The Muckross Abbey Yew

In 1897 this yew measured ten feet round at the ground. In 2005 the tape read 305 centimetres, the same tree to within a thumb's width. The trunk has barely thickened in a century, and nobody can say how many centuries came before that. It grows from the exact centre of the cloister at Muckross Friary, founded around 1448 by Donal McCarthy Mor for the Observant Franciscans. The friary has lost its roof. The yew has kept its crown. In 1756 the historian Charles Smith called it one of the tallest yews he had seen, its spreading branches overshadowing the niches of the cloister "like a great umbrella", and the crown still fills the open square from wall to wall. How old it is depends on whom you ask. The Office of Public Works, which cares for the site, says it is likely up to 400 years old and one of the oldest in Ireland. Local tradition says it was planted with the friary, which would make it closer to 575. A hollow yew keeps no countable record of its rings, so neither figure can be settled and both stand here as what they are. The bark is red and the trunk twists as it rises, dividing into limbs at about four metres. It is a male tree, so it carries no berries. Outside the ruin, near the entrance, a second old yew grows inside a circular stone wall, and at knee height it is the wider of the two.