Pando Aspen Tree at Fish Lake (Utah)

A few months ago, Windows showed me a lock screen image of a white forest. I thought it was a birch forest, but when I clicked on the explanation button, it said Pando Aspen Tree. Tree! Not forest! I looked it up on Wikipedia and learned that it was a clone organism. In fact, it is the largest known tree on Earth, measured by mass. Twice the size of the second largest tree, which is also an aspen clone. The tree works differently to what we are used to when we think of a tree. The root system of this clone is actually considered to be the tree. It is huge and very old. It is estimated to be between 8,000 and 12,000 years old. What we see as the trunk are the branches. There are 40,000 branches that look like independent trees and they are constantly renewing themselves. They die and fall off after 60-120 years to make way for new branches. If I remember correctly, the branches even mutate so that the tree evolves and adapts to the climate and its surroundings.
When I read all this, I was amazed and wanted to find out where the tree was. At the time we were planning our trip to the USA and I discovered that Pando actually lives on the road from Joe's Valley to Bryce Canyon! What a wonderful coincidence.
The stop divided our day's drive into two parts. First we drove to the lake next to the tree, Fish Lake. We had lunch there and saw many people walking along the small stream that feeds the lake. We were curious and went down to the creek. It was full of salmon! A group of men were fishing with nets and we asked them what they were doing with the fish. They showed us the salmon they had caught and how to tell the males from the females. They were catching both sexes and wanted to move them to another lake in the area where the population had declined in recent years.
After this little chat we walked up a small path into Pando. We were surrounded by its branches. Unfortunately, we had already missed the autumn colours by a few weeks. The tree had already shed all its leaves. Autumn comes a bit earlier up here in the mountains at 2700 metres. It was still beautiful and a great experience to walk through such an old and huge organism.Meer informatie