Starting a little #ThickTrunkTuesday series today: every week a short 🧵on a different #Tree and its #historicalecology, meanings, uses, #Mythology etc.
Today it’s the #Yew - a tree I’ve been intrigued by ever since we first came across this big old yew tree next to #Wilmington church here in #Sussex. It’s over 1,500 years old and pretty amazing! 1/x
5/x So many #UK churches were built next to already existing Yew trees. There are various hypotheses around this, but all stem from the fact that #Yews were long (long before Christianity) sacred trees, due to their longevity and also perhaps because they are so poisonous. You can read a lot online but I particularly enjoyed this #BBCSounds #NaturalHistories #podcast with Brett Westwood (a really wonderful series all round by the way)
6/x But it's not just in the #UK, throughout Europe there is a long history of #Yew #Mythology - both as #TreeOf Death and #TreeOfLife. In Greek Mythology the way to #Hades is lined with Yews, and some suggest #Yggdrasil, the amazing #Norse tree of life, may have been a Yew
7/x Yew trees were also a favoured (very hard) wood for #LongBows and #Spears, from #prehistoric times right to the middle ages and beyond. Even now, the German bowmaker Ulli Stehli travels to the #Uetli forest in #Switzerland to get #Yew wood for his bows
8/8 Last for today! Yew trees were once one of the most common trees across Europe, but now much less common due to changes in land use; deer eating them (aristocatic hunting so much impact everywhere) ; and also people cutting them along paths to prevent horses nibbling them (poisonous for all animals, just not deer for some reason). There is so much more in the links and podcasts above - just want to end here with this nice (German) Youtube clip about the #Eibe!
Pauline von Hellermann
Mark Burton