The Aspens & the Largest Organism — a stop on the Coronado Trail Scenic Byway.
Those stands of slim white trunks with the fluttering leaves are quaking aspen, and they are stranger than they look.
The name comes from the leaves: the stem of an aspen leaf is flat rather than round, so the leaf can't hold still — the faintest breeze sets the whole tree shimmering and hissing. Stand in an aspen grove on a light windy day and the sound is unmistakable.
Here's the strange part. An aspen grove is usually not a group of trees. It's ONE tree. Aspens reproduce mainly by sending up shoots from a shared root system, so an entire hillside of trunks can be a single genetically identical organism — a clone. That's why a whole stand turns gold on exactly the same day in autumn while the stand next to it is still green: they're different individuals. The most famous example, over in Utah, is considered one of the largest living organisms on earth.
Look at the trunks as we pass and you may see old carved initials, healed into black scars. Sheepherders working these mountains a century ago carved names, dates and drawings into aspen bark, and because the tree grows outward the carvings survive. They're called arborglyphs, and some up here are genuinely old.