Europe's oldest and largest living fungus discovered

Just reported, it's growing in Switzerland's Engadine National Park, where it currently occupies 86 acres.

Scientists at Switzerland's Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research say it has been growing for at least 1,000 years in the Alpine pine forest.

The vast majority of the ancient honey fungus Armillaria ostoyae is underground; a network of filaments looking like long shoelaces feeds on trees and their roots.

In the autumn, fruiting bodies appear as large yellow-brown mushrooms that are not only edible but, aficionados say, delicious.

But not to worry: this Swiss fungus is far smaller than the U.S. and world champion, another honey fungus growing in the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon.

That one, covering an area 25 times greater - an estimated 2,200 acres, 3.5 miles across, an area equivalent to 1,665 football fields - is between 2,400 and 7,200 years old.

Puts things in perspective, what?