A yew standing alone in an open meadow is an odd sight. They are woodland trees and churchyard trees, usually in company and usually in shade. This one stands free on a hillside above the Hallstättersee, and Upper Austria protected it on 22 July 1960, the oldest protection order of the yews on this page. The province measured it then at 2.1 metres round. That figure is now 66 years old and it is the only measurement anyone recorded: no age, no height, nothing else. Yews grow slowly enough that a girth like that could mean several quite different centuries, so the honest answer is that nobody has dated this tree. If you have put a tape around it lately, we would like the number. The paperwork cannot even agree on which hamlet it belongs to. The register's own location line puts it near the house at Untersee Nr. 40, standing free on the slope, while the list that reproduces the register files it under Obersee. The two are neighbouring lakeshore settlements of Bad Goisern, minutes apart, and we have followed the more specific of the two. It is easier to reach than to place on paper. Get off at the Obersee halt, walk the shore, look up the slope. The meadow is open ground rather than a fenced garden, though where exactly the field edge runs is worth watching as you go.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Standing free on a hillside near the house Untersee Nr. 40, Untersee, Bad Goisern am Hallstättersee
You can recognise it as the single dark evergreen standing on its own in open meadow grass, 2.1 metres round when it was measured. It stands free on the hillside slope near the house at Untersee Nr. 40, above the lake.
Appears open (register does not flag it as private, unlike other entries on the same list that explicitly say so); stands in the open on a hillside meadow near a named house rather than behind a gate. Flagged here because the exact boundary of the meadow was not independently confirmed this pass.
Obersee halt on the Salzkammergutbahn (between Hallstatt and Bad Goisern), then on foot along the lakeshore
In fruit
September to November: 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.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
