Yew

Audio Narration

Transcript

Yew trees typically grow in the understory or canopy of most temperate or tropical mountain forests. Evergreen trees can gather energy from the sun all year, they grow slowly and live for a long time – some up to 2,000 years. The small surface area of their leaves allow evergreens to store water efficiently, allowing them to survive in dry and rocky environments. Conifers are sometimes called softwoods because their wood is less dense than deciduous trees. How old is your oldest garden plant?

The term coniferous comes from the Latin term for bearing cones. Conifer describes how a tree reproduces, rather than whether it’s green all year or drops its leaves in the fall. Trees and shrubs that are coniferous reproduce by forming cones rather than flowers, but not all cones look like the classic pinecone. The spinning cylinder at the bottom of the sign shows cones from junipers, yews and ginkgos. The juniper has little blue cones that look like berries. The female yews have red cones called arils that also look like berries. The female ginkgo trees have cones that look like yellow fruit.

The male yew cones are round, 3 to 6 millimeters across and shed their pollen in the early spring. The female cones are fleshy, round and red. Yews are mostly dioecious, meaning the male and female cones are on separate plants, but occasionally some yews can be variably monoecious, changing their sex with time.