Field Trip

Scully talks about huge fungal organisms that are dozens of square feet and hundreds of tons in size having a precedent in nature. The largest one known to exist was discovered in 1998, about a year before this episode aired, in the Blue Mountains of Northeastern Oregon. This particular organism is a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae, and it feeds off the roots of pine and fir trees. It extends filaments between root wads as it grows forming one massive organism. This particular one occupies some 2,384 acres of soil, which is equal to about four-square miles; it is estimated to weigh over 10,000 tons and is at least 2,400 years old. Some scientists think it could be as old as 8,000 years. DNA testing was used to confirm it is in fact one single massive fungal organism and not a bunch of smaller ones growing together.

Both Agent Scully and the coroner repeatedly refer to the fungus as a plant. Fungi do not belong to the kingdom Plantae; they belong to their own, and are even considered to be more closely related to animals than to plants. While neither of them are botanists or mycologists by profession, they would have learned this fact in a basic undergraduate general biology course.