Meet the world's largest tree

 Meet the world's largest tree, an extraordinary male clonal organism that sparked wonder since 1976!

Standing tall with an estimate of 47,000 stems that looks like individual trees, these trees are believed to be the clones of one male tree that vegetatively reproduced itself. This is because each stem possesses identical genetic markers.

In a posthumous biography, by Burton V. Barnes, he described these trees as a single aspen clone. In 1992, they were reexamined and it was confirmed that this aspen forest is a single male aspen that had cloned itself covering an area of 43 hectares.

With an extensive, massive and interconnected root system, this tree is equipped to coordinate energy production, defence and regeneration across the expanse area it occupies.

Weighing about 13.2 million pounds, this is also the heaviest known organism in the world.

Located in Fishlake National Forest in Sévier County, Utah, this is Pando, a Latin word which means, "I spread".

It is a Quaking Aspen Tree, Populus tremuloides, a deciduous and fast growing tree whose leaves quakes or trembles because the stalk that attaches the leaf to the stem is flexible and flattened.

ChiOmæ

National Geographic