The world's largest plant
The flora is a seagrass meadow located off the coast of Western Australia. Through genetic testing, researchers found that it is actually a single species of Posidonia, meaning that the entire meadow grew from a single seedling, with a total area of 180 square kilometers, and its age is more than 4,500 years old.
It is known that seagrass is a monocotyledonous plant that lives mainly in shallow coastal waters of tropical and temperate seas, and it is also the only higher angiosperm on earth that lives entirely in seawater.
The study was initiated when scientists at the University of Western Australia and Flinders University set out to study the genetic diversity of seagrass meadows in the Shark Bay region.
Prior to the discovery of seagrass in Australia, the record holder for the largest plant was an aspen tree known as a pandan in Utah, USA, but the aspen covered only 0.42 square kilometers, or one 400th of the seagrass.
Researchers say "the reason it has grown so large is because it has been largely undisturbed by external sources."
Interestingly, the world's oldest tree, which has survived for more than 5,000 years, was discovered in Chile recently, also because it was undisturbed, as was this meadow in Australia.
