The trembling giant

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scientists believe that the biggest living organism on Earth is a fungus. But the heaviest organism, and the most massive organism, is a tree, or rather a giant colony of quaking aspen tree stems which has been growing across a hillside in the west of America for thousands of years. The colony - called Pando - was first discovered in the late 1960s. But it wasn't until many years later that scientists proved it was one genetic entity. Two of the scientists involved in researching Pando's story have been speaking to Louise Hidalgo about what they found out.

Photo: Quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) in autumn colours (Credit: Science Photo Library)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this
0:30.3	BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know.
0:34.4	My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds.
0:38.3	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely
0:46.0	engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:54.2	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories.
0:57.6	And that's just a few examples.
0:59.4	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at
1:04.7	BBC Sounds.
1:08.7	Now here on the BBC World Service Witness history with me Louis Adalgo. Today we start with a
1:15.7	question what is the largest living organism on earth? Is it a whale or was it a dinosaur?
1:22.5	The answer in fact is a fungus stretching over more than 2,000 acres
1:27.4	in an American forest.
1:29.2	But if you're talking about the largest organism by weight
1:31.8	or by mass, the answer some scientists believe is different.
	...

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