The Royal Horticultural Society’s magazine, The Garden, of June 2016,  reports that the world’s most expensive pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima) seed is being cultivated at the RHS Garden Hyde Hall, Essex.  The seed was purchased at auction by the seedsmen Thompson & Morgan for £1,250.  It is hoped that it will produce a record-breaking fruit in time for the ‘official U.K. weigh-in on 8 October’.

Update:  In The Garden of December 2016 it was reported that the pumpkin grown at Hyde Hall, set a new record as the ‘UK’s heaviest outdoor-grown pumpkin’, weighing 605kg (1,333 lb  13 oz), and with a circumference of 4.5m (15ft).

Image: ‘Atlantic Giant’ pumpkin, cultivated at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London Borough of Richmond on Thames; September 2015.

Updated 29 November 2016.