Càrn Mairg

Explorer Tom The Fortingall Yew has been standing in this Perthshire churchyard for so long that it makes the surrounding stonework look like recent DIY. It is an old tree with a complicated shape and a habit of upsetting tidy age estimates. I would ask it what it remembers, but the answer might take another thousand years. The Woodland Trust puts its likely age between 2,000 and 3,000 years. That is a careful estimate: the trunk is hollow and split into separate living pieces, so nobody can simply count a full set of rings. Eighteenth-century visitors recorded a girth of around 16 or 17 metres. Look at the fragments now and try to picture a single great trunk that broad. The gaps were once large enough for funeral processions to pass through, according to local tradition. The tree's odd shape has a human cause as well as time. By the 1830s people had cut chunks away to make souvenirs, leaving it diminished long before anyone thought of selling a fridge magnet. A low wall now helps protect the surviving stems, which still put out new growth. There is another small surprise: a branch of this traditionally male yew has produced female growth. Scottish yew specialists say that change is unusual to notice, though it can happen in yews. The yew is in Fortingall's churchyard and can be viewed without an admission fee, but keep outside its protective enclosure and respect the churchyard. The tree is alive, after all. Give it a proper look from each side; it has spent a very long time becoming more than one view can show.