Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol01.djvu/133

 addition to many young plants, 311 yew trees of 1 foot or more in girth of stem. On the Veronica mountain at Angelroda in Thuringia, there are about 150 yew trees, of which the largest are possibly 600 years old. Apparently there were anciently two zones of distribution of the yew in Central Europe—a northern one which extended from the Netherlands through the coast provinces of Germany to the eastern shore of the Gulf of Riga, and a southern area comprising the mountainous regions of the Vosges, Jura, Black Forest, the whole of the Alps to Croatia, and the Carpathians. The yew also occurred in the hilly land of central Germany, where, at the present time, according to Drude, it is indifferent to soil, as it grows on the muschelkalk near Gottingen, on the dolomite of Suntel in the Weser mountain district, and on primitive rock on the southern slope of the Rachel (up to 3300 feet altitude). On the dolomite it occurs as isolated trees, while in the ravines and rocky parts of Suntel it forms thick underwood. In the Bavarian Alps it ascends to 3800 feet, not being met with below 1240 feet.

In Switzerland the yew ascends in the Alps to 4660 feet. The largest and finest yew is at Geistler, near Burgdorf, at an elevation of 2400 feet above the sea. This tree is well figured in Les Arbres de la Suisse, t. xii., and is said to be 50 feet high by 12 feet in girth at 4 feet above the ground; it divides into several stems at about 10 feet up.

In Austria-Hungary the yew occurs in the Carpathians and the Alps, ascending in Transylvania to 5400 feet; and it is reported to occur in Roumania and Bulgaria.

The yew is generally distributed throughout the mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, according to Laguna, it almost always occurs as isolated trees, and is found in all the Cordilleras from the Sierra Nevada to the Pyrenees and the mountains of Asturias, also in the Balearic Isles. He has only seen it forming pure forest in the Sierra Mariola, near to Alcoy (Valencia). In the high part of that chain on its northern slope there exist what are called the Teixeras de Agres, groups of yews belonging to the town of Agres. Here, in 1870, there were still living some hundreds of ancient yews, with some young trees.

Gadow says, "There are numerous large and small trees forming a scattered forest, between Riano and Cistierna at about 3600 feet elevation, the terrain belonging to the reddish Permian rubble. The yew tree is widely distributed throughout the Spanish mountains and on the Serra da Estrella (in Portugal), but is rare everywhere. Most of the trees are solitary and old, with decaying tops! Younger trees are ruthlessly destroyed by their branches being lopped off, to be used in the cattlefolds partly instead of straw, and partly for repairing the fences and roofs. The vernacular name is Tejo."

Willkomm states that in the high mountains of Spain it occurs as isolated stunted trees, and says that on the Sierra de la Nieve there was an old yew tree which measured only 17 feet in height, although it had a girth of 17½ feet. In the south of Spain it ascends to 6500 feet.