We can now hear one of the largest and most ancient living organisms on Earth whisper with the tremble of a million leaves ...

Worrall speculates that the trees absorb stored energy from their own roots, eventually killing the roots and preventing the rise of new aspen sprouts. "They basically starve to death," he says.

Pando is an ancient quaking aspen tree (Populus tremuloides) with 47,000 genetically identical stems, or tree trunks, connected to a vast underground root system. Each stem is a clone of the one ...

The new sprout is a clone of the original tree, and many cloned aspen trees can grow from the same root system. Aspen clones are some of the largest organisms on the planet. A single aspen clone ...

If the root system between patches is severed ... 2008). The ability of aspen to produce whole stands of "trees" vegetatively provides yet another key element in explaining the species’ ability ...