The Yew of Laimer Kirchweg

Nobody can tell you how old a yew is, and that is a property of the species rather than a gap in the paperwork. Yews grow slowly, then stop and start again for centuries, and the heartwood rots away from the middle while the tree stays perfectly healthy around it, so there is nothing left to count. Every part of it except the red flesh of the berry is poisonous, and it will resprout from a stump that would have finished any other tree here. Taxus baccata is the longest-lived thing that grows in Europe. This one stands on Laimer Kirchweg, the old church path of a village that Munich has long since grown around, and the city's 2021 natural monument ordinance protects it as a dominant tree that shapes the townscape. Yews and church paths belong together across Europe, usually with the tree older than the building at the end of the walk, though nothing on record connects this one to that habit. Go in February. A yew keeps its dark, dense, almost black-green all winter, which is unremarkable in July and the only colour on the street in the dead of the year. The register lists no age and no girth, and if you know either, we would like to have it.