Large Little Mushrooms

As it turns out, not all mushrooms come in white button sizes. Just take a look at these hefty fly agaric shrooms! Don’t they look like they’d make a great home for a family of gnomes and fairies? And to think they just grew randomly in an Australian homeowner’s backyard.

Even more amazing is that these mushrooms are pretty small when compared to the largest one we’ve found so far. That humungous fungus is the giant Armillaria ostoyae mushroom in Oregon. Believed to be the oldest and largest organism on Earth, it covers 2,384 acres and is about 8,650 years old.