JULY. 
201 
VARIETIES OP COMMON YEW (TAXUS BACCATA). 
{Read before the Floral Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society^ 
March I2th^ 1861 j. 
By Mr, William Paul, F.R.H S., Cheshunt Nurseriesy Waltham Crossy N. 
As many of our favourite evergreens hitherto reputed hardy have 
been seriously damaged or destroyed by the last winter’s frost, we turn 
with increased interest to those which remain to us uninjured. Bays, 
Evergreen Oaks, Arbutus, Euonymus, Laurestinus, Common Laurels, 
Cypress, and in some cases, Portugal Laurels are killed. Araucarias, 
Deodaras, and some other South American and Indian beauties have 
in many places complexions as brown as ground rhubarb; Phillyreas 
and more hardy evergreens are stripped of -their leaves. But our 
native plant, the common Yew, is safe; none of the varieties have a 
leaf injured in this valley of the Lea, where the thermometer on 
Christmas-day was 5° below zero. 
The common Yew is, no doubt, w^ll known to every observer, but 
perhaps the numerous and beautiful forms which have descended from 
it are as yet strangers to the many. It is these varieties which I 
would now attempt to describe. They are many in number, beautiful 
in appearance, and vary greatly among themselves. Neat, graceful, 
elegant, picturesque, sombre, massive, grand, are terms which may be 
appropriately used to one or the other of them. 
It is my present intention to look at them from one point of view 
only, and that a popular one—their value as ornamental trees in garden 
scenery—and so regarded, they seem to fall naturally into four groups, 
viz.:— 
Group I.—Varieties of a spreading habit, of which the common 
Yew is the type. 
Group 2.—Varieties of pyramidal or columnar habit, of which the 
Irish Yew is the type. 
Group 3.—Varieties of weeping habit. 
Group 4 . —Varieties with variegated foliage. 
Group I. —Varieties of spreading habit. 
1 . T. haccata, common Yew. 
2. T. b. fructu-luteOy the yellow berried Yew. This is one of the 
most elegant; the pulp surrounding the seed is of a dull yellow colour 
instead of red, as in the ordinary kind. The growth is vigorous; the 
leaves are of a very pleasing green medium tint. 
3. T. b. nigra. —This is a striking plant of bold and rather upright 
growth; the leaves are of a bluish or blackish-green. It flowers 
abundantly, and is very effective in the landscape, forming a somewhat 
sombre, but grand and massive tree. 
4 . T. b. procumbens forms a huge spreading bush; leaves bright 
green, the plant, looked at as a whole, having a reddish appearance. 
Group 2.— Varieties of pyramidal, or columnar habit. 
5. T. b. fastigiata, the Irish, or Florence-court Yew, is a plant of 
rigid growth, columnar in form; leaves dark green. This plant is too 
