Yew
Taxus baccata
Family · Taxaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
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Europe's most toxic tree, and one of its longest-lived: there are yews over a thousand years old. In Portugal it is rare and protected, surviving in cold valleys of Estrela, Gerês and Marão.
Uplands · Oak woods
Also known ascommon yew, English yew
How to tell it
Flat needle leaves, dark green above and paler beneath, set in two rows. The fruit is not a fruit: it is a fleshy red cup with a dark seed in the middle.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None
The whole tree is toxic except the red flesh, but the seed inside it is deadly, which makes that distinction a terrible idea. The wood made English longbows, and that is the part worth talking about.
The law says
A protected species in Portugal, with classified stands. Do not cut, collect or transplant it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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