Near Fish Lake in West-central Utah, lives one of the oldest and largest organisms on Earth. The clonal colony of quaking aspens known as Pando or sometimes as the Trembling Giant is estimated to be around 80,000 years old and have mass of 6 million kilograms. While viewing the forest of white trunks, it's easy to think of them as individual trees, but they are in fact all clones of each other and share a common root structure. There are more than 40,000 stems rising from the earth to make up this entity's forest.
It's hard to believe that all of the trees that I can see as they blanket the mountainside. The elevation here is over nine-thousand feet and so it's fairly cold and there is still snow on the ground in patches. The stems (trunks) are bare of leaves this early in the season at this elevation, but it's still quite beautiful. In addition to Pando, there are many other patches of quacking aspens on the nearby mountainsides and valleys. I suspect they are also clonal colonies, but perhaps not as old are large. Still, quite amazing to see something on this scale.
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