The list of leaders of giant living organisms on Earth is a mushroom. Not in the sense that a mushroom, as we are used to thinking, is a cap on a stem: this is just its smallest part, a fruiting body that forms spores and through them helps the fungus to multiply. And a real mushroom is a mycelium, or mycelium: thousands of thin threads and thick "laces" that pierce the soil and stretch over long distances. In the 1980s, biologists discovered the mycelium of tolstopod honey fungus on the Michigan protected peninsula, which covered an area of 37 hectares.
Scientists at the University of Toronto and Carleton University decided to check once again whether it is exactly the same mushroom, and how old it is in this case. So almost three decades later, they returned and made 245 slices in different parts of the mushroom family. Gene analysis confirmed the "identity" of the fungus, Science reports. Moreover, the age of the giant was confirmed: if we evaluate it by the number of mutations in different parts of the mycelium, then the honey mushroom is about 2500 years old.
However, the Michigan honey fungus, according to Science, is not at all the oldest of the mushrooms. In the state of Oregon, the oldest old-timer also lives from the genus of honey agaric. It was discovered in 1988. This mycelium occupies more than 770 hectares, and it has lived on the earth for more than 8000 years.