Pacific Yew Tree: A Fantasy Tree Turned Real

by | Aug 18, 2024

Let’s imagine a Tree from a Fantasy Novel written by an author like Ursula Le Guin or J.R.R. Tolkien. A Tree of legend and lore which characters regard with awe. The “Death Tree” let’s call it. The bark, wood, and leaves of this Tree cause a very painful death. It is used to poison domestic animals of landowners who ran their mouths a bit too much at the tavern. Royal Assassins would strategically kill potential usurpers by switching out for cups made of its wood after food tasters had already tried the wine. Women would harvest it’s leaves from the forest and secretly, out of the sight of men, share in small doses of tea to young women for abortions.

This Death Tree doesn’t just kill with its poison though. Its wood was renowned for its strength and toughness. It is used for axe heads and nails till metalworking was discovered. Still intertwined with death, it made spears that would not break. Bows that would shoot arrows farther than anyone thought possible. How much of its wood your Army had would decide if you won the war. It made the Other Side think they were fighting against magic. Armies camping in what they thought was far beyond arrow-range were slaughtered by giant bows that bent back so far that any other type of wood would snap. Forests where this tree grew became a coveted, guarded resource and its wood was traded across the world at steep prices.

Generations would watch over these Trees as they grew. Protecting them, fearing them. It was noticed that these Trees never seem to seemed to die. Local Histories told Tree in the village had always been there. It seemed to be eternal. Histories upon histories would pile up.

Now let’s jump a thousand years in the future, still in our fictional world. Let’s change from a Fantasy novel to Science Fiction one. In an age of flight, machines, and virtual worlds, the need for this Tree is lost and forgotten. Well not completely, there are those that remember and they are patient and driven and soon others start to remember as well. Ancient humans are found with wooden weapons regularly made of this Tree’s wood. Giant, incredibly old Death Trees survive and are mysteriously found in ancient graveyards and religious sites. Stories about this Tree begin to be told again. Those who still have the knowledge of ancestors that lived with the Forest, not against it, are no longer mocked but appreciated and valued.

Then comes the seismic shift. There is an incurable disease killing the people of this Future World. A silent killer that grows inside of you slowly, till it takes over your whole body. Studies seem to show almost everything in this future world causes the disease. Panic takes over. Worry. Fear. Then, a study commissioned by the Government to reconsider the forgotten use of treatments of Ancestors, rediscovers this Tree. Turns out the Death Tree is one of the best medicines for this disease. A forgotten medicine. It is soon mass produced and used. Lives are saved. The Death Tree becomes a source of hope and life.

Ok! Let’s pull out of this of this fictional narrative! As you probably suspect from the title, this Death Tree exists, it is the Yew Tree.

I’ve taken a bit of poetic license here, but the stories I tell about the Yew Tree above are true. Yews are extremely lethal. Domestic Animals still regularly die of eating yew needles. Members of the IRA committed suicide eating Yew leaves in prison in protest against British Colonization. There are references in ancient texts to Yew Cups being used for secret assassinations. There are Oral histories of North American and European societies using small portions of Yews for abortions.

In the stories about Robin Hood his bow is always made of Yew and he was buried under a yew tree when he died. Yew bows are what allowed the massively outnumbered English Army to defeat the French in a few key battles during the Hundred Year War. North American Pacific Indigenous tribes would also use Yew wood for bows and spears. They would trade Yew wood as valuable commodity to other tribes with less access to Yew forests. One of those oldest preserved humans ever found, the Iceman, had multiple weapons and tools made out of Yew wood.

Ancient giant yews grow in many European churchyards and graveyards. There is much debate about how they old they actually are. The inside core of the trees is often hollow so they can’t be dated. Scientist think they are younger, while locals think they are oldest trees in the world. There is also a lot of debate about why giant Yews are always in these religious spots. Were these ancient pagan sites that Christian Invaders colonized and exploited the spiritual awe these trees already had? Or are Yews in religious areas for the simple reason to keep domestic animals away because the poisonous needles are a deterrent?

Then of course, there is this incurable disease. Which is, of course, Cancer. Yew Trees produce a chemical called Taxol that is one the best treatments for cancer we currently have. It was discovered in 1970s when the US government, desperate as Cancer took over as a leading cause of death, starting testing plants that had long oral histories of disease treatment and discovered that the Taxol in Yew wood is a powerful Cancer Killer.

This discovery was maybe the worst and best thing to ever happen to Yew trees. There are multiple species of Yew Trees across the northern hemisphere, but the Yew species that was discovered to fight cancer was one native to our own Pacific Spirit Park (PSP), The Pacific Yew. There are stories all over the Pacific Coast, of desperate cancer patients, family, and friends, going directly into the woods and harvesting Yew wood. Health Care Agencies warned that harvesting Yews directly wouldn’t work – Taxol needs to be pulled out of the wood via a complex laboratory process – and it could be deadly. But Cancer was/is terrifying and people were desperate. So, between the self-harvesting and mass harvesting by governments, Pacific Yews began to vanish from our Forests. Thankfully a lot of the Yew Harvesting has now stopped, because Taxol can now be created via a Chemical Process without needing Yew wood. However, the damage has been done, Yews are now listed as “Near Threatened”

Pacific Yews likely were everywhere in Pacific Spirit Park (PSP) before European Colonization, but now only grow in a small section of the park, North of Chancellor Blvd. Most people don’t know they are there! Yews can be hard to identify at first. Their flat green needles make them blend in with PSP’s most common evergreen trees, Hemlock, Fir, and Douglas-Fir. However, once you know how to identify a Yew they become extremely easy to recognize and – a rare phenomenon with trees – are identifiable from a distance away based on their shape. Pacific Yews often look like dwarfish, dying trees. Bark shredding to reveal wood with a reddish tinge. Sprouting tiny branches, with just a few needles, from the main trunk and limbs.

This sprouting of tiny branches is the real give away that it is Yew. It also helps reveals why the Yew tree has it’s almost supernatural strength and poisonous abilities. Yews are one of the most shade tolerant tree species in the world. By this I mean they can grow beneath large, shade casting trees. Yews don’t need a lot of sun to grow. They can grow super slowly. They have compact tree growth rings, which is what makes their wood so strong. Also, because they often grow in deep forest and are short trees, they need a powerful defence against the creatures, insects, and fungi that flourish in these forests and are looking for smaller tree like this to eat. So, Yews make themselves the incredibly lethal Taxol. The same poison we use to kill cancer cells, they use to kill in defence. They grow slow and strong and deadly. That’s how they survive. But like all trees, they need sun. So, they have also have developed this ability to resprout branches from anywhere on their trunk to capture every small patch of sun that gets through the trees above them. A bunch of small sprouts of needles? It’s likely a yew!

This powerful resprouting ability actually makes Yews incredibly common in cities and urban areas. If you are sitting inside right now, there is likely a Yew within 30 meters of you. Yews are one of the most used Hedges in the world. Their resprouting ability and year-round needles, make them ideal for separating property lines and landscaping. Likely the Yews near you aren’t Pacific Yews, which take more of a tree form, but other species of Yews which take more bush-like forms (like the Eastern-North American Canada Yew).

Kinda surreal huh? How we have taken this Tree, with all this weight of myth and legends behind it, surrounded our homes with it, and no one knows what it is! Imagine showing this to ancient cultures. They would be in awe of the wealth we have to surround ourselves with such a tree …. and then in shock and disgust when they find out we have no idea what it is and what it can do.

Growing up in Ontario we had two giant yew bushes in our front lawn. I didn’t know what they were at the time. However, I did know one thing about them, which I’m not sure how I knew, nobody told me this, but me and my siblings all knew this: Don’t eat the berries.

So here is another incredible thing about Yews. (It’s overwhelming! Yews are too unique! It never stops!) Pretty much every evergreen, needle-leave tree has cones. Berries (which I am using in its common usage as bright, juicy spheres around a seed) are reserved for broadleaf, deciduous trees like Cherries, Rowans, and Hawthorns. But Yews have berries! Berries that surround a very poisonous seed. Don’t eat the berries! But you know this somehow? Everyone seems to know this? Somehow the contrast of green needles and red berries makes it clear. Even young children seem to know. Don’t eat Yew berries. Some-sort of evolutionary knowledge passed down in our genes.

These berries are how Yews procreate and spread. Birds eat the berries and then poo out the seeds elsewhere and a yew pops up. It’s a nice trick. It’s one our deciduous trees do well. Relying on animals to spread their seeds by covering the seed in something tasty. It’s very weird that Yews can do it. They shouldn’t! We often consider deciduous, fruit baring trees (Oak, Maple, Cherry) and evergreen, cone bearing trees (Fir, Spruce, Cedar) to fall under one common “Tree” umbrella. But this isn’t true. Cone-bearing Trees, referred to scientifically as Gymnosperms, are twice the age (More than a hundred million years older) of flowering deciduous trees, which are called Angiosperms. Angiosperms are new kids on the block. They invented this colourful flowering and tasty fruit seed-spreading trick. Meanwhile giant Gymnosperms tower over them, bemused, and watch these flamboyant upstarts. Gymnosperms continue to rely on ancient practices of mass seed production and wind to spread their seeds. Meanwhile, Yews, the strange sibling of the Gymnosperm family, are like “Hey, using berries and animals to spread seeds was our trick first!”.

Let’s get back to Pacific Spirit Park (PSP) though. If you learn to recognize Yews and hunt through the forest through that patch north of Chancellor Blvd, you’ll be lucky to see any of these bright red berries on our Pacific Yews. This is partly because there are less Yews in general. As mentioned before, they “Near Threatened’ thanks to harvesting for Taxol. PSP has also been logged and disturbed by human-use, and no longer ideal Yew Old-growth habitat. Another reason is because the berries are a rare, sweet forest treat that birds that quickly gobble up once they are ripe. The biggest reason though might be another unique quality of the yew.

Pretty much all gymnosperm trees, especially our native ones, are both male and female, they are Monoecious. They have both male cones that produce pollen and female cones that produce seeds on the same tree. Yews are exception again, they are Diecious, meaning there are female and male trees are separate. (This was such a unique phenomenon with Gymnosperms that for decades male and female yews were thought of as different species!) This split in sexes makes Yew reproduction even rarer. You need a female and a male tree, not just one! Female trees have a smaller population then Males, they grow slower and need more access to light to produce their berries. Often you will find many male Yew trees but struggle to find a female one.

However there two interesting features of PSP North of Chancellor that I believe help explain why there are so many Yews in this section and no other areas. First, there are two canyons in this area of the park, that is, streams who have carved deep slopes. A sloped, semi-shaded stream is ideal Yew habit. A stream means access to water and a semi-shaded slope ensures moisture won’t evaporate too quickly (Yews don’t do well in dry areas). A slope also means easier access to sun (like sloped seating in a theatre audience ensures everyone can see). Canyons like this are a common spot to find Female Yews and this is only of the only spots in the park that has them. More Female Yews, more berries, more Yews!

The second reason I think Yews exist in this area of the park is due to a unique forest composition that exists in the area surrounding the North and East side of University Hill Elementary School. This area was clear-cut around a hundred years ago and was actually a dairy farm in the early 1900s. It’s grown back now into a deciduous forest of mostly Maple trees. A perfect spot for Female Yews to grow, allowing them enough sun early spring and the maples giving them shade in the summer. Usually in forest succession on the Pacific Coast, angiosperm trees (maple, alder) grow first, then gymnosperms (cedar, hemlock) grow after. Female Yews, seem to flourish in the in-between moment between these two types of forest.

However, this has process has been disrupted in past few decades in Vancouver with Invasive Species and Climate Change. This Northeast area around University Hill is now a rare example of relatively undisturbed Forest Succession in Vancouver.

If you take a look at forest composition South of University Hill across Chancellor Blvd, you will notice a lot of dead or dying angiosperm trees (particularly Alder trees) with non-native, invasive trees (Holly, Laurel, Sycamore Maple) growing to take their place. Natural pacific coast forest succession isn’t happening here. What native gymnosperms trees that are there, have been planted by PSP Society to try and save the forest. This area of the park, South of University Hill, was deforested in the mid-1900s (to build houses, the forest was saved by local residents). The mid-1900s was when Vancouver really started taking off, with the population growing and neighbourhoods being built with gardens full of non-native, invasive species. Anthropocene was taking over.

It’s fascinating! There are three types of forests in this area around Chancellor Blvd. The late succession canyon forest where evergreens and female yews flourish. The natural, early succession with healthy Maples and scattered female Yews below them. And then finally a recent deforested forest, where natural succession has been disrupted and it is dominated by invasive species with no Yews at all.

I’ll wrap up this blog post here! This is a long one! Thanks to my readers for sticking with it! Pacific Yews! A tree of strength, death, and life. A tree you can use to read the forest that surrounds you. An indicator of forest health where it grows. A living thing that is bridge between our world and a fantasy one. A reminder of the Old World and how it is still with us. A spark that we can use to help us wonder again.

On Sunday, September 8th I’ll be leading a Yew Walk in PSP North of Chancellor. Please subscribe to our Newsletter for updates about the date and time of this walk and other events.

Author: Ryan Regier

Ryan Regier, was born in Kitchener, Ontario. He has a Philosophy Degree from University of Waterloo and a Master of Library and Information Science from Western University (London, Ontario).

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