Biggest Fungus Among Us Oregon is home to what is likely the
world's largest living thing Creeping largely unseen through the
evergreen forests of eastern Oregon is the world´s largest
living organism, a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae. The fungus
is at least 2,400 years old and covers more than 2,200 acres--or
nearly 1,700 football fields--according to scientists with the
U.S. Forest Service who discovered it last summer. "This fungus
lives in a below-ground habitat, spreading very slowly outward
from tree to tree along roots or by growth through the soil
using special shoestringlike structures called rhizomorphs,"
says Catherine Parks, a biologist with the Forest Service's
research station in Portland. Previously, the title of world´s
largest living thing was claimed by an Armillaria covering more
than 1,500 acres in eastern Washington, discovered in 1992. Both
these records have a dark side, foresters point out: Armillaria
causes a root disease that can eventually kill trees. So for
this champion fungus,