I See Yew

ICU

It was a typical kids’ cold: runny nose, sore throat, a little pale, a little lethargic. My three-year-old son and his best friend shared the germs. His friend got better in a couple of days. My son did not. And he continued to lose energy, languishing on the couch all day. And he looked so pale. We took him to our family doctor, who did not like what he saw. He told us to drive the two hours to Children’s Hospital in Seattle the next day. There, another doctor did hours of tests on our son, then sat us down and told us quite gently, “It’s cancer.”

I thought he had hit me with a baseball bat.

Most of us have cancer stories, some with happy endings, some not, and some still being written.

Hangin' over a Cap Sante trail

Yew Got This

Murphy and I hiked some of the lower Cap Sante trails this week, each of us racing the other to see who could go the slowest, Murphy sniffing every rock and fern along the trail, me wandering lost in reverie as golden maple leaves fluttered down to the forest floor. Like a three-year-old, I tried catching them as they fell. Several were stuck in the branches of a tree angling over the trail. The tree had been knocked askew by a falling fir tree years ago, but still flourishes, though now leaning at a severe angle. It’s a tough tree, the Pacific Yew.

leaves on the yew, this year's needles a lighter color than last year's

Yewsful

They are found along the coast from northern California to southern Alaska, and along the slopes of the Rockies from southern British Columbia into Idaho and Montana.

The trees are evergreen with flat needles, distinctive reddish-purple peeling bark, and small, berry-like, bright red fruit (arils) on the female plants, which are toxic to humans but eaten by many birds, thus spreading the undigested seeds around the forest. Occasionally they form thick stands. I guess the aril doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Local tribes used the slow-growing, dense wood of the Pacific yew for making harpoons, spear handles, eating utensils, wedges, paddles, and clubs for hunting seals. Pacific yew is renowned for its value in making bows, and is called "bow plant" by the Salish people.

They now have another, more modern use.

the peeling reddish bark is very distinctive

Thank Yew

In the late 1950s, the National Cancer Institute scoured our wildlands for possible cancer drugs. A botanist named Arthur Barclay searched in the forests south of Mount Rainier, collecting bark and leaf samples of Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, as part of the project. They found that the bark had a promising anti-cancer compound. They named the compound Taxol after the tree’s scientific name.

Extracting Taxol was difficult, requiring stripping the bark and thus killing the tree in the process. Treating a single cancer patient meant killing eight yew trees! It quickly became clear that this was not going to be sustainable. Researchers raced to find methods of isolating Taxol without killing the trees. In 1994, the first chemical synthesis of the drug was successful. Research is ongoing to bolster production of this lifesaving drug in sustainable ways.

Taxol is now used against ovarian and breast cancer, and others. It remains one of the best plant-based cancer treatments available.

Another yew nearby, also tilted

Yew Who

The genus name Taxus is from the Greek word for ‘bow’, referring to the historical use of the branches of this tree for making hunting bows. The species name brevifolia is Latin for ‘short or small’ and ‘leaf’. It's needles are indeed small.

Yew needles are yewnique. They are about an inch long, wide all the way until they end in an abrupt point. Redwoods are similar in some ways, but the rest of a redwood tree looks nothing like a yew. Grand fir needles are in a flat plane, but they are wide with a blunt tip. Hemlock needles also lie flat but are far more feathery, smaller, lighter, and with rounded tips.

The name ‘yew’ appears to be from an Old English name for ‘red’, referring to the bark of the tree. It is distinctive in our local forests with trees that are mostly drab gray.

Yew See

As I looked around the trail where we stood, I found another yew. Once you see the red scaly bark, the wildly gesticulating branches sporting sparse, medium-green needles flattened in a horizontal plane, you start recognizing the trees quickly. And looking around, I saw over a dozen more yews of various sizes, all within a stone’s throw. We were in a yew den!

Given a stable forest with the right soil and climate, they will live contentedly beneath an aging fir forest for hundreds of years, developing their dense wood. Look for them in whatever local woodlands you may be wandering.

And thank them for what they contribute to our health. What other life-saving medicine is right in our neighborhood forests, plants we just take for granted? It makes me wonder what critical resources we may be losing as our planet's biodiversity continues to be wiped out.

This one looks almost like a normal tree.

Yew are my sunshine

Oh, I never finished the story about my son.

He went through three years of cancer treatments, years before Taxol was ready for use. I still remember the bright orange chemo poison flowing into his body to fight the cancer cells stealing his energy and life.

Today, he and his wife are raising two wonderful pre-teens, and he will soon be retiring after a very successful first career.

This is a story with many happy endings!

jack

All photos taken by me this week at the lower end of Cap Sante

Your comments and feedback are always encouraged, and they encourage me. Contact me at skagitjack@outlook.com