In cool corners of churchyards, among rows of the dead, you’ll find some of oldest living things.
Yew trees form amorphous sentinels in burial grounds. Veteran yews are at least 500 yrs old. Ancient yews are at least 800. Bad tees have the ability to eternally regenerate.
#thread

The shapeless form seems appropriate for a tree that’s hard to age, define, understand.

The oldest UK yew is in Scotland, it’s at least 2000 years old and is shrouded in folklore…
In particular story, it’s told that Pontius Pilate played under the Scottish yew as a child…

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While that may be questionable, what’s true is that many of the older yews in our churchyards predate Christianity. So, the yew came first. But why were churches built around yew trees?

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As a conifer, it’s an unusual one, bearing berries rather than cones. The needles and berries are poisonous, can cause cardiac arrest in humans and can be fatal to livestock.

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The finest longbows, stretching to 6ft, were made from yew trees, but other wood like box and elm was also used. And the enclosed churchyard protected this vital source of timber from… sheep?

Hmm. Doesn’t sound right.

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Another suggestion is that yew was used as a palm substitute on Palm Sunday. As palm trees don’t general like our northern, temperate climates, this is plausible. In particular, in a clearing in the cloisters of Wells Cathedral there’s a yew tree. It’s known as Palm Courtyard.

The evergreen yew tree, that continually regenerates, is a powerful symbol of resurrection, everlasting life, and constancy of faith, even through the darkest winters.

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The original relationship between churches and yew trees remains a mystery, but these ancient trees provide inspiration to across centuries from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, and Tennyson:

Thy fibres net the dreamless head
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones

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p.s. Typo alert! *Bad tees* cannot eternally regenerate. Neither can bad trees. Nor bad teas. That would all be very alarming. But yew trees can!