Mushrooms and woods post

Not a half an hour drive from my place, going west, we found ourselves in Ruislip Woods where my friend used to bring his children while successfully  shaping them into sensible and responsible adults. Good of him!
Woods? It means mushroom! I saw them everywhere. Not so much the edible ones that I know though, most of the time. I know people eat the young puff mushrooms (the second picture). Supposedly they resemble truffles in taste. I wouldn't. Maybe because of the folk name they have in Polish... I'm too polite to tell you, don't even try asking!
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

 

This mushroom was hiding from the world under the fallen oak leaf. When you looked from the side you could see it. This made my friend wonder how mushrooms pull the leaf on top of their cap to hide...
 
He removed the leaf for a moment so I could take a picture:

We saw lots of different mushrooms, but it wasn't until we came to a clearing in the middle of the wood that I found one that I could put on the plate. My friend dashed past it. He is not a 'mushroom seeker', but there it was! The KING OF MUSHROOMS was waiting for me amidst the brown oak leaves! My first boletus on English soil! This's how my trophy presented itself at first sight:
 
After dancing with joy, like the Red Indians when they caught a buffalo, I carefully pulled the noblest of  seps from the ground so as not to destroy the spawn and set off to look for its siblings. No luck.
Instead, I encountered one of the mushrooms of 'you only it it once' variety:
Beware of those!


My boletus was waiting for me on a bench by a picnic table:
 

Then I noticed something. You can see it too if you enlarge the picture below. I am talking about the little mushroom literally growing from the table!

The English climate is so mushroom friendly, that you can seat at a table and wait for your mushroom to grow in front of you!

The last mushroom I photographed before  my camera got exhausted was this one, with a cap funnily flipped over. Cap straightened, the shroom was more presentable, don't you think?
 

The mushrooms and the beauty of nature was so absorbing I was often at risk of a close encounter with the muddy ground.  See what the path looked like, often much worse than that...

A few of my walking friends (and a biking one) from Skarzysko would be in their element there!;-)

Now have a taste of the sights I enjoyed this afternoon: