Castle Howard Arboretum Trust - Furniture Makers Trees

Botanical name: Taxus baccata

Family: Taxaceae

Common Name: Yew

Habitat and Distribution

A British native of chalk downland and limestone soils, often as an understorey in oak woods. Also found in Europe, N. Africa and S.W. Asia.

The Yews are of great garden value and given good drainage are tolerant of most soils and situations including dry chalk and heavy shade. There are many garden forms with leaves ranging from golden-yellow, through bright green to dark green, also some forms have yellow berries.

Description

A primitive evergreen conifer to 20metres (65 ft), the tallest ones tend to be young trees planted in sheltered woodlands whereas the oldest and thickest (can be up to 5 metres) tend to be sprawling and much shorter.

A broadly conical, often multi-stemmed evergreen with scaling, red-brown to purple-brown bark and linear, pointed very dark green leaves. Flowers open in March or April, male flowers are yellow, about 0.6 cm (0.25 in) whereas the female flowers are tiny and green. The fruits, borne on female plants have a bright red fleshy cup that contains a single seed. All parts are poisonous.

Timber

The beauty of its smooth, red-brown heartwood, often flushed with crimson or purple, is unsurpassed in any of our native timbers. Sapwood, in contrast, is creamy-yellow. The characteristic knots, in-grown bark and shakes are regarded as part of its charm. It is the hardest, strongest, most weather-resistant ‘softwood’ known; exceptionally durable, it can even outlast iron. It dries rapidly with little distortion and there is very small movement in use.

Yews can live for 1000s of years, some are thought to be as much as 5000 years old

Location within the arboretum:

A group of specimens are located in the old entrance gate area. As you enter this area though the gate in the deer fence the trees can be found about 10 m away, on the left by the fence.

Furniture Makers Trees at The Arboretum - Kew at Castle Howard

Uses

Its great flexibility was most famously exploited for the making of longbows.

Furniture makers use it for veneers, in marquetry, paneling and cabinet making and, historically, it has made the most resilient bows for Windsor chairs. Yew veneers require careful handling and flattening, due to its buckled, fragile nature.

Yew has been used in the past in solid (often as simple planked constructions) for rustic country furniture, but its slow growth and high cost make veneers a more economic proposition in modern times.

Recently, Yew prunings have been used to produce a semi-synthetic version of Taxol a drug that is used in the treatment of some cancers.