Wat is de oudste boom van Dublin?

Ring counts are not possible without felling the tree, so estimates for the Old Glebe yew swing widely: a girth-based rule of thumb puts it past 500 years, while local tradition claims over 700. Either number makes it older than the house whose garden it now shares, built in 1710, and older than most of the city's other ancient trees. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, is said to have sat beneath it while composing verse, though that pairing of an ancient tree and a famous writer is exactly the kind of story that attaches itself whether or not it happened, so treat it as folklore. The nearest challenger for oldest is a good deal younger: a pair of yews in the National Botanic Gardens, possibly planted in the 1730s to commemorate the essayist Joseph Addison, a claim the garden's own historians can't fully reconcile with its 1795 founding date. Getting there requires checking the calendar first. It is a private property that opens free to the public under Ireland's Section 482 tax relief scheme, specifically in May, all of June, and nine days in mid-August, 10am to 2pm. Turn up outside those windows and the gate stays shut.