You're standing in the middle of Fish Lake National Forest, surrounded by 47,000 quaking

aspen trees.

You look around at the sea of spindly white trunks and listen to the building rattle

of the flapping leaves that give the quaking aspen its name.

But here's the thing, this isn't really a forest.

Those 47,000 trunks aren't individual aspins, and the rustling you're hearing isn't

actually the sound of thousands of discreet trees.

It's the collective voice of one giant organism.

I'm Abby Peralt, and this is Atlas Obscura, a daily celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we'll meet Pando, the trembling giant.

We'll trace the journey of how Pando grew to be this big, what's causing it to shrink,

and how it became one of America's most talked about trees.

After this.

Pando is Latin for eye-spread, and that's exactly what this aspen has been doing in southern

Utah for up to 80,000 years.

Way, way back, it began as a single tree, and spread outwards and upwards until it became

the biggest organism by mass on the planet.

Today, it covers 106 acres and weighs some 13 million pounds, and at the heart of its growth

is its sensitivity.

Aspen are really susceptible to a lot of things because I term it that they are thin-skinned,

meaning their bark is very thin and they get infected very easily.

...