Talk:Llangernyw Yew

Things to do
Still to do I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree#Oldest_trees should be updated to include it as well. Lawrie (talk) 15:53, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Things done
Tidied this up a little and put things into sections - I don't expect a whole bunch of new edits but may as well keep it a little neater. Lawrie (talk) 04:23, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be good to get something of the legend of predicting deaths into this - Frankly for a 5,000 year old tree it doesn't seem to have much interesting folklore surrounding it at all. Lawrie (talk) 15:30, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It looks like an un-named somebody did this, so thanks for that! Lawrie (talk) 04:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms#Individual_plant_specimens Lawrie (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree#Oldest_trees Lawrie (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Damn I just realised I was doing all these edits as Emgaol and not Lawrie. Typical - Wikimedia wouldn't let me login as lawrie to upload the photos so I had to create a new id... La la. Why does it make it so hard to actually do anything? Anyway let's try logging back in as me and moving it to the main Wikipedia. Emgaol (talk) 20:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Lawrie/Llangernyw Yew → Llangernyw Yew — The Llangernyw Yew page is currently a redirect to the village so this is a clean new page. Lawrie (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Support There is a link to the village in the first line, so shouldn't cause any problems.  Skinsmoke (talk) 09:54, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Almost beyond belief...

 * In the mid-1990s the church oil tank stood in the space between the two trunk fragments, however, this was moved when it was realised that the tree was a living Ancient Monument. When this tank was built a lot of the dead wood was removed from the site which makes ageing the tree more difficult for dendrochronologists.

That, in the mid 1990s, with attitudes towards conservation, environmentalism and the preservation of trees well advanced at that time, it is almost beyond my comprehension that any parish council could have acted with such extraordinary ignorance, regardless of whether they knew that the tree was specifically a national monument. Church-goers (of old churches) in general know two things about Yew trees. 1. It's probably 1,000 years old, 2. Don't eat the berries. Amandajm (talk) 04:44, 19 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yea, it is pretty amazing - Still, Yew Trees are pretty tough, and it survived bearing its relatively short lived scars. In some ways now it's a little safer since it has 2 above ground sections :) Lawrie (talk) 03:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Ancient monument?
The Ancient monument article says that (at least in the UK) they're "always man-made". This tree doesn't seem to be man-made. Ergo, it must not be an Ancient Monument. Anyone know whether this article is wrong or the Ancient Monument definition is wrong? LW izard @ 04:14, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Changes
I this edit I removed the unnecessary claim to ancient monument status brought up by LizardWizard, put the age claims together, removed a link to page that is not a reliable source and has much less information than the article itself, removed a redundant link to external images, and removed a broken link. Hekerui (talk) 23:56, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Age disparity
I checked the source again and this is what it states on the tree on page 49: "the yew at Llangernyw is almost certainly one of the ten oldest yews in Britain" and "Dr. Gregory notes a couple of early Welsh saint tombs markers at this site, from before the ninth century. Saint Digain of the church dedication fits this picture of a genuine early sait yew. This evidence, like many other early saint sites, points mostly to a yew of circa 1,500 years age. This provides, in my opinion, a tangible, living link to an ancient Christian presence on the site in the post-Roman period."

On Bellamy it says on page 17: "David Bellamy realised that the great ages of yews were plausible and began a campaign of awareness in order to preserve existing yews and encourage more research. However, the hallowing process continues to disallow totally empirical dates for many old yews. It must also be noticed that the Yew Tree Campaign age certificates were intended to provide estimates of the ages of each churchyard specimen, not empirical results".

I think this should be noted somehow in the text and I would prefer to highlight the cautious age estimate instead of the one on the certificate. Hekerui (talk) 11:47, 30 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hekerui, my concern was chiefly with the contradiction in the prose, not the fact that there are different estimates (many trees on the "oldest" lists have age ranges and conflicting opinions). To resolve the problem with the prose, the first step (which you took) was to make the two age estimates contiguous.  The next step is to acknowledge the disparity (someone says this, whereas someone else says that).  I would hesitate to "highlight" one estimate or the other, if by highlight you mean present one estimate as more plausible. More sources are needed, I think, for that. However, I can see no reason not to include Bevan-Jones' observation (attributed to him) about the Yew Tree Campaign and its estimates, perhaps as a quote in footnote form?  I also think the term "saint site" needs explanation. Richigi (talk) 00:19, 2 October 2013 (UTC)