The Yew of Plaza de la Libertad

Most of Salamanca's yews are new. The four planted around the Columbus statue in the Parque de Colon are about three decades old, which for a yew is barely a start. The one at the corner of the Plaza de la Libertad and Calle Concejo is a different proposition: a full-grown tejo standing in the middle of the old city, listed by the local press among Salamanca's notable trees and known simply as the great yew of the square. The ground under it was an orchard. The plaza was laid out from 1842 on the site of the convent garden of the Carmelitas Descalzas de San Elias, and it has been replanted repeatedly since: acacias first, then plane trees, then cypress and palms. The yew appears in none of those accounts. Either it arrived between the waves or it has outlasted the record of who planted what. By one account of the plaza it stands out of line with the formal symmetry of the layout, and the gardeners have kept it where it is rather than tidy it away. That is the argument for going. Yew is the slow species, the one European churchyards are full of because it will still be standing when the building needs work, and it carries age better than anything else that will grow through a Castilian summer. Nobody has published an age, a height or a girth for this tree. If you know any of the three, tell us.