Sometimes new species evade detection because they’re tiny and thus easy to miss—not this giant fungus. Shaped like a hand reaching out of the ground, this new species of fungus was discovered deep in the forest in China’s Yunnan Province. A research team from the Kunming Institute of Botany, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported it as a new species they named Dianjunus rex.
The name comes from the region’s ancient Dian Kingdom and the Chinese pronunciation of the word “fungus.” D. rex is a type of Ascomycete, which is the largest phylum of fungi with over 64,000 known species, and among them, this new fungus produces the largest masses of mushroom recorded. Unlike what we typically think of as a “mushroom,” Ascomycetes don’t form caps and stems but produce structures called fruiting bodies, which release spores to reproduce. And growing up to 20 inches and weighting nearly five pounds, D. rex’s are huge.
