Tiss berry - an endangered long-liver

This amazing plant belongs to the endangered evergreen coniferous species. Tiss berry is a very durable plant, some specimens live several thousand years. Mainly has a tree-like form, but it happens also by a shrub. After the departure of the glaciers of the Great Glaciation period, there remained a few islets of this ancient plant in North Africa, Asia, Western Europe. Sometimes these plants are found in forests on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, the Carpathians and in the Southern Crimea. In the Russian expanse, the berry yew grows from Moscow to Kaliningrad, not rising north of the latitude of these cities.

Appearance and habitat

The tree in Europe rarely reaches a height of 17 m, in the Caucasus it grows to 27 meters. Has a very dense spreading crown. The ribbed trunk is covered with a platey bark of a reddish-gray color. The needles are flat, green in color: the top is dark and shiny, and the bottom is yellow and matte. Tiss is very shade-tolerant, it is able to grow even under conditions in which other coniferous trees die. He needs moist and nutritious soils. It grows very slowly, according to one of the legends in the mountains of Adjara, there is a yew, whose age is 4 thousand years. The height of the barrel of the long-liver is about 30 meters, and the diameter is more than one and a half meters.

Modest Beauty

Tiss berry is especially beautiful in autumn, when on its twigs, covered with dark- Green needles, small seeds appear in a fleshy, brightly colored shell resembling tiny ruby lanterns. The yew wood has a red-brown color and a beautiful texture, for which it is very valued in the production of furniture, expensive hand-made articles and wooden elements of some musical instruments.

Extraordinary strength

In addition to beauty, the wood of the yew has one more unusual feature - it is practically not subject to rotting. This is its remarkable property was known to people even in the Stone Age. This is confirmed by a find in one of the Swiss lakes, from the bottom of one of them raised stone axes with grip handles. Tiss berry used in the construction of buildings, made of its wood sculptures and monuments of the gods and pharaohs. By the way, the mummy of Tutankhamun was in three sarcophagi, and one of them was made of yew. In the Middle Ages, when wooden ships were built at a rapid pace for distant sea voyages, massive destruction began due to the solid wood. Today it is listed in the Red Book, but still this plant is found less and less.

Tree of death

In Egypt and Ancient Greece, yew berry planted near graves in cemeteries, wore its branches as a sign of mourning for the deceased. All parts of the tree, except the pulp of the pine cone, are poisonous. Quite often it was used to poison a person, it was enough to serve wine in a cup of yew. Or they prepared a drink from the needles of a tree - the older it is, the more poisonous it is.

Tiss berry fastigiata

It is a decorative form of a plant, only ten meters high at the age of ten. Has a slender columnar crown, at a young age graceful, and in a more mature - loose. It grows slowly. The needles are of a beautiful dark green color. In gardens and parks, the yew berry (leaving does not require special effort) is used both in group plantings and alone. It is well moldable.