The Senckenberg Yew

In 1907 two steam rollers dragged this yew three and a half kilometres across Frankfurt, its roots boxed in a block of earth that weighed about 45 tonnes. For three centuries it had grown in the garden at the Eschenheimer Turm that the physician Johann Christian Senckenberg bought in 1766: his botanical garden, with his hospital and anatomy beside it and later a library and museum. When the Senckenberg foundation sold the site in 1907, its administrators asked for two things to be kept. One was Senckenberg's tomb. The other was this tree. Keeping the tree took three years. On the advice of an English specialist in moving old trees, the main roots were trenched and cut back so that new ones would form at the stumps. The rootball came out 4.5 metres square and 2 metres deep, was boxed in timber and set on rollers, and between late May and June it crossed the city. Philipp Holzmann's firm did the work, the public was asked for money and the city council paid in. Frankfurt's city history institute says no tree that old and that big had ever been moved so far. Roughly 400 years is the best figure. The institute put it at about 300 at the time of the move, and local tradition has it planted before the Thirty Years War. German Wikipedia counts it among the oldest yews in the country. It joined the Palmengarten in 1960, so seeing it costs a ticket.