The Hallstatt Boat Landing Yew

Upper Austria's natural monument register says, in its own words, that this yew is part of why Hallstatt looks like Hallstatt. Prägend für das Landschaftsbild: defining for the landscape. Government files do not usually write like that. It stands at the boat landing, about 25 metres northeast of the parish church, in the foreground of the view the whole village is famous for. The ferry from the railway station on the far shore ties up beside it, so for anyone arriving by train and boat, which is how most people arrive, this is the first tree in Hallstatt they meet. Almost all of them are looking up at the mountain instead. The state protected it on 4 March 1991 and wrote down the two numbers it had: more than 2.6 metres round, about 15 metres tall. It recorded no age, and nobody since has put a number on it. Yews are the slowest growing and longest lived trees in Europe, which makes girth a poor clock. If you know when this one went in, tell us. Everything on paper about it traces back to that one designation; no independent account of the tree has turned up. What is not in doubt is where it stands. On the waterline of a village that has been mining salt since prehistory, in front of the church, waiting for the next boat.