These woods by the River Derwent are famous for holding probably the oldest organism in the county. The Betty Kenny yew is reputed to have begun to grow at about the same time that Christ was born. Its death was even announced in the 19th century, but this stalwart creature, measuring 8 metres around its waist, persisted as a hollowed-out relic whose interior served as home to the eponymous Kenny (spelt Kenyon) family. It was Betty’s habit of suspending a crib containing one of her seven children from its boughs that, in turn, gave rise to the nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby. As if to prove that very little changes in Britain, in the 1930s local children set fire to the tree and it decayed and shrank until today it is only a stump.
Yet not far from the site, I found what is possibly one of its offspring. Judging from the thickness of the vertical regrowth, this mere youth of a yew was blown down about a century ago and among the most distinctive features is its peacock’s tail of exposed, bone-like, pale dead roots. They may be lifeless, but the complex entanglement of this beautiful organic network strikes me as a metaphor for life itself.
To demonstrate how yews have survived for two millennia or more, this one has made a virtue of catastrophe and sent up two bold new trunks where the original stood. From the horizontal body, however, which is now sunk deep in leaf-litter, has arisen a grove of six to seven further uprights. I tried to pace out the bonfire of evergreen represented by the whole, which was tricky because the yew has extended across a nearby streamlet, and I reckoned on 90 paces, perhaps 225ft, in circumference. To buttress the subterranean root network, the tree has also sent out above-ground pipelike trunks that have docked and melded with the furthest upright.
The whole thing feels less like a plant (which technically it is) and more like some extraterrestrial being. It is among the most remarkable trees that I have ever seen and what it may be for all of us is an expression of unity and hope in troubled times.
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