Yew tree

“ The tall swaying poplars are yellow in leaf at first, but soon change to darkest green.
But in this sweet time of the year every tree is a poem, and the birds that hide among their foliage do but set those poems to music.
It is interesting to note the different kinds of showers that fall from the trees. Here in Twyford I live in a miniature wilderness, partly garden, partly orchard, partly forest. Very early in the year the yew-tree yonder sheds its little round blossoms, as thick as hail; soon after come showers of leaf scales or chaff from the splendid lime-trees ”

“ Nothing breaks the silence but the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree at the church door,—beneath which was the poet's favourite seat, and where the brown needles, falling, through many an autumn, have made a dense carpet on the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the ivy; a fitful bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness; and from a rose-tree near at hand a few leaves flutter down, in soundless benediction on the dust beneath. ”

“ I hold up "the clipped Yew tree to obloquy," as the tree in its natural form is the most beautiful evergreen tree of our western world—as fine as the Cedar in its plumy branches, and more beautiful than any Cedar in the colour of its stem. In our own day we have seen trees of the same55 great order as the Yew gathered from a thousand hills—from British Columbia, through North America and Europe to the Atlas Mountains, and not one of them has yet proved to be so beautiful as our native Yew when it is allowed to grow unclipped root or branch. ”

“ Persons who sleep under a Yew tree are liable to be seized with dizziness, heaviness, and violent headache. Its juice is poisonous, and the tree exhausts the soil which supports it, and destroys all other plants which spring up beneath it. The Yew was planted in old English burying-grounds, and its wood was commonly employed for making bows and arrows before the introduction of fire-arms. The Greeks, impressed with the melancholy aspect of this tree, invented the fable of the unhappy Smilax; who, seeing that her love was rejected by young Crocus, was transformed into a Yew. ”

“ The Yew-tree rises from the ground with a short but straight trunk, which sends out, at the height of three or four feet, numerous branches, spreading out nearly horizontally, and forms a head of dense foliage. When full-grown it attains the height of from thirty to fifty feet. The trunk and bark are channelled longitudinally, and are generally rough, from the protruding remains of shoots which have decayed and dropped off. The bark is smooth, thin, of a brown colour, and scales off like the pine. ”

“ Green foliage around, green grass beneath, a pleasant sensation—not silence, but absence of jarring sound—blue sky overhead, streaks and patches of sunshine where the branches admit the rays, wide, cool shadows, and clear, sweet atmosphere. High in a lime tree, hidden from view by the leaves, a chiffchaff sings continually, and from the distance comes the softer note of a thrush. On the close-mown grass a hedge-sparrow is searching about within a few yards, and idle insects float to and fro, visible against the background of a dark yew tree—they could not be seen in the glare of the sunshine. ”

“ An old yew-tree shades the door, and near by are two enormous elder-bushes, which have twined their great branches together until they fall down to the ground like a drooping ash, forming an absolutely secluded bower, very popular with lovers and truants from church. ”

“ A yew tree, Taxus elongata, Sigba, also of the Shoan forests, keeps within more moderate dimensions; sixty feet in height, and five in circumference, is the utmost. The tough wood, like that of the wild olive-tree, furnishes the timber for works of art which are to last some time. To tarry beneath its shade, or to inhale the smoke of burning yew wood, is regarded as particularly noxious. ”

“ If never a word has been written about that red colour with which Nature touches the old stones to make them beautiful, a thousand or ten thousand things have been said about the yew, the chief feature and ornament of the village churchyard, and many conjectures have we seen as to the reason of the very ancient custom of planting this tree where the dead are laid. The tree itself gives a better reason than any contained in books. It says something to the soul in man which the talking or chattering yew omitted to tell the modern poet ”

“ In Cornish broch denoted the yew tree, the sanctity of which is implied by the frequency with which a brace or pair of yews are found in churchyards. The yew is probably the longest living of all trees, accredited instances occurring of its antiquity to the extent of 1400 years, and at Fortingal in Perthshire there is a famous yew tree which has been estimated to be 3000 years of age. This is deemed to be the most venerable specimen of living European vegetation, but at Brabourne, in Kent, used to be a superannuated yew which claimed precedence in point of age even over that of Perthshire. ”

“ Each stamen has six dust-bags at the end, and when the stamen powder is ripe these dust-bags open, and the fine yellow powder is blown like meal over the leaves and seeds.
The Yew tree has seed flowers (4) as well as those which bear the stamens. Usually they grow on a different tree, but occasionally you will find them on the same Yew, but on a separate branch. It is a curious thing about the Yew tree and its relations that these seeds are not covered in any way, but lie naked to the sun and rain. They always grow on the under-side of the stem, and at first they look like tiny acorns. ”

“ The yew-tree thrives most luxuriantly in a moist, loamy soil: it may be propagated by sowing the ripe berries in autumn, in a shady bed of fresh earth, and covering them to the depth of half an inch, with similar mould: when the young plants appear, they ought to be carefully weeded, and occasionally watered in dry seasons.—In this situation, they must remain for two years ”

“ There was towards the top of the rock from which the waters fell a huge old yew-tree, or rather bush, which hung forward over the fall. It looked very black in comparison with the tender green of the fresh leaves of the neighbouring trees, and the white and glittering spray of the water. ”

“ But the leaves of this tree are more like the fir, and is very bushy, furnish’d with leaves from the very root, and seeming rather an hedge than a tree, tho’ it grow very tall.
6. This English yew-tree is easily produc’d of the seeds, wash’d and cleans’d from their mucilage, then buried and dry’d in sand a little moist, any time in December, and so kept in some vessel in the house all Winter, and in some cool shady place abroad all the Summer, sow them the Spring after: Some bury them in the ground like haws ”

“ Hence the yew-tree was planted in churchyards, not to indicate death, despair, but life, hope and assurance. It is one of our few evergreens, and is the most enduring of all, and clearly points out the Christian's hope in the immortality of the soul: Resurgam.
Whilst on the word yew, I may perhaps observe that I am hardly inclined now (though I once was so) to derive from it, as the author of the Etymological Compendium does, the name yeoman: I think that yeoman is not yew-man, "a man using the yew-bow," but yoke-man, a man owning as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough in a certain time. ”

“ The western yew is found from southern Alaska to northern California. It occurs in the park up to 4,000 feet, growing in rich, gravelly soil on moist flats and benches and in deep ravines. It is a small branching tree, rarely over 20 feet high. The bark is purple or reddish brown. The branches extend almost to the ground. It bears a small, bright, amber-red berry.
The dark-brown or red heartwood is very tough, hard and heavy. It takes a fine polish and is used for fancy cabinetwork. ”

“ You have seen yew trees cut into the forms of pyramids, chess-kings, and peacocks:—nothing can be more unlike their proper growth—and yet no tree except the yew could take the artificial figures so well. ”

“ The yew tree grows here and there on the mountains and so does the laurel. The alder grows to a tree 18 inches in diameter but it is useless. There is a tree representing the butternut - but it has no fruit save a seed like that of the maple, and one called the mansimeter, a more splendid tree than you ever saw ”

“ That day, when we climbed up in the supper-room to take our coffee, where they had already placed a number of chairs, benches, and rustic tables, the yew was more attractive than ever. A fresh breeze coming up from the estuary made the branches gently sway; the sun, striking full on the tree’s top, gilded it, and drew out that penetrating, somewhat resinous odor, which increases in our hearts the rapture of life. The height at which we found ourselves suspended might indeed make us fancy that we were birds ”

“ The tree was of vast size, though details are now lacking. At Watcombe, a lonely farm on the roadside between Wantage and Hungerford, stands a cluster of aged yews, possibly coeval with the Benedictine cell and church which were built there at the close of the eleventh century. The trees form a kind of covered way or cloister and now surround a central pond [983] . Of “Talbot’s yew,” in Tankersley Park, Yorkshire, it is said that a man on horseback could turn round inside its hollow trunk [984] , and similar stories are related of other yew trees. ”

“ The practice of planting yews in churchyards helps to account for the extravagant statements about the age of certain trees. Generation after generation has become familiar with seeing a yew beside the parish church; the date of the building of the church being accurately known, it comes to be assumed that church and tree are coeval. Dr. Lowe gives a case in point of two churches in contiguous parishes in Kent, each of which has a large yew in the churchyard reckoned to be the same age as the church. One of these yews measures 16 feet in girth, the other 17 feet ”

“ Dr Daniel Rock, whose volumes show wide research and carefulness in sifting ecclesiological details, casts aside the bow theory, and proceeds to say that many of our yews were planted by Anglo-Saxons, and not a few by British Christians. The hardy evergreen yew is the analogue of the cypress of hotter climes. The converted Britons, he believes, “often, if not always, sought to build their churches near to some fine yew-tree—even then, maybe, a few hundred years old [1057] .” ”

“ Its limbs stand straight out from the trunk at an acute angle, not drooping as those of the redwood and fir.
The sexes are separate in yew. The female tree has a bright red gelatinous berry in autumn, and the male a minute cone. It is interesting that in bear countries the female trees often have long wounds in the bark, or deep scratches made by the claws of these animals as they climb to get the yew berries. It is also stated by some authorities that the female yew has light yellow wood, is coarser grained, and does not make so good a bow. ”

“ The following extract from the Laws of Howel Dda, King of Wales in the tenth century, shows that the yew tree was the most valuable of all trees, and also how the consecrated yew of the priests had risen in value over the reputed sacred mistletoe of the Druids:—
“A consecrated yew, its value is a pound. ”

“ You notice a small disc surrounded by a few scales, and on this disc sits the little green acorn with its olive green skin. This acorn is waiting for the stamen dust to reach it. As soon as the wind has blown the yellow powder over it a beautiful cup of pale pink wax grows round the green seed. There is no hard, woody cone on the Yew tree; the fruit (5) is this pale [80] pink waxen berry, shaped like a fairy cup and filled with sticky juice. The walls of the pink cup are soft and fleshy, and you can just see the tip of the green seed standing up in the centre. ”

“ It is always a depressing thought, when one has discovered a wonderful or a beautiful thing, that a very full and very exact account of it is and must be contained in some musty monograph by some industrious, dreary person. At all events, I can say that the yew trees which have most attracted me, which come up when I think of the yew as a wonderful and a sacred tree, are not {201} in the book. Of my Hampshire favourites I will, for a special reason, speak of but one more—the yew in the churchyard of Hurstbourne Priors, a small village on the upper Test, near Andover. ”

“ Yew (Taxus) , a genus of some six trees and shrubs, are widely distributed in the northern hemisphere, three species occurring in the United States. The American Yew is a low, straggling shrub seldom over five feet high growing in woods from Newfoundland to Manitoba and south to Virginia and Iowa. The Florida Yew is a bushy tree rarely twenty-five feet high. The California Yew is a tree forty to fifty feet high occurring from British Columbia to California, sometimes cultivated in gardens in Europe. The hard wood is used for fence posts. ”

“ In Tasmania a kind of yew tree produces no leaves, all the foliage being modified stem, which is true of many kinds of spurge in the West Indies, where an almost impenetrable scrub is largely made up of a shrub which is apparently covered with leaves, all actually part of the branches and stems. ”