The Old Yew Tree, Astbury

[poliphilo]

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Wow! That really does look 1000 years old. It looks like the kind of tree Odysseus might have carved he and Penelope's marriage bed out of. Very cool.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

The sort of tree I can imagine Tolkien sidling up next to for inspiration.

1,000 years old, really? Can you imagine everything that's transpired around it between 1007-2007? Boggles the mind.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Holy smokes. What a tree. I gather they're bracing it -- food for them.

I'm almost sorry it was a sunny day -- on a cloudy day you'd have been able to capture more detail in the trunk.

[sovay]

That's a fantastic tree. It looks like a doorway.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

1,000 years is a guess, I believe- but an informed guess.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

That is one ancient tree. Isn´t it amazing how a tree can come to tilt like that under its own weight and from the winds and rain of centuries and keep right on living? Are those two poles/trunks shoring it up?

And I thought my 250 year old olive tree was old.
:)

This is not at all surprising...

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

I've got a junior version of one of these in my front yard. I keep trying to kill it. It's leaning into my very narrow walkway. I've been chain sawing it and/or poisoning it for 10 years now. Every year it looks like it's giving up the ghost and by the end of summer it has recovered and is rejuvenating itself yet again. In a thousand years it will consume my little old house... but I won't be here to see it... so who cares?

Thanks for the look at my future!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It needs bracing; it's hollow.

It was a lovely day for walking around in a short-sleeved shirt, not so good for photographing this kind of a subject.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A portal....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, the poles are to stop it falling over.

Apart from that- and being hollow- it seems to be in rude health.

Re: This is not at all surprising...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Heh-heh-Heh....

Mother Nature always has the last word.

[sovay]

Yes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hadn't read up about it before the visit and had no idea the tree was quite so old- I just thought it had presence.

Now I want to go back and take a lot more pictures.

[oakmouse]

Wow --- gorgeous. Reminds me of the yew tree in the churchyard at Wilmington (one of my most prized memories from a trip to England). Thank you!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Only a brave person would walk under that tree! Are those two posts holding it up, poor thing?

I wonder how old it is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They say it's 1,000 years old, but nobody knows for sure. If they took away the sticks it would fall over.

But look how healthy its foliage is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe there was a law commanding that yew trees be planted in English churchyards as the wood was needed to make bows.

[oakmouse]

That would certainly make sense!

[mokie]

Offered with a grain of salt, this being the internet and all:
http://www.mokshaproductions.com/Yggdrasil.htm
http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/yew.htm

One suggests that the trees predate the cemeteries in most cases, or at least the church's cemetery, and that the bodies followed given the tree's pre-Christian death/resurrection symbolism.

http://www.alsirat.com/symbols/plants.html
"English cemeteries became yew-tree reserves because the branches were used to make bows. Once a year, parishioners would clip the churchyard yews so that other cemeteries might be filled with the victims of war."

Lovely picture, by the by. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's no reason why both can't be true.

But when an article says there's "no doubt" about some assertion while failing to offer hard evidence I see a warning flare go up.

[mokie]

I'm wary of pagan sites in general. Hence the grain o' salt, though. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. They don't have much of a reputation for impartial, scholarship, do they?