The largest living organism on Earth is thought to be an aspen in Utah, called Pando.

It spans more than 100 acres and weighs around 13 million pounds. It might look like a forest of individuals but each tree in the Pando stand is connected to all the rest through an intricate underground root system. Each shares the same genetic code. While aspen, like most trees, produce seeds (charmingly called catkins) the species mostly reproduces by cloning itself and sending up new shoots in advantageous places.

Pando is old, too, with best estimates clocking it at around 10,000 years, though it could be far older.

It’s been around so long because of its diversity — young and old and middle-aged all share the abundance of the soil and sky. In that way, it can share nutrients, spread out to get a little more sunlight or react to threats.

Both short-lived and ancient — individual trees live to around 150 years, at most — it’s a community.

Walk with me for a moment. 

We’re heading out my door and down the long gravel driveway to the hillside above the river. The air is still and warm, rich with a mix of earthy and floral perfumes wafting from the diversity of native species that surround my little cabin in the woods.

Grasses and wildflowers, pines and willows, scraggly shrubs whose berries are past-due, falling shriveled to the sun-baked dirt. Oh, if only I’d had more time this summer, maybe I could have made jam. 

We cross the dusty road and plunge down the trail, the wild rose stems scratching at our legs. Watch your step, everyone stumbles a bit in here.

The birds call warnings to one another, darting away and crashing through the tangled bush. We can hear the river now, a wash of white noise that is both endless and constant and ever varied and changing, a real world version of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. It gets me every time.

As we step into the shade, a cool dampness greets us and all the sounds and smells shift imperceptibly. We’re here.

Rising above our heads are the slender white trunks of the aspen that dominate the upper part of this hillside. Hundreds span the slope. The tiniest breeze, so slight it would barely carry a dandelion seed, sends their leaves dancing and singing.

This propensity for movement and sound is what gives the aspen its Latin name, Populus tremuloides. Trembling aspen.

It goes by other names, too: quaking aspen, mountain aspen, poplar, and more.

One of my old neighbors called it a “damn nuisance” because it has a habit of popping up through lawns.

Aspen grow in a wide range of ecosystems across North America, rooting themselves in mountains, along rivers and on prairies, and are especially good at regenerating after wildfires and other disasters, which makes them remarkably resilient to climate change. As they regenerate, they stabilize slopes and give the soil time to replenish microbial diversity. They provide forage for animals like deer and moose, and shelter for birds and scurrying critters, not to mention the millions of bugs essential to ecosystem health.

The burst of green leaves against the charred black of a recent burn is one of the most hopeful sights in the natural world. It tells a story we can all understand, a story of resilience and how stubborn life can be.

Here, against the bright blue sky, the little leaves are like the stars at night, twinkling and cheerful.

It won’t be long now before all this green explodes into a sea of yellows and oranges — and get this: they will all do it at the same time. Because this is one tree.