Here’s an article from Nature:

Biggest genome ever found belongs to this odd little plant
The gigantic genome of a type of fork fern smashes the human one in terms of size.

A small, unassuming fern-like plant has something massive lurking within: the largest genome ever discovered, outstripping the human genome by more than 50 times1.

The plant (Tmesipteris oblanceolata) contains a whopping 160 billion base pairs, the units that make up a strand of DNA. That’s 11 billion more than the previous record holder, the flowering plant Paris japonica, and 30 billion more than the marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus), which has the largest animal genome. The findings were published today in iScience.

nature.com

There’s some speculation about how this plant can support such a high number of base pairs. Dunno, but I would imagine that since ferns were among the earliest plants to develop after life came out of the water, that this fern is reflecting the antiquity of its lineage. (Not a biologist, just speculation.)

Also, it appears that 160 billion base pairs is at the bleeding edge of what can be sequenced and there’s apparently a real question whether the genome could be investigated even if sequenced due to not enough computing power.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article and made me think.