Published: September 14, 2008 08:33 pm      

Maple harbors humongous fungus

BLUEFIELD — Here’s a mushroom that even Super Mario would be tickled to snatch up.

The staff at the Maples Retirement facility on Bland Street have been buzzing since last week, ever since Fred Perry of the Maples capped off a huge mushroom that tipped the scales at 13.4 pounds.

“Fred (Perry) spotted it, and after we all wondered what it was, I asked him to get a ladder and bring it down,” Amanda Farmer said. When the weather is pleasant, several Maples staff members often take their lunch break at the picnic table in front of the facility. Perry works in the facility’s maintenance department.

“When Fred brought it down, I got so excited, but I don’t know what to do with it,” Farmer said. “I weighed and measured it.” The 13.4 pound mushroom is nine and one-half inches wide and 17-inches long, according to Farmer, 24, of Falls Mills, Va., who works as the facility’s assistant activities’ director.

The Maples is located in a building that once housed the former St. Luke’s Hospital. The nursing home/retirement facility’s name comes from the huge maple trees in the lawn between the building and Bland Street.

“The mushroom was growing out of a stump where we had a limb removed from one of the big maple trees,” Brenda Epperson, Maples administrator said. “We had never seen any mushrooms growing up there before.”

Amanda Farmer’s mother, Carol Farmer is the business office manager at the facility. “Amanda had it in my den last night. In my den!” Carol Farmer said. “I told her to get it out of the house. Who knows what kind of alien spores that thing might have,” Carol Farmer said, smiling.

Actually, the 13-pounder is relatively small in comparison to a 48-pound, 8-ounce puff ball discovered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1987, and smaller still than the 56-pound, 3-foot wide mushroom that Ty Whitmore found in Maysville, Mo., in October of 2005.

– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com