Pando, a forest made up of a single tree, one of the oldest living things on Earth

It is the largest living organism in the world and one of the oldest, according to a recent study. Pando is found in Utah, USA and is made up of a single root. He knew mammoths and survived ice ages.

“Pando” means “I extend myself” or “I spread myself” in Latin. Imagine a huge forest of 47,000 poplar trees on 43 hectares in Utah in the United States. But you should not trust appearances, in reality, it is not a forest, but rather one and the same interconnected organism: 47,000 poplar stems connected by a single root. A very old root since, according to a DNA analysis from a recent scientific study, Pando is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old.

Concretely, this study demonstrates that Pando was already present in these American plains, when they were roamed by woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats, before naked apes set foot there. Born from a single tiny seed, Pando slowly but surely expanded, and today is one of the oldest living things on the planet. Maybe even the oldest.

It is also one of the most fascinating living things. As one of the researchers who studied his DNA said so well, “It’s a bit shocking that Pando has received so little interest so far given how cool he is“. Why cool? Because he is a triploid living being. That is, his cells contain not two copies of his chromosomes, but three. Technically, this means that he cannot reproduce in mixing its DNA with that of other trees, so instead it creates clones of itself, in a constant motion, letting genetic mutations appear mostly on its leaves, as if it were evolving in a way to protect its core. , its roots, undoubtedly one of the secrets of its longevity.

Moreover, when it comes to longevity, he would undoubtedly have a lot to teach us. Whether it’s the deep connections that sustain life through the ages, or the power of slowness. For Pando with its roots flowing beneath the earth, through the soil, like a slow-moving river, has survived ice ages, droughts, fires, its entire being spanning millennia past.