TAXACEA. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 65 
TAXUS BREVIFOLIA. 
Yew. 
LEAVES short, yellow-green. 
Taxus brevifolia, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 86, t. 108 (1849). — 
Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. pt. v. 140.— Newberry, 
Pacific Rk. Rh. Rep. vi. 60, 90, f. 26. — Cooper, Pacific 
KR. R. Rep. xii. pt. ii. 26, 69; Am. Nat. iii. 414. — Car- 
ritre, Traité Conif. ed. 2, 742. — Hoopes, Evergreens, 
383. — Parlatore, De Cundolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 501. — 
K. Koch, Dendr. ii. pt. ii. 95. — Gordon, Pinetum, ed. 2, 
392. — Hall, Bot. Gazette, ii. 95.— Brewer & Watson, 
Bot. Cal. ii. 110. — Veitch, Man. Conif. 305. — Kel- 
logg, Forest Trees California, 6.— Sargent, Forest Trees 
N. Am. 10th Cénsus U. S. ix. 185.— Lemmon, Rep. 
California State Board Forestry, iii. 185, t. 30 (Cone- 
Bearers of California) ; West-American Cone-Bearers, 
83. — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 177. — Masters, Jour. R. 
Hort. Soc. xiv. 249. — Hansen, Jour. R. Hort. Soc. xiv. 
Taxus baccata, Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 167, in part (not 
Linneus) (1839). 
Taxus Boursieri, Carritre, Rev. Hort. 1854, 228, t.; 
Traité Conif. 523. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 47. 
Taxus Lindleyana, A. Murray, Hvinburgh New Phil. 
Jour. n. ser. i. 294 (1855); Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, 
vi. 370. — Carritre, Traité Conif. 523.— Gordon, Pine- 
tum, 316; Suppl. 99. — Henkel & Hochstetter, Syn. Na- 
delh. 560. — (Nelson) Senilis, Pinacee, 174. 
Taxus baccata, var. Canadensis, Bentham, Pl. Hartweg. 
338 (not Gray) (1857). 
Taxus Canadensis, J. M. Bigelow, Pacific R. kh. Rep. iv. 
pt. v. 25 (not Marshall) (1856). 
Taxus baccata, var. a brevifolia, Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 
6 (1893). 
312 (Pinetum Danicum). 
A tree, usually forty or fifty, but occasionally seventy or eighty feet in height, with a tall straight 
trunk one or two or rarely four and a half feet thick, frequently unsymmetrical, with one diameter much 
exceeding the other, and irregularly lobed with broad rounded lobes, and long slender horizontal or 
slightly pendulous branches, which form a broad open conical head. The bark of the trunk is about a 
quarter of an inch in thickness, and covered with small thin dark red-purple scales, which, in falling, 
disclose the brighter red-purple inner bark. The branchlets are slender, and in their fourth or fifth 
year turn bright cinnamon brown. ‘The buds are from one sixteenth to nearly one eighth of an inch 
in length, with loosely imbricated pale yellow-green scales. The leaves are from one half to five 
eighths of an inch long and about one sixteenth of an inch wide, dark yellow-green above and rather 
paler below, with stout midribs, and slender yellow petioles one twelfth of an inch in length, and 
remain on the branches four or five years. 
Taxus brevifolia inhabits the shady banks of mountain streams, deep gorges, and damp ravines, 
growing usually under larger coniferous trees; although nowhere abundant or gregarious, it is widely 
distributed, usually in single individuals or in small clumps, from Queen Charlotte’s Islands and the 
valley of the Skeena River southward through the coast ranges of British Columbia,’ through western 
Washington and Oregon, where it attains its greatest size, and the coast-ranges of California, as far 
south as the Bay of Monterey, and along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where it is found at 
elevations of between five and eight thousand feet above the sea-level, to Tulare County, and ranges 
eastward in British Columbia to the Selkirk Mountains and over the mountains of eastern Oregon and 
Washington to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains of Montana, being of smaller size in the 
interior than near the coast, and often shrubby in habit. 
The wood of Taxus brevifolia is heavy, hard, strong, although brittle, close-grained, very durable 
in contact with the soil, and susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish. It is light bright red, with 
thin light yellow sapwood, and contains thin dark-colored conspicuous bands of small summer cells and 
1 G. M. Dawson, Can. Nat. n. ser. ix. 329. — Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. 436. 
