Ann Rafalko is Director of Online Content.

The world’s heaviest pumpkin is calling The New York Botanical Garden home for just a few more days. And while its entrance was grand, its exit will be spectacular!

Beginning Friday, October 29, world-renowned pumpkin carver, and current holder of the Guinness Book‘s World Record for largest jack-o’-lantern, Scott Cully will be at the Botanical Garden to carve the 1,810.5 lbs beauty. The carving, which will take approximately one hour per 100 lbs. will continue through Sunday, October 31 (also known to some as Halloween!).

What will the pumpkin end up looking like, and will Cully break his own World Record? Only time will tell. But we do love daydreaming here at the Garden. So to get your imagination going about what the great pumpkin might end up looking like, we thought we’d share a few pictures of Cully’s past creations.

Learn more about the giant pumpkins here, here, and here. And to plan your visit for this fascinating Garden experience, click here.

Thomas C. Andres is an Honorary Research Associate at the Garden.

I am especially excited that three record-breaking pumpkins are on display this month at The New York Botanical Garden. The heaviest one is not only the heaviest fruit ever grown, but also the heaviest fruit in the plant kingdom! The scientific name of the species, Cucurbita maxima, says it all. How did this all come about?

First, I should explain my relationship with these plants. I work here at the Botanical Garden with Michael Nee on the taxonomy of the genus Cucurbita. This group of a little over a dozen species includes the squashes, pumpkins, and certain kinds of gourds. They all originally grew wild in the tropical and subtropical Americas. Five of the species were domesticated and represent some of our oldest New World crop plants. This means that Italy not only didn’t have tomatoes before Columbus, but no zucchini!

Wild Cucurbita fruit are like a baseball in size, shape, and even almost in hardness. This is quite large for a wild fruit, although nothing to write to the Guinness Book of World Records about. So how could a fruit that is so hard and so big travel around enough to form new populations? Wild Curcurbita do often grow in flood plains, and float during floods, but they would then only float in one direction: downstream.

A tale of megafauna, Columbus, selective breeding, and the pursuit of the one ton pumpkin. More below.