Taxus brevifolia

The Yew tree is an amazing, beautiful tree with many gifts.

We're posting interesting things that we find.

One neat note - in old yew trees there is no wood that is as old as the tree itself. This is why they are so hard to date.

Something else that's interesting...most things you read about the yew say how poisonous the plant is...and most of it is. The seeds particularly so, but...the aril (fleshy part around the outside of the seed) is not. It's actually sweet and juicy and quite delicious.

Otzi                                                                                                     Hauslabjoch, Austria

Otzi the Iceman is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 5300 BP. The mummy was found in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Otztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy.

Items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a flint-bladed knife with an ash handle and a quiver of 14 arrows with viburnum and dogwood shafts. Two of the arrows, which were broken, were tipped with flint and had fletching, while the other 12 were unfinished and untipped. The arrows were found with what is presumed to be a bow string, an unidentified tool, and an antler tool which might have been used for sharpening arrow points. There was also an unfinished yew longbow that was 1.82 metres (72 in) long.

Saint Anne Chapel                                     Normandy, France

The chapel lies within the hollow trunk of a yew tree (1000-1300 years old) in the cemetery at La Haye-de-Routot village in the Brotonne Regional Park.

Details                                                                                           (thanks wiki)

It is a small to medium-sized evergreen tree, growing 10–15 m tall and with a trunk up to 50 cm diameter, rarely more. In some instances, trees with heights in excess of 20m occur in parks and other protected areas, quite often in gullies. The tree is extremely slow growing, and has a habit of rotting from the inside, creating hollow forms. This makes it difficult to impossible to make accurate rings counts to determine a specimen's true age. Often damaged by succession of the forest, it usually ends up in a squat, multiple leader form.

It has thin scaly brown bark, covering a thin layer of off-white sap wood with a darker heartwood that varies in color from brown to a magenta/purplish hue. The leaves are lanceolate, flat, dark green, 1–3 cm long and 2–3 mm broad, arranged spirally on the stem, but with the leaf bases twisted to align the leaves in two flat rows either side of the stem except on erect leading shoots where the spiral arrangement is more obvious.

The seed cones are highly modified, each cone containing a single seed 4–7 mm long partly surrounded by a modified scale which develops into a soft, bright red berry-like structure called an aril, 8–15 mm long and wide and open at the end. The arils are mature 6–9 months after pollination, and with the seed contained are eaten by thrushes and other birds, which disperse the hard seeds undamaged in their droppings; maturation of the arils is spread over 2–3 months, increasing the chances of successful seed dispersal. The male cones are globose, 3–6 mm diameter, and shed their pollen in early spring. It is mostly dioecious, but occasional individuals can be variably monoecious, or change sex with time.

 

 

 

 

The Song of the Bow              
                          By Arthur Conan Doyle

What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew tree
And the land where the yew tree grows.

What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
So we'll drain our jacks
To the English flax
And the land where the hemp was wove.

What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the gray goose feather
And the land where the gray goose flew.

What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowman--the yeoman--
The lads of dale and fell
Here's to you--and to you;
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.

TEN YEARS UNDER THE YEW TREE
by Michael Dunning
If you click on initiation you can read the start of his story...