According to multiple websites, the world's largest living organism is not the blue whale but a mushroom. A specimen of Armillaria ostoyae, also known as the honey mushroom, allegedly covers more than 2 200 acres in Oregon.
If its birth date has not been fudged and it really is 2 400 years old as claimed, this is also the world's oldest living organism.
Before you get all excited and book your trip to the US with a knife, a fork and a pot of cream, this is not, as some fake digitised web photos would have us believe, a single mushroom. It is a network of rhizomes that grow underground, so you can't even see it. The only evidence of the mother ship's existence is after heavy rains, when a lot of normal-sized honey mushrooms pop up in the woods.
Still, it is pretty thrilling to think of that enormous ancient fungal mass right beneath the unsuspecting feet of hikers.
Mushrooms are survivors. Unlike green things, they do not need light to grow. They can be cultivated in caves, in mine shafts and even in Ireland.
In Paris, mushrooms are being grown in cellars beneath the pavements for use in top restaurants. Which is a lot better than trying to grow anything on a Parisian pavement.
You could, were you so inclined, grow mushrooms in your bedroom, although it is a little creepy to think of them sprouting and swelling while you sleep.
Out of all the poets who wrote about mushrooms, Sylvia Plath described them best. Since this issue of Food Weekly is devoted to mushrooms, here is her poem:
Overnight, very/Whitely, discreetly,/Very quietly
Our toes, our noses/Take hold on the loam,/Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,/Stops us, betrays us;/The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on/Heaving the needles,/The leafy bedding,
Even the paving./Our hammers, our rams,/Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,/Widen the crannies,/Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,/On crumbs of shadow,/Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing./So many of us!/So many of us!
We are shelves, we are/Tables, we are meek,/We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers/In spite of ourselves./Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning/Inherit the earth./Our foot's in the door.
'Mushrooms' by Sylvia Plath (from the anthology 'Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times' edited by Neil Astley)
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 