The Yew of Jauzé (If de Jauzé)
How do I find it? You can recognise it by the trunk, 5.70 metres round, standing in the open in the village centre beside the church rather than inside an enclosure. It is the only tree of that bulk in the bourg.
The oldest tree in the Sarthe stands beside the church in Jauzé, a village most of France has never heard of. SEPENES, the association that keeps the department's inventory of remarkable trees, calls it le doyen de la Sarthe and puts it at seven to nine centuries, on a trunk 5.70 metres round. Local tradition goes further and has Vikings planting it, eight hundred to a thousand years ago. The regional tourism board repeats that story and calls it a legend in the same breath, which is the right way round. A visitor's photo caption elsewhere calls it the thousand-year yew. Nobody has produced a source for either figure, so the seven to nine centuries stands: it is the number the people who measured the tree are willing to put their name to. It carries one genuinely unusual credential. It is the only classified yew in the Sarthe that flowers as a male. Yews come in separate sexes, and the females, the ones that carry red arils in autumn, are what churchyards usually keep; this one sheds pollen in late winter instead. Access is free and it stands in the open in the bourg, not behind a wall. Reaching Jauzé takes a car. It is a regional tree rather than a national one, but if you are working your way through the old yews of France, this is the one the Sarthe puts forward.
- Species
- European Yew (Taxus baccata)
- Girth
- 5.7 m
- Location
- Le bourg, next to the church, 72110 Jauzé (Jauzé, Sarthe)
- Access
- Free (confirmed explicitly by the regional tourism board's own listing: 'Acces au site gratuit: Oui'). It stands in the village ('le bourg'), by the church, not on enclosed private land.
- Getting there
- No public transport found serving Jauzé, a small village in Sarthe; reachable by car. Nearest larger town is La Ferte-Bernard (SEPENES, the association that inventories Sarthe's remarkable trees, is based there), a short drive away.
The button above opens directions in your maps app.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
Discover more
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
Correct a detail on this pageSuggest another tree