Thousand-year-old yew tree

 Thousand-year-old yew tree. This is one of two ancient yew trees situated within the "Plaisance" (a walled garden beside Kelburn Castle). The trees are certified as over one thousand years old.

Note, though, that dating yew trees is not a simple matter of counting rings: "after 400 or 500 years almost all yews begin to lose their heartwood and become hollow, making dating by ring-counts impossible.

They also enter long periods of suspended growth, when they put on virtually no extra girth at all." [Richard Mabey, "Flora Britannica"]

The Common Yew, Taxus baccata, is usually a dioecious species: there are separate male and female trees. One of the trees in the Plaisance is a male, while the other is a female.

The nearby castle has been continuously inhabited by the same family (Boyle) since the first Norman keep was built on the site in about 1200, but their ancestors (then surnamed "de Boyville") arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror in 1066.

However, if their age has been correctly determined, then these venerable trees pre-date even that arrival.