
Pando (tree) - lelf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
======
bglazer
Learning about this a while back absolutely blew my mind. (So much so that I
submitted it to HN, where it was roundly ignored. Oh well :-)

Anyways, it's a new and strange idea to me that this organism, covering a
mountainside, is really more properly thought of as an absolutely massive
underground body that sends shoots above ground to breed and collect energy.
Makes me feel weird when I consider the quantity and variety of life below my
feet.

Secondly, it's _80,000_ years old. That made me consider the variety of
timescales that life exists in. I wonder if this is considered in the search
for extraterrestrial life. Would we even be able to detect an organism whose
life spans more than ten thousand years, and what about a million?

I wish we could see a timelapse of the above and below ground growth of this
magnificent life form. I wonder if it has "moved" in that time, expanding and
shifting into more fertile areas and atrophying in others.

~~~
abandonliberty
Would an organism that lives for millions or hundreds of millions of years
detect our momentary flash?

Our lives (and civilization) are incredibly short on a universal time frame.
This is very cool - we are the fastest creators of complexity and order we
know of. We are a piece of the universe that has become sentient; (arguably)
the only part capable of choosing whether to grow or die.

Our understanding of life is inherently limited by our context; an enormous
tree is nearly alien yet it is very closely related to us. At a philosophical
level we can begin to assess the basic requirements for life: an
infrastructure that can store, propagate, modify, and execute code to alter
itself and the world around it.

~~~
agumonkey
> we are the fastest creators of complexity

I like that definition. I also tend to define humans as having a large
spectrum of scale interactions. We explored and sensed from nanoscopic to
cosmic.

------
soneca
edit: its off-topic

This surprised me: _" The plant is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000
kg (6,600 short tons)"_

I always tought that one ton was equal to 1,000kg. So this could be a typing
mistake on wikipedia, but then I followed the link to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton) and
found out that is quite a mess its definition:

 _" In the United Kingdom the ton is defined as 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg)
(avoirdupois pounds).[2] From 1965 the UK embarked upon a programme of
metrication and gradually introduced metric units, including the tonne (metric
ton), defined as 1000 kg (2,204.6 lbs). The UK Weights and Measures Act 1985
explicitly excluded from use for trade many units and terms, including the ton
and the term "metric ton" for "tonne".[3]

In the United States and formerly Canada[4] a ton is defined to be 2,000
pounds (907 kg)."_

Any case, for me, living in a country using the metric system, appears that I
should use the word "tonne" as translation for "tonelada" (metric ton in
portuguese). This means that I am thinking the wrong quantity whenever I read
"ton" on a american text. Quite a discovery!

~~~
microcolonel
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_ton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_ton)

~~~
soneca
thanks! as the hyperlink was only at thw word "ton" (and to the url above); I
assumed "short" was part of the phrase, not of the unit name. Something
meaning that 6,600 was a rounded number or something like that (enlgish is not
my first language).

~~~
microcolonel
Just fixed it on Wikipedia. :-)

------
matmann2001
Clicked this expecting to read about some crazy data structure.

I was wrong, but not disappointed.

------
hasenj
Is this the only instance of this species? Why doesn't it have other instances
elsewhere that behave the same way?

~~~
jff
As the article explains, it grew to this size under very favorable
circumstances: forest fires keep burning down competing conifers, and a shift
in climate some 10,000 years ago made it so separate aspens couldn't really
flourish.

Also in the article it mentions other clonal groups in Utah and elsewhere.

------
DavidAdams
There's a co-work space and startup hub in Park City, Utah called Pando Labs
that's named after Pando:
[http://www.pandolabs.org/](http://www.pandolabs.org/)

------
Brendinooo
I was just at a web design conference, and Ethan Marcotte cited this as part
of his presentation while talking about 'networks of content' in responsive
Web design.

------
uptown
Also the origin of the news site Pando:

[https://pando.com/about/](https://pando.com/about/)

------
kanusterkund
What's the news here?

~~~
Roodgorf
Potential headline: "Hey, I just learned about an interesting thing."

