Windsor Great Park
After successful mushroom trips which saw me find the lurid bolete as well as penny buns in large quantities in Thetford Forest, I decided to finally give Windsor Great Park a visit, a known hotspot for rare warmth-loving boletes, as well as the place where ancient oak trees dot the landscape, with the oldest thought to be over 1,000 years old.
When I began, trouble started. I don't know how exactly the train managed to do this, but because of severe damage to wires on a mainline, all trains from Paddington got cancelled. I was forced to take a train from Waterloo (which was actually rather comfortable), and decided to begin with the yew. I left the train at Wraysbury, and soon was admiring the tree in National Trust grounds. In front of me was the oldest tree in England, and it was spectacular.
The tree up close looks old, but nowhere near as old as its age would suggest (unlike some other trees I saw today, which look much older yet are actually much younger). In 1215, the tree witnessed the signing of the Magna Carta by King John just across the river, and in the 16th Century it is said Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn under this tree (and murdered her a few years later). The Ankerwycke Yew is one of the most remarkable trees in the UK, and also one of the 50 Great British Trees. Gnarly and ancient, the massive yew is 2,500 years old, and is still going strong and healthy. Who knows for how long it will live in the future.
After I was done admiring the magnificent tree, I moved on towards Windsor Great Park. I couldn't simply walk past the famous view from the statue of King George III, nor some beautiful scenery in the park including a huge and ancient oak.
As I left the area, I stopped for a brief look at another wonderful oak tree, William the Conqueror's tree. It is possible this tree from the Norman king's time was brought to life by an acorn from its much older relative nearby.
After this wonderful detour, I still had one tree in mind, but began to look more at the ground as well. Windsor was an amazing place to look for mushrooms, after all. It didn't take me long to find my first group, growing under a couple of young oaks. It was something I had never seen before.
The rooting bolete, Caloboletus radicans, isn't especially rare in the UK, if unusual for me, but is an exceptionally beautiful fungus. Its old name is Boletus albidus for a reason. When I cut one of them open, the white flesh instantly turned a brilliant blue through the cap and stalk. This mushroom, unlike some others associated with oaks and warmth, isn't poisonous (although curiously one study has suggested it is poisonous when raw). But if something like that finds its way into any food dish, it will ruin the whole dish due to its extreme bitterness, though not so overpoweringly bitter as the infamous Bitter Bolete. Shortly afterwards, I found another group, growing close to the tree known as the Signing Oak
And here is the Signing Oak itself. Whereas the other oaks I saw today were rather small, this one was an enormous titan massively exceeding them in size. Some say it is 900 years old, others a full-blown 1100 and is one of the most famous trees of the park.
I searched the deer park area, but didn't find anything which I hoped, even though I had found a huge amount of rooting boletes and lesser boletes such as red cracking boletes. I left afterwards, and explored a different area. I didn't find much here, but the landscape was so beautiful I stopped for a couple of photographs.
Searching through another area and coming up empty-handed, a red kite circled low overhead, flying directly over me. It then perched in a tree nearby, watching me with interest. By now, it was moving towards the evening, and the landscape became beautiful and golden.
I then visited a monument to Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards turned and explored back down the track I had come, moving further down than before, and found another clump of rooting boletes. these were really everywhere. As I investigated, I noticed a reddish bolete growing nearby. The reddish-pink cap instantly caught my attention, and I almost immediately realised what it was, even before I got a look at the stem and confirmed.
It was the bilious bolete, Rubroboletus legaliae. At long last, after so many years hoping and so many hours searching today for it, I had a large specimen right in front of me. A few others were nearby, and I left them for later. As I cut it open, I became further convinced it was the bilious bolete. The flesh turned blue, just like with the rooting bolete. But it turned blue slowly, and the colour was a very light blue, unlike the instant deep blue-black of what I saw before with the lurid bolete, the most similar mushroom to the bilious bolete. It had an unusual, faint smell to it. I'm told it smells like chicory, and, true, there was something familiar about the smell. What was unusual about it is that, despite being R. legaliae for sure, it had yellow pores. Windsor has been known for such mushrooms, and researchers have said that it is this exact morph of R. legaliae that is responsible for most, if not all, reports of the Pretender, Butyriboletus fuscoroseus, from the park. Another, much older specimen grew nearby, and this one was with the normal orange pores.
The bilious bolete is a very rare, beautiful and poisonous mushroom. It is not terribly dangerous, but it will be an unpleasant few hours if this mushroom is mistaken for something else. I've never seen a poisonous bolete before as well. And just as I was leaving, I found another one, even prettier and smaller, nearby, also the 'normal' variant of R. legaliae
After this, I cycled around for a while longer, and then turned and headed back to Windsor, only to find out that the wires got wrecked again, this time at Stevenage. Again, right where I needed to go through. Took me a long time to get home after that.
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