The Old Yew of Cremines (If millenaire)

Switzerland's oldest living tree has no path, no signpost and no bench, and the commune that owns it seems content to keep it that way. The yew in the Foret du Maljon above Cremines is put at around 1500 years old by the commune itself and by the Bern canton forestry division, which designated it an arbre monumental. Cremines calls it flatly le plus vieil arbre de Suisse. Nobody has counted its rings. You cannot core a hollow, already damaged trunk without risking the thing you are trying to date, so the 1500 years is the settled estimate of the commune and the dendrological community rather than a measurement anyone took. The German tree register that also carries it lists 4.25 metres round and its condition as vital, and Swiss television filmed it as recently as 2023, which is the best evidence anyone has that it is still standing. If the figure is even roughly right, this yew was young while the western Roman empire was coming apart, and it has been in the same wood through everything since, logged, replanted and walked over for fifteen centuries without anybody getting around to cutting it. Finding it is the visit. It sits under rocks off the marked paths, and the commune's own page says plainly that it is hard to find. Take the coordinates, take an hour, and expect to search.