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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The mushroom Ty Whitmore found on a relative's farm near the northwest Missouri community of Maysville this week tipped the scales at 56 pounds _ and that was only part of it.

Whitmore, 19, of Kansas City, was cutting firewood Monday when he saw the orange and yellow mushroom growing from the base of a maple tree. He cut it off with a saw and said the biggest half of it fell into a creek.

"I wanted to see if I had a world record," said Whitmore. "It was so heavy, and I was trying to carry it without damaging it, which was hard because I had to wade across creeks, and the brush in the woods was hitting it."

Whitmore got it to his pickup truck, half a mile away, and had it weighed at a Maysville grocery store. He did some checking on the Internet and determined the big fungus was a sulfur shelf mushroom. Its scientific name is Laetiporus sulphureus, and it's commonly referred to as the "chicken of the woods" for its good eating qualities.

"I hunt and fish, but this is the best thing I ever got, a real trophy," Whitmore said.

On the Internet, the Guinness World Records lists the largest edible fungi as a giant puffball weighing 48 pounds, 8 ounces.

Whitmore said he can tell his mushroom has lost some moisture weight, and he was undecided about whether to weigh it again and submit it to Guinness.

The mushroom, measured Tuesday by a Missouri Department of Conservation, was 30 inches wide and 16 inches high. Harold Burdsall, a retired U.S. Forest Service fungus expert in Madison, Wis., said after looking at e-mailed photos that it was the biggest sulfur shelf mushroom he had ever seen.

James W. Kimbrough, an expert on molds, mildews and mushrooms at the University of Florida, said reference books list the biggest sulfur shelf mushroom as being about 20 inches wide.

While experts say it's doubtful anyone has a reliable record book for individual mushroom species, Kimbrough said the one Whitmore discovered has "got to be among the largest ever found in North America."

Burdsall says sulfur shelf mushrooms taste great, with a firm texture and plenty of flavor.

"If there are two wild mushrooms on the table, I'd always take that one, even over morels," he said.

The mushroom probably took about two weeks to grow. Whitmore said the part that fell into the creek was a larger clump growing on top of the one he got. He said the water was too cold and deep for him to retrieve it.

"It might have weighed 120 pounds altogether," he said.

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