Death and Taxus: a plant with a morbid reputation has become a tree of life

Publication Type:

Magazine Article

Authors:

Nicholson, Rob

Source:

Natural History, Natural History Magazine, Inc., Volume 101, Issue 7, p.20-23 (1992)

Call Number:

U92NIC01IDUS

Keywords:

Taxus brevifolia

Abstract:

A bad reputation can sometimes take thousands of years to overcome. Such is the case with the yew tree, known to botanists as Taxus, a familiar conifer in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The yew's negative associations date back to classical Greece and Rome. Pliny the Elder reported that the berries of the yew were a mortal poison, and Plutarch claimed that its shade was fatal to those who slept beneath it. Centuries later, in the British Isles, the yew became a fixture of the cemeteries surrounding churches, adding to its long and dreary link with mortality and things funereal. Men of letters cast the yew as the botanical equivalent of a grave robber or vampire. Robert Blair wrote in 'The Grave": Well do I know thee by thy trusty Yew, Cheerless, unsocial plant, that loves to dwell Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms .... The most graphic lines were penned by Alfred Lord Tennyson in "In Memoriam": Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the underlying dead, Thy fibers net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. Only recently has the yew begun to shed its aura of morbidity, becoming instead a symbol of hope and a restorer of life. For within its branches and bark lies taxol, a molecule shown to arrest a variety of cancers