The Fortingall Yew
estimates range from roughly 2,000 to 5,000 yearsEuropean Yew
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.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. 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.
- Species
- European Yew (Taxus baccata)
- Age estimate
- estimates range from roughly 2,000 to 5,000 years
- Location
- Fortingall churchyard, Fortingall, Perthshire PH15 2NQ, Scotland (Fortingall village churchyard)
- Access
- 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.
- Getting there
- 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.
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