Every county in America has some massive plant that a local farmer has grown to record levels—a huge pumpkin, a gargantuan zucchini, whatever—but none so much as this:
The world's largest living plant has been identified in the shallow waters off the coast of Western Australia, according to scientists.
The sprawling seagrass, a marine flowering plant known as Posidonia australis, stretches for more than 112 miles (180 kilometers) in Shark Bay, a wilderness area protected as a World Heritage site, said Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia.
That's about the distance between San Diego and Los Angeles.
That's a long way. I'm not sure how or why a plant gets that big, but I'm not gonna be jumping into the water to ask it.
Here's some video:
This thing is apparently some sort of terrifying freak of nature:
The plant is so large because it clones itself, creating genetically identical offshoots. This process is a way of reproducing that is rare in the animal kingdom although it happens in certain environmental conditions and occurs more often among some plants, fungi and bacteria.
Yeah you know what they say about cloning right?
Australia is a frightening land of terrifying natural wonders. I do not plan to visit anytime soon!
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