#Armillaria ostoyae

[deramin2]

Oregon ties up too much cultural identity in Bigfoot as our cryptid (colonial bastardization of indigenous stories) when we basically have a cryptid proven to exist:

The Humongous Fungus Armillaria ostoyae in Malheur National Forest. One of the largest organisms on earth.

As of 2015, it covered more than 3 square miles, weighed 7.5k - 35k tons, and was estimated to be 2k - 8k years old. It voraciously feeds on the trees in its territory. And it's not obvious to the average person unless you know what to look for. It lurks among us.

Of all supernatural shows, I've only ever encountered it alluded to in X-Files. "The ground is a giant hungry mushroom" seems like it should have way more horror mystique to work with.

[mushroom-showdown]

[a-typical]

To offer more perspective, consider that all species large and small in the tree of life are contemporary players in Earth’s land, sea, and air ecosystem. The largest known organism in the world is a single mat of mushrooms weighing 35,000 tons (nearly two-thirds the weight of the RMS Titanic). This humongous fungus lurks underground and measures miles across in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. If you’re into hard-to-pronounce, hard-to-remember italicized names for genus and species, it’s called Armillaria ostoyae. Mushrooms occupy their own kingdom of life, which split with animals in evolutionary history later than our common ancestor split from green plants. Humans and mushrooms are therefore more genetically alike than either we or mushrooms are to anything that grows in the plant kingdom.

— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization - Neil deGrasse Tyson (2022)

[autumnmylife]

Mushrooms.Probably Armillaria ostoyae, but not sure.

Sept 2004,Southern Sweden.

[seventytwoowls]

“When my skin feels like a barrier between /Everything else in this universe and me / Then I try to remember / That there may very well be a link between us / That I can't see / Something underneath the surface / Buried / In among the weeds.”

ID: A watercolor painting outlined with ballpoint pen of a human heart. The heart has been colored brown, and the arteries have been drawn as the caps of Armillaria Ostoyae, a brown mushroom with speckled caps. the veins running over the chambers of the heart are dark brown. The painting has been titled, “Armillaria Ostoyae”.

Art that I made for @narcissistcookbook , who I saw in the flesh tonight :) they and their audience were very cool, soaring over the (low) bar set by the only other concert I have ever been to.

[jiaoji]

WangXian would have so many children their family tree would turn into family Armillaria ostoyae

[thegodemperorsmycopilot]

Armillaria Ostoyae, ‘The Mother of Maggots’ - Knight Abominant is the center piece of my Death Guard Company. This model uses the Knight Abominant stock model and is heavily converted using scoby leather as the mushroom cap material.

- House of Dys

[jana-aych-ess]

want to feel old? there is a single specimen of the mushroom armillaria ostoyae in oregon that stretches over a range of nearly four square miles and is estimated to be 2400 years old. this has nothing to do with your age. your age is not important. you are free

[mushroominaforest]

opinions on the honey mushroom? (biggest organism on earth)

I think it’s so cool!!!

For those of you who don’t know, there is one mycelium system in Oregon that covers approximately 3.7 square miles, making it the (presumed) largest living organism on earth, both on land and in the sea. The fruiting bodies of this massive network are a type of honey mushroom, the Armillaria ostoyae honey mushroom.

[fungi-and-a-funguy]

Daily Fungi Fact 34: There is a colony of Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon's Malheur National Forest that is possibly the largest living organism on earth by mass, area, and volume. It covers 3.7 square miles, and possibly weighs as much as 35,000 tons.

[wizardhecker]

Overhead transmission lines are a megastructure in the same way that the Oregon Armillaria ostoyae colony is a mega-organism

[mushroom-showdown]

Ultimate Mushroom Showdown Round 1

ROUND 1:

1. Destroying Angel vs. Texas Star

2. Basket Fungus vs. Gyromitra Esculenta

3. Witches Butter vs. Devil's Tooth

4. Dewdrop Bonnet vs. Puffball

5. Psilocybe Semilanceata vs. Pink Pagoda

6. Black Trumpet vs. Mycena Chlorophos

7. Enoki vs. Cat's Tongue

8. Amanita Frostiana vs. Morel

9. Death Cap vs. Xylaria Polymorpha

10. Lion's Mane vs. Psathyrella Aquatica

11. Violet Coral vs. Mycena Interrupta

12. Bridal Veil Stinkhorn vs. Indigo Milk Cap

13. Chicken of the Woods vs. Armillaria Ostoyae

14. Fly Agaric vs. Octopus Stinkhorn

15. Cordyceps vs. Mycena Nargan

16. Orange Peel Fungus vs. Inky Cap

[memoriesofthepark]

What’s your favourite mushroom species? (If you have one)

This feels a lot like getting asked what my favorite song is: I don't think I could ever choose just one! And of course there are so many I've yet to encounter.

I'm very fond of milkcaps of the genus Lactarius. Some species are choice edibles (though I've never eaten them personally). Silver-blue milkcaps (Lactarius paradoxus) are particularly beautiful, and the Indigo milkcap (Lactarius indigo) is a bucket list species of mine I have yet to see in person.

I'm also a big fan of stinkhorns (genus Phallus) and witch's butters (several species of jelly fungus). Stinkhorns have very unique morphologies and jelly fungi are just cool and fun, haha!

Honey mushrooms of the genus Armillaria are also fascinating in that they fruit from some of the largest mycelial networks (and indeed some of the largest and oldest living organisms on the Earth) formed by any fungus! The giant Armillaria ostoyae specimen in Oregon's Malhuer National Forest is a single network, a single organism, that spreads through the soil for 3.5 square miles. Armillaria mycelium can also be bioluminescent, resulting in the phenomenon known as foxfire!

Thanks for giving me a chance to rant a bit about my favs! Mush love 💛🍄

[nature-is-awesomesauce]

Honey mushroom

Armillaria ostoyae

[o-craven-canto]

Largest prokaryote: Thiomargarita magnifica, which can grow up to 1 cm (!!) in length, though tbh it's basically a micrometer-thick veneer of bacterium spread over a bag of inert water.

Largest unicellular organism with a single cell nucleus: the mushroom-shaped alga Acetabularia, which grows several cm tall.

Largest unicellular organism with multiple cell nuclei: the green alga Caulerpa taxifolia and the slime mold Physarum polycephalum can grow up to 30 cm, though in practice they function as multicellular organisms that lack membranes between a nucleus and another.

Largest animal: by linear size, the tendrils of the lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) can reach 36 m long, and a specimen the ribbon worm Lineus longissimus was dubiously described as 55 m long. They are pretty thin, though. By mass, the highest non-controversial estimate for the largest non-fragmentary sauropod dinosaurs is around 80 tons (Argentinosaurus huinculensis), though there are dubious estimates from fragmentary remains pushing above 100 or even 200 tons. The known record for thee heaviest measured blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is 190 tons.

Largest non-colonial organism: the giant redwood General Sherman (Sequoiadendron giganteum) has been estimated to weigh almost 2000 tons, though the vast majority of that mass is probably dead wood tissue. The Lindsey Creek tree (Sequoia sempervirens) was estimated to weigh 3300 tons when it was felled by a storm in 1905. The tallest redwoods grow to 110-120 m tall, which is probably the physical limit for tree height on Earth.

Largest colonial organism: clonal colonies of trees and fungi can grow quite large indeed. The Pando aspen colony in Utah counts over 40,000 individual trees with ininterconnected roots, for an estimated total of over 6000 tons. A colony of the mushroom Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon covers 9 square km and may weigh over 30,000 tons. A colony of the seagrass Posidonia australis (an aquatic flowering plant, not an alga!) in Australia reportedly covers 200 square km, though I see no estimate of its mass. Apparently there is a supercolony of the ant Linepithema humile stretching between Spain, California, and Japan with "billions" of individual workers (assuming 0.5 mg per ant, that would still mean only a few tons of total mass).

[abombihoney]

I know Bugaria is commonly set in Central America-but I like to imagine Team Snakeouth coming into contact with the Armillaria ostoyae fungus in Oregon, AKA the largest organism on the planet. (It's currently 3.5 square miles.) (My HC is that, after the Day of Awakening, it would become Powerful. As in, it'd get Magic.)

leif can't go there cause he'd get a migraine lol