Himalayan Yew

• High Mountains
• High Himal & Trans-Himalaya

Flowers inApril, May

• 01A yew can live for hundreds of years but grows only a few centimetres a year.
• 02Every part of the tree is poisonous except the soft red cup around the seed, which birds eat safely.

• Taking too much

  How serious5/5

  Bark stripping to extract the medicine kills the tree outright. Because it regrows so slowly, a cut stand does not come back in a child’s lifetime.

• Rising heat

  How serious3/5

  It needs cool, shaded mountain slopes. As warmth pushes up the hillside, the band it can live in gets narrower.

• Take only what regrows

  Many Nepali medicine plants are disappearing because every last one gets dug up. There is a way to gather that leaves the plant alive.

• Save seeds

  Seeds are a plant’s way of sending itself into the future. Collecting and sharing them costs nothing at all.

Scientific name

Taxus wallichiana

Family

Taxaceae