about 45 feet high by 35 in girth. The trunk is hollow, and has inside it a goodsized younger stem, probably formed by a root descending inside the hollow trunk from one of the limbs. It is a female tree, and of its age it is impossible to form a correct estimate. (Plate 35.)
At Kyre Park, Worcestershire, the residence of Mrs. Baldwyn Childe, is a very fine yew tree growing near the wonderful grove of oaks which I have described elsewhere; it measures 55 feet high by 20 in girth. Under it the Court Leet of the Manor was formerly held.
The most widespreading yew I have seen is a tree at Whittinghame, the seat of Mr. Arthur Balfour, which I measured in February 1905. It grows near the old tower, formerly the property of Sir Archibald Douglas, one of the conspirators of Darnley's murder, and, according to a local tradition, this was plotted under its shade. The tree is not remarkable for height or girth, the bole being only about 12 feet high and 10½ feet in girth, but spreads out into an immense drooping head, the branches descending to the ground and forming a complete circular cage or bower about 10 yards in diameter, inside which, Mr. Garrett, the gardener, told me that 300 school children had stood at once. The branches lie on the ground without rooting, so far as I could see, and spread so widely that I made the total circumference about no paces. Mr. Garrett, with a tape, made it 125 yards. The appearance of the tree from outside is fairly well shown in Plate 36.
Another tree of this character, but not so large, grows at Crom Castle, on upper Lough Erne, and is described in the Ulster Journal of Archæology by Lord Erne.[1] It is said to resemble an enormous green mushroom in contour, and has evidently been a trained tree, its horizontal branches being supported on timber supports upheld by about 60 stout props. Its total height is given as 25 feet, with a bole of 6 feet and a girth of 12 feet, the branches being 250 feet in circumference.
Yew trees in a wild state do not, as a rule, grow so large as those which are planted, probably because they are usually in poor rocky soil and crowded by other trees; but Lord Moreton tells me of a remarkably fine one which was shown him by Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, son of the owner of Fawley Court, in a wood on the Greenlands property on the Chiltern Hills. He described the tree as of the most symmetrical growth, and he guessed it to be nearer 70 feet than 60 feet high, with a girth of about 12 feet.
Yew Hedges and Topiary Work
The yew, owing to the readiness with which it submits to pruning, forms an admirable hedge, and an excellent account of the conditions necessary to success in the making and keeping up of yew hedges is given by Mr. J. Clark in recent issues of the Garden[2] to which we refer our readers.
One of the oldest and finest yew hedges in Great Britain is that at Wrest Park,[3]
