English Yew

Taxus baccata is an Old World species of evergreen tree in the family Taxaceae, the tree originally known simply as yew, though it is sometimes called common yew, European yew or, in North America, English yew to distinguish it from related species. It grows as a woodland tree across much of Eurasia and Northwest Africa, and every part of the plant except the fleshy aril is poisonous. Its wood has long been prized for longbows and for musical instruments such as lutes, and the tree is widely grown as an ornamental, hedge or topiary, including in churchyards, where it is often associated with death, immortality and rebirth and sometimes reaches great age.