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This picture represents evolution as a spiral timeline with the earliest date starting in the middle. It shows how life on Earth has evolved over centuries. The spiral is labeled with the different phases of Earth’s evolution which helps point out when important milestones happened. It also shows pictures of species that were more dominant during specific periods. It helps visualize the rise and fall of a species as well as any changes it may have went through. If you look at the start of the spiral, it looks a bit less full and complex as the outer parts of the spiral. This shows distinct environmental transitions that reshaped ecosystems and gave way for new life. Overall, this spiral helps visualize the continuous process of evolution that is motivated by time, adaptations, and environmental transitions.

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This beautiful looking fungus called Armillaria ostoyae which is commonly known as the honey mushroom, was discovered in 1998. Honey mushrooms are fungi in the Armillaria group, and the first large honey mushroom ever discovered was a 37-acre Armillaria bulbosa (later known as Armillaria gallica), which was discovered in Crystal Falls, Michigan by a team of botanists. Their discovery of such large fungi sparked an ongoing debate on what makes up an organism. The Armillaria ostoyae are considered to be the world’s largest known organism. They cover about 2,384 acres of land in Oregon’s Blue Mountains and said to be anywhere from 2,400 to 8,650 years old. Armillaria ostoyae causes Armillaria root disease which kills large areas of evergreen trees. They spread to new trees by growing along roots and using rhizomorphs, which are thread-like structures. This fungus has been able to survive thanks to great genes and a stable environment.

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Next time you purchase white button mushrooms at the grocery store, just remember, they may be cute and bite-size but they have a relative out west that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf.

The discovery of this giant Armillaria ostoyae in 1998 heralded a new record holder for the title of the world's largest known organism, believed by most to be the 110-foot- (33.5-meter-) long, 200-ton blue whale. Based on its current growth rate, the fungus is estimated to be 2,400 years old but could be as ancient as 8,650 years, which would earn it a place among the oldest living organisms as well.

A team of forestry scientists discovered the giant after setting out to map the population of this pathogenic fungus in eastern Oregon. The team paired fungal samples in petri dishes to see if they fused ( see photo below), a sign that they were from the same genetic individual, and used DNA fingerprinting to determine where one individual fungus ended.

This one, A. ostoyae, causes Armillaria root disease, which kills swaths of conifers in many parts of the U.S. and Canada. The fungus primarily grows along tree roots via hyphae, fine filaments that mat together and excrete digestive enzymes. But Armillaria has the unique ability to extend rhizomorphs, flat shoestringlike structures, that bridge gaps between food sources and expand the fungus's sweeping perimeter ever more.

A combination of good genes and a stable environment has allowed this particularly ginormous fungus to continue its creeping existence over the past millennia. "These are very strange organisms to our anthropocentric way of thinking," says biochemist Myron Smith of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. An Armillaria individual consists of a network of hyphae, he explains. "Collectively, this network is called the mycelium and is of an indefinite shape and size."

All fungi in the Armillaria genus are known as honey mushrooms, for the yellow-capped and sweet fruiting bodies they produce. Some varieties share this penchant for monstrosity but are more benign in nature. In fact the very first massive fungus discovered in 1992-a 37-acre (15-hectare) Armillaria bulbosa, which was later renamed Armillaria gallica -is annually celebrated at a "fungus fest" in the nearby town of Crystal Falls, Mich.

Myron Smith was a PhD candidate in botany at the University of Toronto when he and colleagues discovered this exclusive fungus in the hardwood forests near Crystal Falls. "This was kind of a side project," Smith recalls. "We were looking at the boundaries of [fungal] individuals using genetic tests and the first year we didn't find the edge."

Next, the microbiologists developed a new way to tell an individual apart from a group of closely related siblings using a battery of molecular genetic techniques. The major test compared fungal genes for telltale signs of inbreeding, where heterozygous strips of DNA become homozygous. That's when they realized they had struck it big. The individual Armillaria bulbosa they found weighed over 100 tons (90.7 metric tons) and was roughly 1,500 years old.

"People had ideas that maybe they were big but nobody had any idea they were that big," says Tom Volk, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. "Well it's certainly the biggest publicity that mycology is going to get-maybe ever."

Soon afterward, the discovery of an even bigger fungus in southwestern Washington was announced by Terry Shaw, then in Colorado with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and Ken Russell, a forest pathologist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources, in 1992. Their fungus, a specimen of Armillaria ostoyae, covered about 1,500 acres (600 hectares) or 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers). And in 2003 Catherine Parks of the USFS in Oregon and her colleagues published their discovery of the current behemoth 2,384-acre Armillaria ostoyae.

Ironically, the discovery of such huge fungi specimens rekindled the debate of what constitutes an individual organism. "It's one set of genetically identical cells that are in communication with one another that have a sort of common purpose or at least can coordinate themselves to do something," Volk explains.

Both the giant blue whale and the humongous fungus fit comfortably within this definition. So does the 6,615-ton (six-million-kilogram) colony of a male quaking aspen tree and his clones that covers 107 acres (43 hectares) of a Utah mountainside.

And, at second glance, even those button mushrooms aren't so tiny. A large mushroom farm can produce as much as one million pounds (454 metric tons) of them in a year. "The mushrooms that people grow in the mushroom houses&133;; they're nearly genetically identical from one grower to another," Smith says. "So in a large mushroom-growing facility that would be a genetic individual-and it's massive!"

In fact, humongous may be in the nature of things for a fungus. "We think that these things are not very rare," Volk says. "We think that they're in fact normal."

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Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus

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The blue whale is big, but nowhere near as huge as a sprawling fungus in eastern Oregon

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When we look at plants we use & see every day, it’s actually pretty easy to tell whether they are monocots or dicots by using the traits shown in this chart. Grasses such as rice, wheat, corn, sugarcane, & even bamboo are classic monocots. They grow with fibrous roots, have long, narrow leaves with veins running side by side, & their flowers usually appear in groups of three. A good example is corn. It is a monocot because its seed has just one cotyledon & its vascular bundles are scattered through the stem. Many of the fruits, vegetables, & trees we are use to seeing like beans, peas, mangoes, roses, sunflowers, & oak, are dicots. These plants usually sprout from seeds that split into two parts, which are the 2 cotyledons. They make strong taproots & have leaves with net-like veins. A bean plant is also a dicot because its seed divides into two perfect halves & its leaves show a net-like vein pattern. Even in kitchen fruits & vegetables, the difference shows up in how onions & garlic are monocots, while the above ground parts of carrots & potatoes are dicots. Paying attention to roots, leaves, & flowers makes it clear which group a plant belongs to, & it also helps us better understand how different plants grow & how they’re used in farming & food.

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Branching patterns of root systems: comparison of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous species

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Background and Aims Acropetal root branching is a major process which increases the number of growing tips and distributes their growth potential within the whole root system. Methods Using a method presented in a recent paper, the defined branching…

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Echinoderms are a really interesting group of marine animals that you can find in every type of ocean, from shallow tide pools to the deepest parts of the sea. Sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, & crinoids are their five primary groups. Each of them has they’re own unique traits. They usually show pentaradial symmetry as adults, which is a starfish-like arrangement of five segments around a central point. But they actually have bilateral symmetry from birth which just means their bodies can be split into two equal halves like humans. Some of their features include a water vascular system that helps them with movement, feeding, & breathing. They also have pedicellariae, which are little claw-like structures that keep their bodies clean & safe. Echinoderms take on all kinds of roles in the ocean. Some are predators, others filter feed, scavenge, or eat sediment. One of the coolest things about them in my opinion is their ability to regenerate. They can regrow lost arms & in some cases, they can even rebuild an entire body from just part of their central disk. They’re really important for the environment too since they help control algae, recycle nutrients in the seafloor, & act as important predators that keep ecosystems balanced. On top of that, their skeletons are made of calcium carbonate which play a role in the ocean’s carbon cycle. All in all, echinoderms are extremely essential for keeping ocean ecosystems healthy.

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Phylum Echinodermata Part 1: Form and Function