The yew (Taxus baccata, family Taxaceae) is a medium-sized evergreen tree with small dense, flat and dark green leaves. It bears characteristic red fleshy berries (known as arils) with a single seed in each. It attains a typical height of between 15 and 28 metres. The reddish-brown bark flakes from the bole and the branches. The trees can live to a very great age - some specimens are thought to be two thousand years old.
The trees bear either male or female flowers. The yellow, catkin-like flowers of the male trees open in February and the pollen is dispersed by the the wind. The green, bud-shaped female flowers are inconspicious along the branches of the tree. The aril, a single large seed with its scarlet collar of fleshy pulp, ripens by October.
The seed sprouts after eighteen months to produce two deciduous seed leaves (cotyledons) which are followed by the usual dark-green, flat, needle-shaped leaves, forming flat fronds.
Ancient yews achieve a great girth but are difficult to age because the central heartwood usually decays.
The foliage, bark, seed and wood of the yew are poisonous but the flesh of the scarlet arils is not. Thrushes and other birds eat the berries and pass the seeds unharmed. Cattle, horses and sheep will graze around the trees. Farm stock has however been poisoned by yew clipings and it is tought that animals may recognize the trees as poisonous but ingest the clippings in an unfamiliar situation.
Large and old yew trees are the favoured nesting place of many bird species including dunnocks, finches, robins, spotted flycatchers, thrushes and wrens. Goldcrests sometimes construct their hanging cup-shaped nests near the tips of yew branches.
The yew occurs naturally on limestone and chalk, often in the dense shade of oaks. Native to most of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, it is distributed throughout the british Isles and Ireland. The trees grow in their hundreds in Hampshire's New Forest and on the South Downs at Kingley Vale, also in Hampshire.
The Irish yew or Iur, is a more columnar variety - with tall and narrow form.
Medieval longbows were fashioned from knot-free lengths of yew cut from selected trees although it is unlikely that churchyard yews were used for this purpose. The best staves for longbows were imported from Spain. So important was the longbow to the defence of the realm that the importation of yew staves for the manufacture of longbows was made a condition of the importation of certain other goods - a sort of import duty.
The dense foliage makes the trees suitable for use as hedging and for topiary. The seeds are deeplydormant and require special treatment from collection to germination eighteen months later. Yews are frequently propagated by means of cuttings.
The sapwood is thin and pale while the rust-red heartwood is strong and very durable. Because its irregular shape, the wood is used for fine furniture, carving and turned items such as bowls and plattersas well as tool handles. Locally the timber may be used for cleft fencing stakes and gate posts. Timber of a quality suitable for the making of veneer can fetch very high prices.
The wood has a density of about 672 kg per cubic metre.
CIRENCESTER, Gloucestershire
The yew hedge in Lord Bathurst's Park near Cirencester is the tallest in the world. Planted in 1720, the hedge which is 130 yards longs is 35 feet high.
FORTINGALL, Perthshire
Now only a relic, the girth of an ancient yew in Fortingall churchyard was fifty feet and the tree may well have been nearly two thousand years old.
