"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." (link),
of true wood, of yew-wood
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| English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals |
Yews are genus Taxus, slow-growing coniferous trees of temperate climates in the Northern Hemisphere, all around the world. There are approximately 12 species, of which two, Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, and the Canada yew, Taxus canadensis, are native to North America. This post is about the English yew, or common yew, Taxus bacata, native to Europe and adjacent areas in Africa and western Asia. It has been widely introduced to North America as an ornamental. A number of states list it as naturalized but it is not considered weedy.
The scientific name Taxus is simply the name the Romans used for the plant. The species epithet bacata means '"berry-bearing". "Yew" is the modern version of the very old name for the plant in the Germanic languages. It is in the small, very old plant family Taxaceae, usually called the yew family.
The English yew is a compact evergreen plant with bright green needles. It can reach 60' high but grows slowly even under good conditions. It is very tolerant of pruning and can be trimmed into hedges and topiary. It is dioecious, "male" plants producing copious pollen, "female" plants have inconspicuous cones that produce seeds within a red "berry" (not a brown cone as you might expect, and technically called an aril: link to photo). The arils is attractive to birds, especially in Eurasia, which eat the flesh of the berry and pass the seed through.
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| Yew leaves (needles) |
Sources usually say all parts of the yew are poisonous, but that means the leaves, the twigs and especially the seeds. The red flesh of the aril is not toxic, but it is difficult to eat it without eating the seed and the seed is so poisonous that this distinction is rarely made. The alkaloids taxine and taxol are the toxic chemicals. Taxol is an effective medicine for treating cancer; it is in its highest concentrations in the the Pacific yew.
Medical facilities field a few cases of yew poisoning every year, mostly minor problems if a child chews a few needles. A review of a decade of toxicology records across the U.S. found 11,000 incidents in those 10 years, of which only four were life-threatening and no one died. European records suggest that serious accidental poisoning is very rare but suicide attempts using yew have made people dangerously ill. Cattle, horses and other livestock sicken when they eat yew, though they usually avoid it.
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| a small yew |
Yews not only grow slowly, they can live a long time. Some in Europe are believed to be at least 2,000 years old. It is the longest-lived plant native to Europe. Old yews tend to rot in the trunk, so aging them is difficult.
Longevity plus staying green in winter were some of the characteristics appreciated by pagan religions across Europe, Greek, Roman, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian. Yews were sacred to the Greek goddess of the night, Hecate. The yew was one of the five sacred trees of Ireland. I can't do justice to the role of yews in preChristian Europe, they are interwoven into place names, clan names, heroes tales and mythology. Yews were widely used in ceremonies, for example branches were laid in graves symbolizing death and rebirth, and to protect the dead. The oldest yews in Europe are old enough to have been sacred to a series of religions. Here are two examples: the Fortingall yew in Scotland link; the Church Preen yew, Shropshire, England link.
Christians in Northern Europe adopted yews as sacred very early. Churches used its evergreen boughs to represent palms in places too cold for real palms. The solid look of the tree and its evergreen nature engendered respect. They grow so slowly and live so long that to a human, they seem immortal. They were frequently planted close to churches and other holy places. In some cases, holy places were established because the yew was there.
One reason yews represented birth and rebirth because they can regenerate. Most conifers have a single meristem at the top and die if that is killed. Yews will root from dangling branches or resprout after being badly cut. A few years ago, concerned about wildfires, I had a tree service (professionals!) cut down three yews I'd planted next to the garage. One has resprouted. I can easily see how this would seem miraculous, since the pines, junipers, spruces (etc.) never do it.
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| New shoots from the yew I tried to kill (winter 2024; it is twice this size now but currently under snow) |
As indicated in the Doyle poem, yew wood makes excellent bows. It is dense and tough, but relatively easily worked. It is a pale attractive color. Yews grow slowly; even in the forests of medieval England, good big yew branches for bows would have been rare and very valuable. Yew was also used for other wooden products, from spears and arrows to furniture and fences. The wood is toxic like the rest of the plant so would not be recommended for bowls and spoons, though the poisons are not water-soluble so would not normally leach into food. The Anglo-Saxon ship-burial at Sutton Hoo included several iron-bound buckets made from yew which archaeologists speculate were used for meads. Folklore includes many tales of people who cut a sacred yew for building timber or bows and soon after, came to a bad end.
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| Topiary dog from yew, Ladew Gardens, Maryland |
In traditional folklore, yews protected people from fire and from evil. They were dangerous to sleep under because they absorbed the nasty vapors in graveyards and so gave off poisons. Used for palms on Palm Sunday, those branches provided continued good luck and were kept around the house or the stables. In Hertfordshire England, girls put a small twig of yew, from a church yard they had never before visited, under their pillows so they would dream of their future husband. In northern England, to locate a lost object, you cut a yew branch and held it out; following the direction the tip pointed would lead to the lost item.
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| a fine yew hedge |
Yews are beautiful, toxic and useful, all at once.
References
Hooke, D. 2010. Trees in Anglo-Saxon England. The Boydell Press, London.
Jones, R., J. Jones, J. Causer, D. Ewins, N. Goenka and F. Josepth. 2011. Yew tree poisoning: a near-fatal lesson from history Clin Med (Lond) 11(2):173–175. doi: 10.7861/clinmedicine.11-2-173 Accessed 1/25/25.
Krenzelok, E.P., T.D. Jacobson and J. Aronis. 1998. Is the yew really poisonous to you? J Toxicol Clin Toxicol. 36 (3): 219-23. link Accessed 1/25/25
Lopez, J. M. 2019 Tree Tales: theYews of our Imagination. Go Green Brooklyn. link Accessed 1/25/25.
Mac Coitir, N. 2015. Ireland's Trees. Myths, Legends and Folklore. The Collins Press, Wilton, Cork, Ireland.
Piskač , O., J. Stříbrný, H. Rakovcová and M. Malý . 2015.Cardiotoxicity of yew. Cor et Vasa. 57 (3): e234-e238. link Accessed 1/25/25.
Radford, E. and M.A. Radford. 1961. Encyclopedia of Superstitions. edited and revised by C. Hole. Hutchinson Publications. London.
Taxus bacata. North Carolina Extension link Accessed 1/25/25.
Yew (Taxus spp.) 2018. USDA Poisonous Plant Research, Logan UT. link
Zucchelli, C. 2016.Sacred Trees of Ireland. The Collins Press, Wilton, Cork, Ireland.
Kathy Keeler
A Wandering Botanist
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