The ancient and much cherished Covenanters Oak at Dalzell is famous for many things including hosting clandestine religious services in the 17th C and being the" oldest living thing in North Lanarkshire", but thats not strictly true, its not even the oldest tree on the estate

You see, Dalzell also hosts the largest and most important collection of Yew trees in Scotland. This year I documented the previously unrecorded Dalzell Yew population and found it dwarfs what was thought to be Scotland's largest population at Inchlonaig

Dalzell has over double the number of Yew trees that the previously largest recorded population at Inchlonaig.

While much of the estate has been worked for timber, less then a few hundred yards from the Covanters Oak, there be dinosaurs

I mean, would you just look at the roots on that!!

It's Lanarkshire's very own Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge, Yggdrasil, call it what you will, and its not alone either....

Yew trees are not thought to be strictly native to Scotland so when a large and ancient population presents itself, it can often hint towards past land uses, including parish boundary markers and lost Christian sites

So what is the population at Dalzell telling us?
Well, its a parish boundary and an early Christian site
but....
The size of this population is unprecedented in Scotland and, well, it seems to represent something much more than an old church or a boundary, what, I dont know.....

One of many fascinating populations of #YewTreesoftheClydeValley

A wee bit of social history about this population of Yew trees. In Greco-Roman Society, extract of yew was used as an antidote to adder bites. It is therefore very curious to see much of this population growing along a waterway called Adders' Gill #YewTreesoftheClydeValley

#FunFact Close to Adders' Gill is the site of a chapel and holy well dedicated to St Patrick, first recorded in the 12th C. Given Patrick's extreme dislike of snakes I really feel somebody is at the wind up here