THUNDER BAY -- The banks of the Kaministiquia River may have produced the largest puffball mushroom recorded in the history of the world.
Adrian Karasiewicz was fishing on the river this summer when he first discovered the puffball, also known as Calvatia Gigantea. By the time he harvested it this week, it measured a circumference of 81 inches and weighed 52.2 lbs.
"I wasn't sure what it was at first," he said. "As I noticed it was growing, I thought, 'holy jeez, that's a mushroom.'"
Mushrooms have been a long-running joke between Karasiewicz and his cousin Joe Dennhardt.Their family has history picking them in British Columbia and Karasiewicz often sends Dennhardt photos of him licking or eating mushrooms.
Karasiewicz hoped to prank Dennhardt by putting the giant puffball on his cousin's lawn as if it had grown overnight.
The prank was a bust.
"He tried to do that but I was actually off work when he was coming over to do it," Dennhardt said. "He texted me and I was like, 'yeah, I'm at home,' But it was amazing. I've never seen anything like that."
According to Guinness World Records, the largest puffball mushroom ever recorded was found in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, UK. It measured 66.5 inches, although it's unclear whether that's a circumference or diamater measurement.
The pair plan to contact the organization to see whether they can inscribe their names in trivia's greatest tome.
"When you're a kid, you're thinking you want to go and make it big and have a Guinness record, whether you're going to run faster or jump higher than the last person," Krasiewicz said.
"Who'd have thought it would be over a mushroom?"
