom has a different technique of spreading.
Again, looking under a microscope, we can see that it is made up of millions of tiny threads, called mycelium.
mycelium
The mycelia grow along the ground and up inside trees.
They steal water and nutrients from the trees, feeding the honey mushroom so it can produce even more mycelia.
The invaded trees are slowly killed, but the honey mushroom marches on.
It's the largest living organism on the planet, and it's still growing!
fungi
mushrooms
spores
mycelium
Can you guess what the world's largest organism is?
Learning points
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