Yew are Amazing!
I am fascinated by BET’s magnificent yew trees – they are so atmospheric, dark and moody. It also amazes me how these impressively large old trees can sprout out of seemingly solid limestone cliffs. Whilst working amongst the yews along the new Geology Trail, I thought I would do some digging!
I came across the website of the Ancient Yew Group (AYG) which has a mass of fascinating facts about yews. Of particular interest is that, in 2005 and 2011, Tim Hills of the AYG surveyed Somerset woods, including BET’s, and made special note of three yew trees in Badgers Wood and one on the other side of Cheston Coombe, in Jubilee Stone Wood. The largest of these has a girth of 16 feet and is estimated by AYG to be around 600 years old! Impressive indeed, but not nearly as old as the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, and one in St Cynog’s in Powys, which are believed to be over 5,000 years old, and may be the oldest living organisms in Britain.
Yew trees are very difficult to age. Even if one can count the rings, they can have dormant spells when they stop growing for a while and then restart! Additionally, older trees often develop hollow trunks.
Being slow growing, the wood is very hard and dense. It has beautiful colours ranging from the creamy sapwood to orange and purple heartwood. This makes it very special for wood turning, carving and furniture making.
Traditionally yew was used to make English longbows. The sapwood of the yew is good in tension and the heartwood in compression. The best ‘selfbows’ were shaped from a single length of yew, using part sapwood and part heartwood, for the back and belly respectively.
Straight lengths from the yew trunk were needed and once English stocks of yew were depleted, longbow staves were imported from Europe – Spain and Italy in particular. In Tudor times, to ensure a regular supply of fine-grained yew, each ton of certain imports, including wine, had to be accompanied by 10 yew staves.
Yew was actually used for bows in Neolithic times. The Meare Heath bow, discovered in the peat of the Somerset Levels, dates from 2,600 BC.
All parts of the English Yew (Taxus Baccata) are highly poisonous, with the exception of the flesh of the red berries (or more correctly arils) of the female tree.
In the 1960s, it was discovered that the poisonous taxane alkaloids in yew could be used in the production of cancer treatment drugs, such as Taxol.
In British folklore, yew is associated with immortality and death. Yew is well known for its association with places of burial and is a feature of many churchyards, often pre-dating the church. Many ancient yews are in close proximity to standing stones, stone circles, and pre-Christian burial sites. There was a pagan belief that the roots of the yew, being very fine, would grow through the eyes of the dead to prevent them seeing their way back to the world of the living. In more recent times, it became a custom for evergreen yew branches to be carried on Palm Sunday and at funerals, as emblems of the resurrection.
All this still leaves me uncertain of the actual origin of BET’s yew trees! But, having such great age and majesty, we must admire and continue to look after our wonderful veteran yews, for generations to come. To quote from William Wordsworth’s poem, Yew Trees:
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! - a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.
Peter Speight