The Yew Tree

If you like fungi then you have to also have an interest in trees because trees and mushrooms are deeply, almost magically, entwined in both ecology and folklore.

Beneath the forest floor, trees live in a deep partnership with fungi. Their roots intertwine with delicate fungal threads, mycelium, forming a hidden network that sustains them both. The fungi draw up water and minerals from the soil, while the trees, in return, gift them sugars created through photosynthesis.

This vast underground system is often called the “Wood Wide Web,” a living network through which trees can send signals, warn one another of danger, and even share nourishment with weaker neighbours.

In folklore, mushrooms are seen as the messengers of this secret world. the fruiting bodies that appear above ground to reveal where the invisible web of life is thriving below.

We will be learning about these wonderful mushroom allies starting with the Yew Tree

A yew tree in the graveyard at Stokesay Castle, Ludlow

The yew tree, one of the most mysterious and powerful trees in folklore, steeped in both reverence and dread.

Folklore & Symbolism of the Yew

Tree of Death & Immortality

• Yews often grow in or around graveyards, particularly in Britain and Ireland. They symbolize both death and eternal life, since the tree is extremely long-lived (some specimens are thousands of years old) and regenerates by sprouting new trunks from the old.

• Its evergreen needles make it a symbol of eternal life, while its toxicity tied it to death.

Connection to the Underworld

• In Celtic and Norse traditions, yew was linked to the Otherworld. The druids are said to have used yew in divination and ritual, associating it with transitions, ancestral wisdom, and contact with the dead.

• Some scholars suggest that Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Norse myth, may actually have been a yew, not an ash, due to the yew’s resilience and connection to death and rebirth.

Churchyards & Sacred Spaces

• Many old churches in Britain were deliberately built near yews, or yews were planted in churchyards. Some say the Church co-opted existing pagan yew groves as sacred spaces.

• Yews also served a practical role: their toxic leaves kept animals away from burial grounds.

  
  

Witchcraft & Sorcery

• In European witchcraft, yew wood and needles were linked with necromancy, spirit work, and baneful magic. The smoke of burning yew was said to open gateways to the dead (but it’s highly poisonous, never burn it in real practice!).

• Yew was also seen as a protective tree, warding off evil, though its aura is often described as heavy or eerie.

Magical Associations

• Element: Water / Earth

• Planet: Saturn (sometimes Pluto)

• Deities: Hecate, Hades, Hel, Odin, Persephone

• Keywords: Death, rebirth, ancestors, eternity, necromancy, transformation, liminality.

Folkloric Uses

• Wands of yew were thought to be especially potent for divination and summoning spirits.

• Sprigs of yew placed on graves served as charms of protection and remembrance.

• Folklore also warns of the danger of sleeping beneath a yew — believed to draw the soul from the body.

Chicken of the Woods found on Yew

Beneath the shadow of the yew, strange fungi gather. Like the tree itself, they walk the thin line between life and death, beauty and poison.

On its dark wood, golden shelves of Chicken of the Woods may appear, bright as firelight, yet deadly here, for the yew’s venom seeps into its flesh. The Green Elfcup leaves behind ghostly stains of blue and green, a sorcery that lingers long after the mushroom itself has gone. Rusts and galls creep across its needles, quiet parasites that whisper of decay woven into evergreen.

At the roots, where the yew’s breath mingles with soil, other spirits stir. Earthballs, round and warty, swell like buried hearts. The False Chanterelle sometimes flickers beneath the boughs, a trickster’s echo of its golden cousin. Rare webcaps may lurk there too, secretive and strange, drawn to the yew’s otherworldly aura.

In folklore, these fungi were seen as part of the yew’s enchantment, poisonous fruiting bodies and spectral stains, guardians of the threshold. Just as the yew shelters the souls of the dead, so too do its mushrooms mark it as a place apart, where the unseen world rises to the surface.

Next time you come across a yew tree, spend some time with it, see it in all of its dark beauty, place your hands on its trunk and feel the pulsing energy held within, talk to the tree, learn its secrets, become its companion for you never know when you will have the need to call upon its magick.