Ancient trees in the United Kingdom

Britain's oldest trees are yews, and it is churches, not palaces, that kept most of them standing. We map 114 trees in 30 cities here. The oldest of them is The Fortingall Yew in Fortingall, at estimates range from roughly 2,000 to 5,000 years.

London's Totteridge Yew is put at two thousand years old, roughly a millennium and a half older than the church built beside it, one of many British yews reckoned to predate Christianity in these islands. Oaks tell a different story: a mild, fire-free climate let them stand long enough to earn names tied to real dates, a Domesday Oak already growing when the Conquest was surveyed in 1086, a Royal Oak enclosed inside a park wall in 1637 because it was already centuries old. Age here survives less through law than inheritance, a landed estate, a cathedral close, a royal park that changed hands but never changed use. Twenty-four places are mapped so far, from Edinburgh's botanic garden to Oxford's college quadrangles, and wherever a yew appears it tends to win on age. The extreme case is Fortingall, a Perthshire village of a few houses whose churchyard yew is dated at anywhere between two thousand and five thousand years, because the heartwood rotted away centuries ago and there is nothing left to count.

Every place we map in the United Kingdom

London27 trees · oldest 2000 years 2

Edinburgh16 trees · oldest 1,000 years 3

Brighton6 trees · oldest 500 years 4

Bristol6 trees · oldest 700 years 5

York6 trees · oldest 150 years 6

Bath5 trees · oldest 290 years 7

Belfast5 trees · oldest 400-600 years 8

Cambridge5 trees · oldest 417 years 9

Glasgow5 trees · oldest 450-500 years 10Manchester5 trees · oldest 120 years 11

Oxford5 trees · oldest 700-1600 years 12Cardiff4 trees · oldest 255-310 years 13

Liverpool2 trees · oldest 400-1000 years 14

Aberford1 tree · oldest 105 years 15Achnacarry1 tree · oldest 400 years 16Borrowdale1 tree · oldest 1,500 years 17Chirk1 tree · oldest 1000 years 18Craigends1 tree · oldest 600 years 19Dunkeld1 tree · oldest 300 years 20Farnham1 tree · oldest 450-550 years 21

Fortingall1 tree · oldest 2000-5000 years 22

Glastonbury1 tree · oldest 90 years 23

Groton1 tree · oldest 475 years 24

Llangernyw1 tree · oldest 1500-5000 years 25Moffat1 tree · oldest 60-99 years 26Newtown1 tree · oldest 500 years 27Runnymede1 tree · oldest 2,000-2,500 years 28Stratfield Saye1 tree · oldest 170 years 29

Tolpuddle1 tree · oldest 340 years 30Wrexham1 tree · oldest 480-500 years

52 species grow in the United Kingdom

Oaks Pedunculate Oak 7 · Sessile Oak 3 · Holm Oak 2 · Oak 2 · Hungarian Oak 1 · Hybrid Oak 1 · Turkey Oak 1

Beeches Sweet Chestnut 6 · European Beech 3

Elms and zelkovas Caucasian Elm 2 · English Elm 2 · Camperdown Elm 1 · Huntingdon Elm 1 · Wentworth Elm 1 · Wych Elm 1

Planes London Plane 12 · Oriental Plane 3

Limes Crimean Linden 1 · Small-leaved Lime 1

Maples Sycamore 4

Chestnuts, walnuts and hazels Shagbark Hickory 1

Figs and mulberries Black Mulberry 6 · Common Fig 1 · White Mulberry 1

Conifers European Yew 14 · Giant Sequoia 4 · Cedar of Lebanon 3 · Dawn Redwood 2 · Coast Redwood 1 · Monkey Puzzle 1

Fruit and blossom Apple 1 · Elaeagnus-Leaved Pear 1 · Graft-chimera Cherry 1 · Hybrid Strawberry Tree 1

More broadleaf trees European Ash 2 · Japanese Pagoda Tree 2 · Adam's Laburnum 1 · Amur Cork Tree 1 · Australian Grass Tree 1 · Black Poplar 1 · Catacol Whitebeam 1 · Common Alder 1 · Common Hawthorn 1 · Handkerchief Tree 1 · Hawthorn 1 · Hemsley's Whitebeam 1 · Hornbeam 1 · Narrow-Leaved Ash 1 · Rowan 1 · species not established 1 · Tree of Heaven 1 · Variegated Green Ash 1