Yew

yu, an evergreen tree allied to the pines, but bearing red or bluish berry-like fruit instead of cones. Our northeastern yew is a trailing shrub, the California yew is a fair-sized tree forty to fifty feet high, and the Florida yew is a shrubby tree fifteen to twenty-five feet high. The Japanese yew has dark green foliage and red bark. The yew of history is a short-trunked, low-branching tree twenty to sixty feet in height. Its heart wood is orange red or brownish and has long been esteemed, especially the yew of Spain, for bows and fine cabinet work. The reader of Ivanhoe will recall that Isaac of York offers good Diccon Bend-the-Bow or Locksley a hundred staves of Spanish yew to make bows if he will but keep silence about a certain vault where Isaac kept his money. The citizens of Frankfurt expended $2,000 to move a venerated yew tree to a place of safety in the city palm garden. This yew is reputed to be 400 years old. In the British Isles, the "venerable" yew is associated with walks and churchyards. Gray in his Elegy alludes to a fine specimen yet standing in the churchyard of Stoke Pogis. A number of English yew trees are 300 and 400 years old. Yew trees of half that age may be found in the first settled parts of North America. The yew tree is traditionally the special abhorrence of witches. See Cedar; Sequoia