Forget blue whales, redwood trees you can drive a Dodge van through, sharks and even the tallest of grizzly bears.
Essentially, all are dwarfed by the largest organism on Earth, honey fungus, Armillaria solidipes. One of these organisms covers 2.4 miles in Oregon's Blue Mountains. It takes over and kills many trees and woody plants, but is also found in smaller versions -- with fruiting bodies that look like pretty typical mushrooms -- throughout the northern parts of Europe, Asia and North America.
The Fungarium, the world's most extensive resource on fungi and related phenomena, at the U.K.'s Kew Gardens, is a great source of fascinating, weird, and scientifically useful tidbits like that. The center's video mentions the honey fungus -- that king colossus of fungi -- and other fun things.
If you want to learn more about the strange, creeping role of organisms in our world, the documentary The Creeping Garden is a lovely source recently released in the U.S., and The Fungarium appears in it too. Made by directors Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp, the film centers on creeping slime mold, which has traits like both animals and fungi. For instance, during times of plenty they live as independent, amoeba-like cells that can still work together. But if food runs low, they can unify into a single structure.
As The Creeping Garden notes, slime mold appeared in early 20th-century time-lapse art films, moving in gorgeous, fast-moving lace action displays. Since then, or maybe before then, people have been intrigued by the organism.
The film includes an intent hobbyist who roams British forests seeking out types of the mold on trees, as well as several scientists who have conducted myriad studies -- including one that allows slime molds to find the most direct exit route in a maze (in order to help plan human escape routes from large buildings) and another in which slime mold spontaneously duplicated human exploration routes across North America, the Roman Empire's roads, and the choice to separate East and West Germany.
The Creeping Garden is a beautiful film covering an obscure subject that is all around, just as much as whales, sharks, and beetles are.
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