The Wallace Yew
Introduction
The photograph on this page of The Wallace Yew by Lairich Rig as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
The Wallace Yew
Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 7 Oct 2010
This fenced-off tree, which stands just 30m south of Image, is known locally as the Wallace Yew. According to an information panel nearby, it is thought to be 300 years old. The same panel also mentions an ancient "Wallace Oak" that fell in 1856(*), and which was the traditional site of an incident featured in Blind Harry's poem about Sir William Wallace. [With regard to the yew tree, it is probably worth adding here that it is often not possible to determine, with certainty, the age of ancient yews: see Image] (*) Some additional information about the Wallace Oak is given on page 30 of the first volume of the "Annals of the Andersonian Naturalists' Society" (1893): when the tree was blown down in 1856, Mr Spiers (of Elderslie) had what remained of it removed to his own estate, where its fast-decaying trunk was lodged in the loft of an outhouse. The paper also notes that an engraving of this tree appeared as a tail-piece to one of the chapters of Ramsay's "Views in Renfrewshire" (1839).
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Image Location
Latitude
55.835284
Longitude
-4.488502