World’s Largest Plant Discovered

It is a little strange that the world’s largest plant has only just been discovered. Where was it hiding all this time? The answer is underwater, just off the coast of Western Australia.

The plant is ribbon weed (Posidonia australis), a kind of seagrass, and it is big – 77 square miles big, or as BBC News noted, “roughly three times the size of Manhattan.”

Researchers made the discovery by accident at Shark Bay, about 497 miles north of Perth. They had set out to study the genetic diversity of the species, collecting  shoots and examining their genetic markers in an attempt to estimate how many plants are in this vast undersea garden.

“The answer blew us away – there was just one!” said Jane Edgeloe, the study's lead author. “That's it, just one plant has expanded over 180km in Shark Bay, making it the largest known plant on Earth.”

It is big and it is old. Growing at a rate of 13.7 inches a year, the researchers estimate it took 4,500 years for the plant to achieve its tremendous expanse today – all from a single seed.
The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Photo credit: Rachel Austin via BBC News