Yews are well known for their longevity, but few — if any — can top the 5,000-year-old Fortingall Yew.
What is the oldest living organism in Europe? It could be the yew tree that grows in the churchyard at Fortingall. Long ago, the trunk changed shape, losing its centre and one side to become a one-dimensional ligneous wall. Nobody quite knows the exact age of this relic, but it is calculated not in decades, not in centuries, but in millennia.
The late Duke of…
