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
Pauline von Hellermann
Mark Burton