Starynkiewicz's Yew

Six stems rise from one base, and the thickest of them is not even two metres round: the register measured this yew stem by stem in 1975 and recorded 56, 51, 73, 43, 48 and 38 centimetres apiece, one tree wearing six trunks. It grows beside the pressure tower of the Warsaw Water Filters, the plant that gave the city clean water for the first time, built between 1883 and 1886 to William Lindley's design under Sokrat Starynkiewicz, the Russian-appointed mayor who pushed the project through. A bust of Starynkiewicz went up near the same tower in 1907, and the yew has carried his name since. Getting to it means booking one of the plant's own guided tours, since the grounds are a working water-treatment site rather than a park; MPWiK, which still runs it, opens it on scheduled Sundays and occasional evenings. The most recent photograph on record is from 2017, showing a healthy tree inside grounds that have been kept as a heritage site for well over a century, alongside an avenue of London planes planted with the original waterworks. No later sighting has turned up, and no report of its removal either.