The 400 ton mushroom covered the American forest

The thousand-year-old giant mushroom spread across Michigan's forest floor is said to be one of the largest living organizations on the planet.

The name mushroom was first discovered in the late 1980s in the Upper Michigan Peninsula, USA, according to Newsweek. At that time, the mushroom was thought to be about 1,500 years old, spread over 37 hectares of forest floor and weighed over 110 tons. This makes it one of the largest and oldest organism organizations on Earth.

The Michigan forest mushroom has a larger weight and longer life than previously anticipated.(Photo: Wikipedia).

"Nearly three decades later, we returned to the mushroom to get a new specimen , " the research team shared in a report posted on biorxiv.org. "We determined that A. gallica mushroom still survived in the old place, but it is estimated to be larger and older than the previous conclusion, weighing 400 tons and at least 2,500 years of age."

Media agencies call A. gallica a "giant mushroom" in the first discovery. "Any forest that grows continuously over time can become a habitat for a large and long-standing Armillaria mushroom. In fact, there are at least two other individuals associated with the original Armillaria mushroom." , the study authors said.

Armillaria survives successfully because it can live as saprophytic plants on dead or decaying organic matter or as parasitic parasites that kill host plants and invade plants. Both ways allow them to grow throughout large areas. To re-evaluate the size of A. gallica, the team took 245 samples and connected them to the geographic coordinate system. From there, they can map accurately reflect the size of the mushroom.

They also examined how the sample changed after more than three decades, considering mutations that occurred over time. The results showed that the fungus spread like cancer, but at a very low mutation rate. So researchers think it can help them better understand the development of cancer.