Off the west coast of Australia, researchers have discovered what is believed to be the world’s largest plant: a carpet of seagrass that is 180 kilometers long and is estimated to be at least 4,500 years old. The botanical wonder was found in a sea bay called Shark Bay, about 800 kilometers north of Perth. This has been protected by UNESCO as a natural world heritage site since 1991.
The plant of superlatives is the seaweed species Posidonia australis, researchers from the University of Western Australia and Flinders University in Adelaide report in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B.” The scientists only made the discovery by chance: they first wanted to know how genetically diverse a seagrass meadow is and took samples for this.
“We are often asked how many different plants grow in seagrass beds, and this time we used genetic tools to answer that,” says evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Sinclair. The team collected seagrass shoots from several spots in the bay and “fingerprinted” them from 18,000 genetic markers, explains lead author Jane Edgeloe.
Plant has been growing for about 4500 years
Then the surprise: all the samples were genetically identical – the plant is therefore a single coherent organism. “The result just amazed us – there was only one plant, stretching 180 kilometers.” The seagrass meadow likely evolved from a “single, colonizing seedling” that continued to spread, Edgeloe said. Given its sheer size, experts estimate the plant must have grown for some 4,500 years.
The flat environment of Shark Bay (pictured below) with its sandy sediments is ideal for the clonal growth of seagrass beds. How the plant has survived for so long and still thrives so well is a mystery. Further studies should now clarify why the clone copes so well with changing environmental conditions. What is certain is that “it has developed resilience to variable and often extreme conditions that allow it to survive now and into the future,” the study says.
Just a few years ago, researchers in North America discovered a huge network of 47,000 aspen trees with identical genetic makeup, connected underground by roots. This so-called pando (the word comes from Latin and means “I scattered”; NB) has probably been around for thousands of years. This “forest of a tree” weighs 5.9 million kilograms and grows on 43 acres, the team led by Paul Rogers of Utah State University wrote in 2018 in the journal “PLOS One.”
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
