Taxus I o I 



very small tree. Leaves very narrow, median nerve scarcely prominent, apex 

 acute and gradually passing into the mucro. Buds small, with loosely imbricated, 

 ovate, obtuse scales. 



7. Wax. globosa {Taxus globosa, Schl.'), Mexican Yew. A small tree. Leaves 

 variable, narrow, straight, acuminate, mucronate. Buds of numerous ovate, rounded, 

 obtuse, keeled scales. 



Distribution 



\. Common Yew. All authorities are agreed that the yew was formerly 

 much more widely spread in Europe than is the case to-day, Conwentz^ relies 

 on three points to prove the ancient wider distribution: (i) fossil remains; 

 (2) prehistoric and historic antiquities; (3) place-names. He considers that 

 nearly all the fossil remains of the Tertiary age, which have been described as 

 species of Taxus, are not really yew. In more recent geographical strata, 

 however, numerous fossil remains of yew have been found. Clement Reid^ gives 

 the following list of deposits in which yew occurs in England : 



Neolithic. Common in peat below the sea -level in the Thames valley and 

 Fenland ; Portobello, near Edinburgh. 



Interglacial. Hoxne, Suffolk. 



Preglacial [Crom&r Forest-bed). Mundesley, Bacton, Happisburgh (in Norfolk), 

 Pakefield (in Suffolk). 



Conwentz has found fossil remains in numerous localities in England and 

 Ireland ; but his promised paper on the subject has not yet been published. 

 Guided by place-names in Germany, he dug up fossil yew in many localities in that 

 country. 



He* found under pure peat, 3 feet thick, in the Steller Moss not far from 

 Hanover, some hundreds of stems of yews. He says that it is never found in the 

 ramparts of prehistoric forts, but that it was often planted on fortifications by the 

 knights of the Middle Ages. 



He has prepared a list of some hundreds of English, Scottish, and especially 

 Irish names of places taken from the yew. The Gaelic name for the yew is 

 iubhar; and in Irish and Scottish place-names this generally appears Anglicised as 

 ure, being sometimes corrupted into or u simply. Youghal means yew-wood. 

 Dromanure and Knockanure signify yew-hill. Glenure is the yew-glen. Gortinure 

 and Mayo mean yew-field. 



Conwentz examined prehistoric wooden boxes, buckets, and other vessels in 

 the British Museum and in the Dublin Science and Art Museum, and identified 

 the wood of some thirty articles as that of yew. 



Yew is occasionally found in peat-mosses in Ireland, but is exceedingly rare 

 as compared with pine and oak. Mr. R. D. Cole, who has kindly sent me a 



' Schlechtendal, Linnaa, xii. 496 (1838); Sargent, Silva N. America, x. 63 (1896). 



* British Association Report, 1 901, p. 839. ^ Origin British Flora, 151 (1899). 



* Bot. Centralblatt, 1896, Ixvi. 105 ; and 1900, Beihefte, ix. 223. 



