# Largest organism in surface area? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 17, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729 "2000-06-17T22:30:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![insider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@insider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insider)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/1 "2000-06-17T22:30:56Z")
Is is true that the largest organism in surface area is a mushroom that grows both above and below ground? That would make some omelet!! ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2000, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/2 "2000-06-17T22:59:37Z")
It depends on how you define a “single” organism. There a species of tree (some kind of aspen I think) covering hundreds of acres that apparently shares a common root system and propagates as clones (or in a related fashion) off the original organism’s root structure. This would (I think) qualify as the largest “single” organism in mass and surface area. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2000, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/3 "2000-06-17T23:03:16Z")
Depends what you mean by an organism. There is no largest in the worlds records book but there is a smallest & its a virus: A putative new infectious submicroscopic organism but without nucleic acid, named a ‘prion,’ was announced from the University of California in February 1982. Viroids (RNA cores without protein coating) are much smaller than viruses. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2000, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/4 "2000-06-17T23:14:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*Is is true that the largest organism in surface area is a mushroom that grows both above and below ground? That would make some omelet!! > \*\* IIRC, this 'shroom is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Supposedly, a picture of it was in the Detroit Free Press a while back, but I don’t read the newspapers regularly, so I didn’t see the pic. I have been told that above ground the organism looks like a big field of mushrooms, while below ground they all join into a huge glob of fungal material. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2000, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/5 "2000-06-17T23:54:44Z")
Three years ago, when I was teaching ecology, the textbook I was using provided the aspen tree example that **astro** mentioned as the largest single organism. It does kindof depend on how you define “single organism.” ---
**Author:** ![Gilligan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Gilligan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gilligan)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2000, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/6 "2000-06-18T01:53:56Z")
The Michigan fungus was surpassed by one in Washington state, which covers 1500 acres. That’s probably the area winner, with the aspen in Utah being the mass winner. Here’s an article on the [Aspen](http://www.colorado.edu/Carillon/volume32/stories/1_aspen.html). ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2000, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/7 "2000-06-18T07:40:44Z")
I don’t think a colony of fungi really qualifies. If you could remove one plant from the colony it would grow on its own. Its not really one organism. And besides, the question was about surface area, not mass. I have another candidate: the lotus. I read some recent scientific research on how lotus leaves can shed mud. They did some electron microscopy of the leaves, and found they had an astonishing surface, millions of protrusions that were so small that dust or mud particles could not lodge between them, so the mud just rolls off. A square foot of lotus leaf has thousands of square feet of surface area. Some of these lotus plants get pretty huge, some are dozens of feet across. And for that matter, some of them form colonies that fill swamps or line riverbanks for miles, so maybe they qualify like the fungus. ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/8 "2000-06-19T05:32:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > I don’t think a colony of fungi really qualifies. If you could remove one plant from the colony it would grow on its own. Its not really one organism. > \*\* You can do the same thing to a slug or a starfish, yet I’m sure you consider those single organisms. ---
**Author:** ![vandergeld](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e99b99/32.png) [@vandergeld](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandergeld)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/9 "2000-06-19T07:11:12Z")
What about the Creosote (sp?) bush, also using the Aspen like clone community… ---
**Author:** ![vandergeld](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e99b99/32.png) [@vandergeld](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandergeld)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/10 "2000-06-19T07:49:10Z")
[http://www.fwkc.com/encyclopedia/low/articles/c/c005002237f.html](http://www.fwkc.com/encyclopedia/low/articles/c/c005002237f.html) Doesn’t give a size, but I’d guess 11,000 years of bushes would amount to one hell of a surface area… ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/11 "2000-06-19T17:57:54Z")
I read in the Guinness book of world records that the largest organism is the Australian Great Barrier Reef. I do not understand the justification for that as it would seem to be a community of interdependant species rather than one organism. Anyway 'tis what has been written. ---
**Author:** ![Danielinthewolvesden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Danielinthewolvesden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danielinthewolvesden)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/12 "2000-06-19T19:26:17Z")
If you want something which is unargueably a single organism, then it is the Giant Sequoia. Some arguement could be made for Rush Limbaugh, tho… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/13 "2000-06-19T19:28:39Z")
You **don’t** want to know how I misread the word ‘organism’ in the title of this thread. Let’s just say that I was expecting something _much_ different. ---
**Author:** ![Danielinthewolvesden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Danielinthewolvesden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danielinthewolvesden)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2000, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/largest-organism-in-surface-area/22729/14 "2000-06-19T19:32:26Z")
Then, John, by overwhelming vote- the answer is “Mr. Cynical”. 😃