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There's a Fungus Among Us
EhobaX writes "BBC News reports, 'Swiss scientists have found what they say may be Europe's biggest mushroom - covering an area about the size of 35 football pitches.'"
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is still found here in the USA, in eastern Oregon. It's the size of 1,665 football fields! More info here.
My only surprise was that it wasn't in Texas. Aren't they supposed to do everything bigger?
1. That'd be a hell of a lot of Tinactin.
2. Seeing as it's in Europe, a football pitch is probably a soccer field.
3. Because fungi reproduce sexually. Each individual is a mix of its parents. Only asexual species "clone" themselves when they reproduce. Just like with genetically identical aspen groves, its infinitely more likely that each individual is connected to a much larger root system than for them to be separate. Lots of plants and fungi do this already, and spread over very large areas without actually reproducing. It could be that there are actually multiple separate fungi, but the cause would probably be something killing off sections of it and breaking the continuity, not truely distinct individuals.
Replying to my own post is kind of lame.
I since found several other references which seem to confirm that the living mass of the Washington state mushroom is greater than that of Pando. Much of the bulk and mass of a tree is dead cellulose fibers. Though some of the mass of mycelial fiber is dead connective tissue as well, a substantially greater fraction of it is actively metabolizing living tissue.
It seems like this young whippersnapper wins the title (10,500 year old pando, vs 1,500 year old mushroom). I still wistfully hope that some Canadian behemoth is eventually found. I like mushrooms, they are tasty, but aesthetically I'd prefer a tree to win over a fungus (even though we are more closely related to the fungus than the tree).
A football pitch is pretty much the same size as an American football field. The pitch is about the same length and somewhat wider.
An American football field is 100 yards long (plus two ten-yard end zones) and 160 feet (53 1/3 yards) wide.
A soccer field is actually less well defined:
Length: minimum 100 m (110 yds) maximum 110 m (120 yds)
Width: minimum 64 m (70 yds) maximum 75 m (80 yds)
For for the purposes of a rough measurement like the one in the article, football pitch = football field.
Football is a game of inches, with carefully measured increments (the most important being the ten yards between downs). Soccer is more continuous, so precise dimensions are less necessary.