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HEREFORDSHIRE TEW TREES. 



BY THE REV. THOS. WOODHOUSE, M.A. 



Among the trees and plants which some botanists have been disposed to 

 Strike out of our Native Flora occurs the Yew. I own I demur very strongly 

 to such an opinion. If there is one tree more than another which seems to me 

 distinctively and characteristically British, it is the Yew. Even the Oak 

 does not seem to me more decidedly our own. 



By an introduced plant, I understand one introduced within historical 

 times. It does not follow that becavise a plant is rare in Britain, and common 

 on the Continent, it is therefore not a native. It may date from the times 

 before history began, when, under widely different circumstances of climate 

 and elevation, Britain was not the separate island it is now. We cannot 

 expect our own island to have a Flora and Fauna peculiarly its own : and it 

 seems to me unreasonable to assume that a plant is not a native unless we 

 know the date of its introduction, or the person who brought it here. 



If introduced at all, the Yew must, I think, have been introduced by the 

 Bomans. The age of some trees, now standing, carries us back beyond the 

 Norman Conquest ; indeed, in one instance recorded by Evelyn, the tree must 

 have dated from a far more remote antiquity — almost from Eoman times. 

 But the Romans are by no means likely to have introduced the Yew. They 

 regarded it with horror and aversion ; they associatetl with it images of gloom 

 and terror; they supposed its fruit to be poisonous; and its very shadow 

 to be fatal to those who lay beneath it. And it is hardly credible that they 

 should have planted in their gardens, as an ornament, a tree which filled them 

 with so much dread. 



The Yew occurs in many places where one can hardly suppose it to 

 have been planted ; where it must at least have been self-sown, if not 

 indigenous. Thus it is found growing out of rocky banks near the summit of 

 many of our steepest woods, especially where a harder stratum intervenes 

 between softer ones and projects below the general outline. The situations of 

 this kind in Herefordshire, where the Yew occurs, are so numerous and so 

 widely dispersed, that we must suppose our forefathers to have been much 

 more diligent planters than we have any other reason to think they were, if 

 we owe to them all these picturesque spots of evergreen foliage and gnarled 

 and knotted roots. 



My own belief is that the Yew is strictly indigenous, and widely 

 dispersed through this county, though nowhere very abundant. 



Our finest Yews are, without exception, to be found in old churchyards^ 



