Pando is the name of a clonal aspen colony in Utah often described as one of Earth’s heaviest organisms.
Pando is a grove of quaking aspen in Fishlake National Forest, Utah. Its many apparently separate trunks, called ramets, are genetically connected through one enormous underground root system. Because the trunks share the same genetic identity, scientists classify the grove as a single clonal organism.
The name Pando comes from Latin for “I spread.” Estimates commonly describe thousands of trunks covering more than 100 acres, although the colony’s exact age, mass, and boundaries remain subjects of scientific measurement. Its root system may be thousands of years old.
Pando is threatened by reduced regeneration, browsing by deer and elk, drought, and changing fire conditions. It is not the same as Old Tjikko in Sweden, another famous clonal plant whose visible trunk is much younger than its root system.