Utah’s Pando: One Of The World’s Oldest Most Massive Living Organisms

Cynthia Mckanzie – MessageToEagle.com – Utah’s Pando, also known as the Trembling Giant is one of North America’s most beautiful trees. It is also one of the world’s oldest and most massive living organisms.

Located in an aspen colony in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest, Pando is believed to be about 80,000 years old. Some even estimate that Pando could be as old as 1 million years, which would mean Pando predates the earliest Homo sapiens by 800,000 years!

When Pando was discovered scientists named it with a Latin word that means “I spread.”

Pando is is a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) determined to be a single living organism by identical genetic markers and assumed to have one massive underground root system.

At nearly 13 million pounds, its and its root system sprawls across 106 acres and feeds of over 40,000 individual trees.

Pando is in many ways incredible. The tree was present in North America thousands of years before humans arrived. When this tree colony first came into being it would be another 50,000 years before humans started coming over from Asia, into Alaska, and then moving down towards the Trembling Giant. By the time any human being set eyes on this grove, it was already, from our perspective, older than ancient.

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 The future is uncertain for Pando. Like many stands of aspen, disease and insect infestation coupled with years of fire suppression and hungry mouths have taken their toll.

Some scientists think that portions of Pando’s root system may be dead and might have led the plant to split into separate groups and therefore would not be one organism, though the collective groups would remain the same singular, genetic individual.

Individual trees have a lifespan of about 200 years, but clones that considered as a single entity, can sprawl for acres, all descended from one original tree, and are able to reproduce indefinitely.

Pando has survived for so many years that it would be extremely sad if the root system died and that is why the Fishlake National Forest along with partner organizations are trying to make sure Pando will continue to last for many more years. However, we must prepare for the worst.

Some years ago scientists noticed a marked absence of juvenile and young stems to replace the older trunks, blaming overgrazing by deer and elk. Without new growth, to replace the old, the Trembling Giant is vulnerable to a catastrophic, sudden withering and shrinking.

Therefore the future remains uncertain and as we all know – nothing lasts forever.

Written by Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer