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Deadly☠️ To avoid

🌲 English Yew

Taxus baccata · Taxaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🫒 Mediterranean🏔️ Mountains
🧠 To remember it“Yew kills quickly”: no resin smell, no cones — just a sweet red berry hiding a deadly black seed.
English Yew — Taxus baccata

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Dark conifer with flat, soft needles and no strong resinous smell. It grows in undergrowth as well as trimmed hedges in churchyards and parks. It doesn't produce cones: its seeds are surrounded by a fleshy, sweet red aril, unique in European flora. The entire tree is toxic except for this aril itself — it's the black seed inside that kills if chewed.

  1. flat needles arranged in two rows, dark green above, paler underneath
  2. no resin smell when crushing the needle (unlike fir trees)
  3. reddish-brown bark peeling off in plates
  4. bright red fruit shaped like a small cup open at the top, never a cone
Sizeup to 20 m, very slow growth
FloweringFebruary-April (inconspicuous), fruits August-October
Habitatcalcareous undergrowth, cliffs, hedges, and churchyards where it has been planted for centuries

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Silver Fir (Abies alba)none (edible as an infusion)

To tell them apart: fir smells strongly of resin when you crush a needle and bears upright cones; yew has no smell and bears a fleshy red aril

Common Juniper (Juniperus communis)low (edible berries in small doses)

To tell them apart: juniper has prickly needles arranged in whorls of three and blue-black berries, not bright red

Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris)mortelle pour l'if (toxines cardiaques)

To tell them apart: yew has flat needles arranged like a comb in 2 rows instead of bundles of 2, scaly reddish-brown bark, and fleshy red fruits (arils) instead of woody cones

Fir and Spruce (buds) (Abies alba / Picea abies)mortelle (toxines cardiaques dans les aiguilles et graines)

To tell them apart: yew has flat needles arranged in 2 rows like a comb just like fir, but its bark is scaly reddish-brown and above all it never produces woody cones: its fruits are fleshy red arils open with a single visible toxic black seed — if you have any doubt about a young conifer without identifiable cones, do not harvest

Swiss Pine (Arolla Pine) (Pinus cembra)mortelle — c'est l'if qui tue ; le pin cembro est comestible (graines) et voisin dans les forêts subalpines

To tell them apart: Swiss pine has needles grouped in bundles of five and upright cones; yew has single flat needles in two rows, never cones, but red arils

☠️ What kills

nomTaxines (diterpene alkaloids, mainly taxine B) present in the needles, bark, and seed — never in the sweet red aril
dose letale estimeeabout 3 g of fresh needles per kg in horses; in adults, a few dozen chewed needles or a handful of crunched seeds can be fatal — no reliable human threshold established (approx)
delai30 min to a few hours; sometimes sudden death without warning signs
symptomesdizziness, dry mouth, mydriasis, abdominal pain, followed by severe heart rhythm disturbances (bradycardia, blocks, ventricular fibrillation) leading to cardiac arrest
antidoteno specific antidote; symptomatic treatment in cardiac intensive care (activated charcoal if treated early)
morts documenteesyes — cases of voluntary and accidental poisonings reported in European toxicological literature, including children who chewed seeds

First steps : Call the poison control center immediately even if you don't have symptoms, as cardiac arrest can occur without warning. Never induce vomiting. Keep a twig or the chewed seeds for identification at the hospital.

Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.