and attains its largest dimensions on deep sandy loam. It grows better under dense shade than any tree we have, and may therefore be used for underplanting beech-woods where bare ground is objected to, and where the soil is too poor and dry or too limy for silver fir. In such situations, however, it grows very slowly and produces little or no fruit.
Remarkable Trees
No tree, except perhaps the oak, has a larger literature in English than the yew; and though a monograph on the Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland by the late John Lowe, M.D., was published by Macmillan so lately as 1897, I am able to add many records of trees not known to him, and shall not allude to most of the trees which he has described and figured.
It is strange that neither Loudon, Lowe, nor any other writer has, so far as I know, described the yews in the close walks at Midhurst, which, on account of their extraordinary height, form what I believe to be the most remarkable yew-grove in Great Britain or elsewhere.
The age and history of these wonderful trees is lost in obscurity, but it is said in Wm. Roundell's very interesting book on Cowdray[1] that Queen Elizabeth was entertained at a banquet in these walks, so they must have been of considerable age and size 300 years ago.
The close walks are situated close to the town on the other side of the river, and consist of four avenues of yew trees forming a square of about 150 yards, together with a grove of yews at the upper end which average, as nearly as I could measure them, about 75 feet in height, but some probably exceed 80. These trees are for the most part sound and healthy, though little care has been taken of them, and some have fallen. They are remarkable not only for their great height, which exceeds that of any other yews on record in Europe, but on account of their freedom from large branches, many having clean boles of 20 - 30 feet with a girth of 8–9 feet. They stand so thick together that on an area of about half an acre or less—I made 213 paces in going round it—I counted about 100 trees and saw the stumps of 10 or 12 more, which would probably average over 30 cubic feet to each tree without reckoning the branches.
The ground below is absolutely bare of vegetation, and though I found some small seedlings among the grass and briars on the outside of this area, I do not think the yew grows from seed under its own shade.
The photographs (Plates 54, 55) will give a fair idea of the appearance of this wonderful grove, and of the walks which lead to it. Some of the trees have a remarkable spiral twist in them like fluted columns, which I have not seen so well developed elsewhere.
The soil on which they stand seems to be of a light sandy nature, but deep enough to grow large fine timber of other species, and is, I believe, on the Lower Greensand formation.
- ↑ Cf. Guide to Midhurst, p. 41 (Midhurst: G. Roynon (1903)).
