Yew

Yews have dark-green colored, rather soft, evergreen, needle-like leaves. Yews usually have separate male and female plants, although sometimes these flowers will develop on separate branches of the same plant. The male flowers are small and inconspicuous, and develop as globular bodies in leaf axils. The female flowers of yews develop in the springtime, and they occur singly and naked in the axis of a leaf. The fruit is a relatively large, hard seed, encased in a bright-red or scarlet, fleshy, cup-like structure known as an aril. The arils are sought by birds as food, which eat and disperse the seeds. The seeds of yews are poisonous to people and other mammals, although the fleshy arils are not. The symptoms of poisoning by yew seeds or foliage are dilation of the pupils, pain, and vomiting, leading to coma and death if the dose is large enough.

The wood of yews is dense, strong, flexible, and resistant to decay. The bark is thin, fibrous, scaly, and dark colored. The young twigs of yews are generally greenish in color.

Yews are slow growing and highly tolerant of shading. As a result, yews can survive in the shade beneath a closed forest canopy. This can be especially true beneath angiosperm trees, which allow the yews to grow relatively freely during the spring and autumn when the trees are in a leafless condition. However, yews also do well beneath conifer trees, as long as occasional gaps in the canopy allow exposure to light as brief sunflecks during the day.

Yews have a dense foliage and so cast a rather deep shade. As a result of this shade, as well as a toxic quality of the yew's leaf litter, few plants will grow beneath a closed canopy of yew tree or shrubs.