This tree is utterly toxic, from all parts; it was planted to protect and shade churchyards from the beginnings of Christianity, or even earlier; wielding death or preventing it, as source of weaponry or, today, as source of anticancer drugs.
An evergreen of medium size, 10-20 m (30-60 ft) high, endowed with a sizeable trunk up to 2 m (6;5 ft) in diameter, often very fluted and asymmetrical. The bark is reddish-brown, thin, scaly with a rough and irregular outer surface due to exfoliation as thin flat flakes. The wood is hard, heavy and flexible, as dense as beech and even oak. The wood is one of the most durable of temperate trees. It shows a spreading, rounded or pyramidal canopy. The leaves are flat, dark green, 1–4 cm (0.39–1.57 in) long and 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) broad, arranged spirally on the stem — but appearing bilateral.
In the name of the plant, the Latin baccata refers to berries: what are they? A tool for disseminatio, is the short answer. Each seed cone holds a single seed, 4–7 mm long. It bears a fleshy scale which develops into a soft, bright red berry-like structure called an aril. The aril is 8–15 mm long and wide and open at the end. Arils are gelatinous and very sweet tasting. They mature 6 to 9 months after pollination, and with the seed included, are eaten by various birds. Their droppings disperse the hard seeds, left undamaged by digestion.
Male cones are spherical, 3–6 mm in diameter and shed pollen in early spring. The yew colonized Europe from the East. European yews diverged into two groups (Western, Eastern) at the beginning of the Quaternary glaciations, c. 2.2 Myr before present.
However, implantation of the tree has suffered from its interactions with mankind. For instance, in the Iberian peninsula, continuous use of its timber for many purposes, intensive grazing by livestock, systematic fellings to avoid the toxicity of its foliage and the repeated intentional fires made by herdsmen were the main causes of the decline and disappearance of yew in many parts. Cemeteries thus have served as repositories or conservatories of yews.
Yews are exceptionally long-lived. There are several millennial trees in Europe. In cemeteries, yews sometimes antedated the building of an adjoining church.
The wood is not attacked by woodworms and the needles are attacked by very few insects. Indeed, it is one of the most toxic plants on record. Except for the arils, all its parts are toxic. There have been countless suicides from ingestion of infusions of the needles, cardiac arrest being the most frequent cause of death.
Death and rebirth, or renaissance: the efficient antitumoral taxotere, frequently used in cancer treatment, derives from molecules extracted from the yew needles, serving to synthesize taxol, the active antitumoral. This procedure was conceived towards the end of the past century by Andrew Greene and Pierre Potier.
Another use needs mention, archery — as in hunting and warfare of yesteryear. The wood is of such high quality as to make bows from. The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of longbow (a tall bow for archery) about 6 ft (1.8 m) long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in warfare. English use of longbows was effective against the French during the Hundred Years’ War, particularly at the start of the war in the battles of Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), and Poitiers (1356), and perhaps most famously at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). The “Mary Rose,” an English war ship, sank in the English Channel in A marine archaeology team recovered the wreck in 1978. Among the artifacts were a large number of yew longbows. Ötzi, otherwise known as the Iceman, was found together with his bow. In its original state, Ötzi’s bow was extremely powerful. The bow was made of yew (Taxus baccata) with a total length of 1.82 m (71.6 in). The Mary Rose bows have dimensions very similar to Ötzi’s. The English longbowmen of the twelfth-fifteenth centuries shot with bows exceeding 100 pounds draw-weight. they were compelled by law to practice at least once a week. Because of his small stature, 5 ft 3, it is doubtful that Ötzi could have drawn a bow of more than 50 to 60 pounds.
This is a moot point though: detailed X-ray examination of Ötzi showed that he had a stone arrow point lodged in his back that would have prohibited any attempt at shooting his bow.