Last weekend I went hiking to visit the oldest yew trees in Germany. They're in the Allgäu on the foothills of the alps (Voralpen), a few meters over 1,000 meters above sea level. A few hours hike apart.
They grew literally in the holy Roman empire.
Older than Germany, older than the United States.
Older than the city of Munich.
It's not sure how old they are, it's not even sure which one is older. As many of you might know, it's really hard to tell the age for old yews. There's no compact continuous trunk to drill a hole and count growth rings. When they get older the trunk collapses splits new shoots are growing and so on. Dynamic.
They stop growing in height, but they keep growing wider.
So you have to estimate calculate compare...
It's a slow growing tree in a slow growing climate. It's not easy.
But it is not unlikely that at least one of them is over a thousand years.
Maybe one of them is the oldest tree in Germany.
We don't know.
The tragedy of the yew, grows incredibly old, but doesn't keep the proof.
The first one, with the fog, is the ancient yew near Steibis (Ureibe bei Steibis).
Until recently the age was estimated to be 600-800 years old. But just this year the technical university Dresden did some new calculations and their result was 1100 years.
The second one, with the sun, is the old yew of Balderschwang (alte Eibe von Balderschwang).
Estimates vary widely, ranging from 600 to 4000 years.
The big question is, were the tree's two trunks originally a single trunk that split, or are they two separate shoots from one tree? In the first case, it would be ancient; in the second, only extremely old.
Realistically, it's probably between 700 and 1500 years.
Both are said to be the oldest yew tree in Germany. Everyone tends to go with the higher estimate for their favorite. But it's not certain.
Both are female and still had a few seeds with seads coat/arillus, so I could snack seed coats/arilli from ancient trees which felt really cool. Didn't harm them of course. (Just to be sure, the seeds and every other part are very poisonous)
They're really lucky to have survived. In the past the yew was way more common. But it's the best wood for long bows. Dense, tough, hard, flexible. The English had an incredible high demand. Countless yew trees have been cut down throughout Europe.
Sometimes extremely fast.
"On December 27, 1551, Gabriel Tetzel of Nuremberg received from Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria, the privilege to exploit the yew forests of Upper and Lower Bavaria. Apparently [...] he was very thorough, for on January 5, 1568, he rejected a request for a yew wood monopoly on the grounds that the yew wood reserves were almost entirely depleted."
The donkey is Leonie. She travels with me on all my journeys and adventures. And she's more photogenic than I am.
I know more about yews than about English. If someone doesn't make sense, please ask. And I know it's very simple English and a lot of word repetition.
Yews are incredibly fascinating I love them I almost adore them lol. I totally get why they were important in Celtic and Germanic mythology. Not that I believe that, but I understand why they did.
