4>30 YEW. 



covered with a rough, cracked, dark brown bark, which easily 

 peels off; the branches are very numerous, and spread nearly 

 horizontally. The leaves are persistent, deep green, linear, 

 acute, very entire, crowded, arranged in two opposite rows. 

 The flowers are dioecious, small, nearly sessile and axillary. 

 The male flowers have a perianth of six to eight scales *, and a 

 cylindrical column which supports several stamens, with the 

 anthers disposed circularly in the form of a buckler and opening 

 beneath : the female flowers are solitary and naked, each with 

 an urceolate scaly perianth, and a germen pierced at the apex 

 with a small orifice which answers to the stigma. The fruit is 

 an ovate-globose drupe, when ripe of a bright red colour, sub- 

 tended by the outer permanent scales or bracteae ; the succulent 

 covering composed of the enlarged perianth almost enveloping 

 the nut, which is obovate-oblong, compressed, pointed, tawny, 

 with a thin, hard, brittle shell and a white mealy nucleus or 

 kernel ; the embryo central straight. Plate 48, fig. 2, (a) leaf, 

 natural size ; (6) male flower ; (c) female flower ; (c?) vertical 

 section of the drupe showing the nut; (e) nut, slightly magnified; 

 (/) horizontal section of the seed ; (g) kernel ; (h) longitudinal 

 section of the same to show the embryo. 



Yew is indigenous to the mountainous woods of Cumberland, 

 Westmorland, Herefordshire, &c. ; it is also found in the south- 

 ern parts of England. It flowers in March. 



Taxus the name of this tree, and to|o S an arrow, have proba- 

 bly the same origin, ro£ixa (q. taxka) being with the ancients a 

 common appellation for poisons ; and it is possible that arrows 

 in the old time were poisoned with the juice of Yew. According 

 to Matthiolusf this tree is the a^ha.^ of Dioscorides, the /xAo? of 

 Theophrastus J, and the a-^og of Nicander. The common name 

 Yew is a corruption of the Celtic word iw, green. 



General Uses, &c. The Yew-tree is mentioned by Caesar 

 as very common in Gaul and Germany. It was planted by our 

 ancestors in churchyards, because of its value in the manu- 

 facture of bows, according to some, but, as Ray more correctly 

 observes, it was there stationed as a symbol of immortality ; and 



* These are named bractece by some botanists. 

 ■f Comment, in Dioscor. p. 774. 

 t Hist. lib. iii. c. 10. 



