MONADELPHIA. POLYANBRIA. Pinus. 813 
PI'NUS.* B. and F. flowers on the same plant: Bloss. none. 
B. Calyx scales forming a bud, expanding: Anthers 
naked, sessile, adhering to the scales. 
numbers discovered in a fossil state ; though at present there are said to be none but 
planted Yews in that country. E.) Those trees situated in the accessible parts of the 
mountains are generally cut down and brought to market for chairs and steps of ladders, for 
which use their durability renders them valuable, (while others, unassailable by man, for a 
succession of ages, bid defiance to 
The raging tempests and the mountains’ roar, 
Which bind them to their native hills the more.” 
Strutt, in f Sylva Britannica,’ gives some admirable representations of these interesting 
trees : as the very ancient ones at Fountain’s Abbey, Yorkshire, supposed to have existed 
anterior to the foundation of the monastery, or at least co-eval with that date (1128.) Of 
six remaining, one measures 2 6 feet in girt at 3 feet from the ground : and the Fortingal 
Yew, in the church yard, amid the Grampian mountains, though now disjoined by the 
lapse of many centuries, when entire, according to Pennant, was 56 feet in circumference. 
At Martley, Worcestershire, grows one twelve yards round ; and an extraordinary tree of 
the same kind may yet be seen in the palace garden at Richmond, planted three days before 
/ the birth of Queen Elizabeth. But still more interesting is the justly celebrated Yew tree 
at Ankerwyke near Staines, (fifty feet high, and in girt three feet above the ground twenty 
seven feet), to which, and the current tradition connected therewith, as standing in the 
vicinity of Runnymede, Fitzgerald thus alludes : 
“ Here patriot barons might have musing stood. 
And plann’d the charter for their country’s good: 
***** 
* * * * 
Here, too, the tyrant Harry felt love’s flame, 
And, sighing, breath’d his Anna Boleyn’s name ; 
Beneath the shelter of this Yew tree’s shade, 
The royal lover woo’d the ill-stai'r’d maid.” 
But for an unrivalled poetical description of extraordinary Yew trees we are indebted to 
the muse of Wordsworth. 
“ There is a Yew tree, pride of Lorton Vale, 
Which to this day stands single in the midst 
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore, 
Nor loth to furnish weapons in the hands 
Of Umphraville or Percy, ere they marched 
To Scotland’s heaths, or those that crossed the sea. 
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour ; 
Perhaps at earlier Cressy, or Poictiers. 
Of vast circumference, and gloom profound. 
This solitary tree ! a living thing 
Produced too slowly ever to decay; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed.—But worthier still of note 
* (Etymologists often fail to elucidate their subject, by limiting their researches to the 
more classical languages, and deriving their most plausible conjectures from such a source. 
In reference to the present name, is usually given the Greek synonym mrog, or Pitch- 
tree ; but De Theis, taking a wider range, deduces Pinus far more satisfactorily from the 
Celtic, and shews it to exist variously modified in all the dialects of that ancient language, 
its basis being pin or pen , a mountain or rock ; whence, among numerous exemplifica¬ 
tions, we have the Apennines, the Penn ine Alps, and in Portugal the jPewha convent situ¬ 
ated on the rocky summit of a mountain. The Gaelic Pwwidden, like the German Pyn - 
baum, means precisely a mountain tree, than which nothing can be more appropriate. E.) 
