The oldest tree in the Sarthe stands beside the church in a village most of France has never heard of. SEPENES, the association that inventories the department's remarkable trees, calls it the doyen de la Sarthe and puts it at seven to nine centuries on a trunk 5.7 metres round. It is also the only classified yew in the Sarthe that flowers as a male, shedding pollen in late winter rather than carrying the red berries most churchyard yews are known for. Free, in the open, reached by car.
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The Yew of Jauzé (If de Jauzé)
European Yew (Taxus baccata) · roughly 700 to 900 years · Jauzé, Sarthe
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.
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