New Delhi| Jagran Trending Desk: Plants have been a very essential part of life, and for obvious reasons — to provide us with oxygen. In a recent discovery, the world’s largest plant growing underwater was discovered by scientists in Western Australia. A study that has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, names the plant Shark Bay, and scientists believe that the plant is large as 200 square kilometers (77sq miles), the Independent reported.
The plant is believed to be larger than the city of Glasgow, or one could say that the size of the plant is three times the size of Manhattan Island. As per the research, the discovery was a pure accident as they stumbled upon the plant while they were carrying out genetic testing. In the initial phase, the researchers thought that the plant was a giant seagrass meadow, but they later found that it was a plant spread from a single seed. Interestingly, the researchers estimate that the plant is 4,500-years-old and 180km-long.
Further, when the study was conducted on the plant, researchers said that the plant is a single clone of “Posidonia australis” seagrass. Researchers refer to this plant as the largest known example of a clone in any environment on Earth. Shallow waters were believed to form after the inundation of the Shark Bay area less than 8,500 years ago.
“We were quite surprised when we had a good look at the data, and it seemed to indicate that everything belonged to the one plant,” Evolutionary biologist and study co-author Elizabeth Sinclair, from the University of Western Australia, was quoted as saying by ABC Australia.
When the research was conducted on the plants it turned out that apart from its huge size, the ability of the plant to sustain itself for thousands of years points out that it has developed resilience to recover from an extreme climate event.
