140 THE WESTFELTON AND IRISH YEWS. 



many years to get up a stock upon the grounds of the then firm of 

 F. and J. Dickson, of which my father was the head. I well remember 

 the value he set upon this plant and the vexation when, on his return 

 home after a few days' absence, he learned that a representative of the 

 firm of Knight and Perry of Chelsea had purchased and taken away with 

 him some half-dozen good-sized plants as the result of negotiation with 

 an inexperienced salesman who was presumably ignorant of their value. 

 This enabled the Chelsea firm to propagate it and eventually to distribute 

 it, which they did under the name of adpressa, but my father always 

 adhered to the name he had originally given it brevifolia" * The name 

 adpressa is here retained, as brevifolia has been applied to two other 

 Yews quite distinct from the Chester seedling. 



The origin of the Dovaston or "Westfelton Yew is thus stated by 

 London : " The Westfelton Yew stands in the grounds of Mr. J. F. M. 

 Dovaston, of Westfelton, near Shrewsbury, and the following account of it 

 has been sent to us by that gentleman: 'About sixty years ago 

 (now over a hundred) my father, John Dovaston, a man without 

 education but of unwearied industry and ingenuity, had, with his own 

 hands, sunk a well and constructed and placed a pump in it, and the 

 soil being light and sandy, it constantly fell in. He secured it with 

 wooden boards, but perceiving their speedy decay, he planted near the 

 well a Yew tree, which he "bought of a cobbler for sixpence, rightly 

 judging that the fibrous and matting tendency of the Yew roots would 

 hold up the soil. They did so, and independently of its utility, the Yew 

 grew into a tree of extraordinary and striking beauty, spreading 

 horizontally all round, with a single aspiring leader to a great height, 

 each branch in every direction dangling in tressy verdure downwards, 

 the lowest ones to the very ground, pendulous and playful as the most 

 graceful birch or willow, and visibly obedient to the feeblest breath of 

 air.' "t This beautiful tree is still flourishing ; at the present time 

 .(1900) the girth of the trunk at 4J feet from the ground is nearly 

 9 feet and the height is 37 feet,; 



The Irish Yew originated from a plant accidentally found 011 the 

 mountains of Fermanagh, near Florence Court, more than a century 

 ago. The original tree is a female, so that the thousands of plants 

 propagated from it are berry-bearing, a circumstance that greatly enhances 

 the ornamental qualities of this shrub during the autumn months. 



The following account of the origin of the Irish Yew is taken from 

 the "Gardeners' Chronicle " for 1873, p. 1336, where it is reprinted from 

 the " People's Journal," as it appeared in one of a series of chapters 

 entitled " A Visit to the Eastern Necropolis " (at Dundee), by a writer 

 under the nom de plume of " Xorval," dating from Rossie Priory. It 

 will be seen that the account contains an apt illustration of one of the 

 purposes for which the Irish Yew is much planted : 



"Near by our place is a grave marked by a small and solitary Irish 

 Yew, and nothing more. I know not who had been laid under it. 



* The Garden, XXIX (1886) p. 221. In the same volume, p. 268, is a further com- 

 munication on this subject from Messrs. James Dickson and Sons of Chester, who state that 

 the original Taxus adpressa was found in a bed of Thorn seedlings ten years earlier than 

 the date given above. In Knight and Perry's " Synopsis of Coniferous Plants " it is entered 

 as Taxus fardiva (Endlicher) with the synonyms T. adpressa (Hort.) and T. brevifolia 

 (Hort.). 



t Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, IV. 2082. 



J Mr. J. F. E. Dovaston, the present owner in Jit. 



