the date as 1828, and the locality as a bed of thorn seedlings in the Bache Nurseries, Chester.
Only female plants of this variety are known, and it is reproduced by grafting. Its flowers are doubtless fertilised by the pollen of common yew trees near at hand, and as a rule it produces a great crop of berries. Messrs. Dickson and Sons have frequently sown seeds which invariably produced the common yew.
Var. adpressa stricta is a form of this variety in which the branches are erect or ascending. It is not known whether it originated as a seedling or as a sport fixed by grafting. It was raised by Mr. Standish.
Var. adpressa aurea is a form with golden leaves.
Var. adpressa variegata is a form with the young shoots suffused with a silvery yellow colour. This was exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society on August 27, 1889.
There are fine examples of var. adpressa in Kew Gardens.
Seedling[1]
The two cotyledons, together with the seed-case which envelops them as a cap, are carried above ground by the lengthening caulicle; and speedily casting off the remains of the seed-case, act as if they were true leaves. They differ from the latter in bearing stomata on the upper and not on the lower surface, and in having their apices rounded and not acute. The young stem, angled by the decurrent bases of the leaves, gives off at first three or four opposite pairs of true leaves, which are succeeded in vigorous plants by a few alternate leaves, crowded at the summit around a terminal bud, which in all cases closes the first season's growth, when the young plant is 1 to 3 inches high. The caulicle, 1 to 2 inches in length, ends in a strong tap-root, which descends several inches into the soil, and gives off a few lateral fibres.
The growth of the seedling during the next four or five years is very slow, often scarcely an inch annually. Afterwards the growth becomes more rapid.
Sexes, Flowers, Fruit, Buds
The yew is normally diœcious; but exceptions occur, and in our account of the cultivated varieties two or three instances of monœcious trees have been mentioned. The celebrated yew at Buckland,[2] Kent, is monœcious. As a rule it is only a single twig or branch which bears flowers of a different sex from those on the rest of the tree. A yew[3] at Hohenheimer, near Stuttgart, is reported, however, to bear male and female flowers irregularly over the whole tree, each kind, however, on separate twigs. There is a specimen at Kew of a branch, sent in 1885 by the Rev. T.J.C. Valpy of Elsing, Norfolk, which bears both male flowers and fruit.
