Tiss berry - an endangered long-liver
This amazing plant belongs to the endangeredevergreen coniferous species. Tiss berry is a very durable plant, some specimens live several thousand years. Mainly has a tree-like form, but it happens also by a bush. After the departure of the glaciers of the Great Glaciation period, there remained a few islets of this ancient plant in North Africa, Asia, Western Europe. Sometimes these plants are found in forests on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, the Carpathians and in the Southern Crimea. On the Russian expanse, the yew berries grow from Moscow to Kaliningrad, not rising north of the latitude of these cities.
The tree in Europe rarely reaches a height of 17 m,The Caucasus grows to 27 meters. Has a very thick sprawling crown. The ribbed trunk is covered with a platey bark of reddish-gray color. The needles are flat, green in color: the top is dark and shiny, and the bottom is yellow and matte. Tiss is very shade-tolerant, it is able to grow even in conditions in which other coniferous trees die. He needs moist and nutritious soils. Very slowly growing, according to one of the legends in the mountains of Adjara, there is a yew, whose age is 4 thousand years. The height of the barrel of the long-liver is about 30 meters, and the diameter is more than one and a half meters.
Modest Beauty
Tiss berry is especially beautiful in autumn, when on its twigs, covered with dark-
Extraordinary strength
In addition to beauty, wood yewa has one morean unusual feature - it is practically not susceptible to rotting. This is its remarkable property was known to people even in the Stone Age. Confirmation of this is the find in one of the Swiss lakes, from the bottom of one of them raised stone axes with grip handles. Tiss berry used in the construction of buildings, made of its wood sculptures and monuments of the gods and pharaohs. By the way, the mummy of Tutankhamun was in three sarcophagi, and one of them was made of yew. In the Middle Ages, when wooden ships were built at a rapid pace for distant sea voyages, massive destruction began due to solid wood. Today it is listed in the Red Book, but still this plant is found less and less.
In Egypt and Ancient Greece, the yew berry was plantednear the graves in the cemeteries, wore his branches as a sign of mourning for the deceased. All parts of the tree, except the pulp of the pine cone, are poisonous. Quite often it was used to poison a person, it was enough to serve wine in a cup of yew. Or they prepared a drink from the needles of a tree - the older it is, the more poisonous it is.
Tiss berry fastigiata
It is a decorative form of a plant,a ten-year-old age of only 1.5 meters. Has a slender columnar crown, at a young age graceful, and in a more mature - loose. It grows slowly. Needles of beautiful dark green color. In gardens and parks, the yew berry (leaving does not require much effort) is used both in group plantings and alone. It is well moldable.
