The Tallest, The Largest, and Other Extremes
—Michael Penziner, Friends of Rye Nature Center Docent
Hyperion, the tallest tree in the world. Image: thetallesteverything.com
There is a passion for numbers that makes people want to know how many, how big, how tall, and ...well, you get the point. So, in the immortal words of Casey Stengel, you could look it up. And we did.
For example:
How tall is the tallest tree?
Hyperion, the tallest tree in the world. Image: thetallesteverything.com
The coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) which grows in coastal northern California, is the tallest. The current record holder is called Hyperion. It was last measured in 2009, reaching the height of 379.29 feet. If it were a building, it would be close to 40 stories high. And what's even more interesting is that it can live to be over 1800 years old. However, there is a possibility that other species which might have been taller (California's coast Douglas firs and Australia's eucalypts) were harvested for their lumber, and so that left the Sequoia as king of the forests.
How large is the largest living thing? This answer is just a bit technical. The winner is a honey fungus (Armillaria solidipes), and the technicality is that when the mycelia (the vegetative part of a fungus) of genetically identical A. solidipes meet, they can fuse to form a single individual. So the largest known living organism is a colony of honey fungus in the Blue Mountains of Oregon measuring 2.4 miles across with an estimated age of 2200 years old. Now, that's big. And pretty old.
A flower that blooms under the ground? Sure, why not? Orchids are such strange plants that being in full bloom under the ground, never seeing the light, shouldn't surprise us at all. It is extremely rare and has been found only in Western Australia. Only 50 plants are known to exist in the wild, and the location of those plants is kept a deep secret. No part of this plant (Rhizanthella gardneri, also known as The Western Underground Orchid) ever sees the light, yet there is still sexual reproduction because the flower is pollinated by termites and gnats. It is parasitic and feeds on a fungus that lives symbiotically on the roots of the broom brush plant.
A pretty little frog that produces a most potent poison? Poison dart frog. Absolutely. South and Central American Indians use the poisonous secretions from the skin of the Poison Dart Frog, to coat the tips of the darts they use when hunting. The frogs are brightly colored, and in nature that color is used to warn predators that they are toxic and do not make good prey. This is something called aposematism, and it is common in nature, evolution thereby protecting some animals by making the predator think it is too dangerous to mess with.
The oldest living organisms? We've listed some "things" with their estimated top ages which we think might interest you. 1) A clonal colony of Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) has been estimated at about 80,000 years old. 2) A colony of sea grass (Posidonia oceanica) in the Mediterranean Sea is somewhere between 12,000 and 200,000 years old. Sorry, but scientists haven't been able to pin it down any better than that. 3) A single Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) is 5065 years old at last count. It lives in North America. 4) Europe's oldest tree is the Llangemyw Yew (Taxus baccata) from North Wales. It is between 4,000-5,000 years old. 5) A Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa) from Sri Lanka was planted in 288 BC, an authenticated date. 6) And finally, the oldest recorded human life span (Homo sapiens) was 122 years, 164 days, ending on August 4, 1997.
Poison dart frog. Image: kids.nationalgeographic.com
