Saturday, October 16, 2010
Largest puffball - world record found by Finley O'Neill
SLAITHWAITE,West Yorkshire,UK--Schoolboy Finley O'Neill stumbled upon a giant puffball, measuring a whopping 66.5 inches - which sets the world record for the Largest Puffball Mushroom.
Photo: Finley discovered the World's Largest Puffball in an overgrown woodland area near to his home while walking the family's dogs.
(enlarge photo)
Finley, along with dad Michael, sisters Esmee, 13, and Millie, 11, regularly walk their dogs in the overgrown area. It is just minutes from their Slaithwaite home but it's Finley's biggest find of his adventures so far.
Mum Emma, of Slaithwaite, said he regularly goes off exploring.
She said: "He came to the house and said 'mum there's a massive mushroom' – he'd been saying it for weeks and I'd not been to look. "I decided to go up and see for myself and couldn't believe it.
"It's in the middle of nowhere really and there are lots of much smaller mushrooms growing around it and some dead ones too.
"We didn't know what to do with it, whether to pick it or leave it. We decided to leave it where it is so might grow some more."
The O'Neill family measured the puffball and it came in at a staggering 66.5 inches.
A spokeswoman for the Guinness World Records said they only had a record of heaviest fungi, called the 'chicken of the woods' mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus) which weighed 45.35 kg (100 lb) and was found in the New Forest, Hampshire, UK by Giovanni Paba of Broadstone, Dorset.
The giant puffball fungi is something of a fungal delicacy. They are called puffballs because brown, dust-like spores are emitted when the mature body bursts.
Guinness World Records also once listed a honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) in Oregon covering 890 hectares as the largest fungus.
The Guinness World Record for a morel mushroom was gained by a mushroom which measured 11 inches long and weighed 4 pounds.
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Saturday, October 16, 2010
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