Polis takes issue with Australia claiming world’s largest plant (sea grass) versus Colorado aspen grove

The office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday issued the follow press release on Australia claiming to have the world’s largest plant in the form of sea grass off its west coast, surpassing massive aspen groves in Colorado and Utah:

Governor Polis refuted a report today out of Australia that the country’s cloning sea grass has surpassed Colorado’s world-class Aspen Grove at Kebler Pass as the world’s largest plant.  

Utah and Colorado have made claims to be home to the largest plant in the world. Utah’s Pando Aspen grove is 106 acres, and Colorado’s famed Kebler Pass Aspen Grove, located in the West Elk Mountains near Crested Butte, is possibly even larger. Aspen groves like the ones in Colorado are connected through a common root system and each tree is akin to a shoot coming out from the same, vast underground organism. 

“Australia is vainly professing that a self-cloning underwater sea grass forest is even larger than Colorado’s world-class Aspen groves. We don’t know what’s going on down under but up at our elevation we know Colorado’s gorgeous Aspen groves are a sight to behold and are the world’s largest plant,” added Gov. Polis.

For Coloradans striving to defend the fact that the largest plant in the world is in fact in Colorado or maybe even Utah, Gov. Polis offered are effective ways for Coloradans to dispute the claims of the ostentatious Aussies:

• Many patches of their sea grass, while genetically identical, are not in fact connected to one another and are therefore separate organism with the same genetics
• Overall size of an organism must also factor in mass, not just area covered, and Aspen trees and root systems are for more massive than wispy sea grasses
• According to reports, researchers “detected some very subtle mutations in the plant’s genetics across the places it was growing” further confirming that the sea grass is not one, single plant organism.