The world's largest known plant is a single seagrass that cloned itself for 4,500 years
Genetic testing of ribbon-weed meadows across Western Australia's Shark Bay found that a 180-kilometre stretch of seagrass is all one plant, having spread entirely by cloning itself from a single ancient seedling rather than breeding with others. Researchers estimate it's at least 4,500 years old. It carries double the usual number of chromosomes, the result of a hybridization event that may be exactly what let it clone itself so successfully across such varied conditions.