In 2015 a tree that had been male for as long as anyone had recorded it grew berries on a single branch. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh reported the change, and beyond the novelty it was proof that the Fortingall Yew is a working organism rather than a standing relic. Its age is genuinely disputed and always will be. Forestry and Land Scotland says 5,000 years. Bevan-Jones, the standard academic reference on ancient yews, gives 2,000 to 3,000 and allows that the tree may only date from a post-Roman Christian site here, which would make it around 1,500. Nobody can settle it, because the heartwood rotted out centuries ago and there are no rings left to count. There was once a single trunk, and it was enormous. Daines Barrington measured it at 52 feet round in 1769, about 15.8 metres, and Thomas Pennant made it more a few years later. By 1770 the decay was already splitting it apart. What stands today reads as a small grove of separate stems, all of them one tree. The wall around it went up in 1785 because visitors kept cutting pieces off for souvenirs, and they have not entirely stopped: the local tree warden was complaining about it in 2019. Village tradition makes this the birthplace of Pontius Pilate, which historians dismissed long ago, and which still brings people up the glen.
In fruit
October to December: red arils on female trees, the only part that is not poisonous
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Fortingall churchyard, Fortingall, Perthshire PH15 2NQ, ScotlandYou can recognise it by its several separate stems, once a single trunk that split apart from the 1770s onward, now ringed by a low wall built in 1785 to stop souvenir-taking. It stands inside Fortingall churchyard.
Free. Stands inside the churchyard, behind a low wall erected in 1785 to protect it from souvenir-taking; the gate in the wall is kept locked so it cannot be touched, but it is easily viewed and photographed from the churchyard path, which is open in daylight hours.
No station; Fortingall is a small village about 8 miles / 20-25 minutes by car west of Aberfeldy, Perthshire. No regular public bus serves the village itself.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.