10/01/2026
🍄 YOU HAVE NEVER ACTUALLY SEEN THE HUMONGOUS FUNGUS
No one has.
What you see in the fall, those little honey mushrooms, that's not the organism. That's just its fruit.
Like an apple to an apple tree.
The real fungus is almost entirely underground: a massive, tangled web of mycelium and black, shoelace-like cords called rhizomorphs. The mushrooms are just what it uses to make spores for a few weeks a year.
Here's the wildest part, scientists didn't find it by seeing it.
In 1992, researchers picked mushrooms nearly a mile apart in the forest near Crystal Falls and ran DNA and mating tests in the lab. They all fused together. Same individual. Same clone.
At the time they estimated 1,500 years old and 37 acres. When the original discoverer went back with new DNA tools, he revised it to at least 2,500 years old, about 440 tons, and about 173 acres.
It's invisible. It's under your boots. It's been growing since around 500 BC, before the Roman Empire even existed.
What else do you think is hiding under Iron County? 👀👇
