Exotic Wood yew

WOOD ID POSTER:
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240 woods on a poster (24"x36")

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YEW

Taxus baccata (common yew / European yew)
Taxus brevifolia (Oregon yew / Pacific yew / western yew)
Taxus cuspidata (Japanese yew)
Taxus canadensis (American yew, Florida yew)
Taxus celebica (Chinese yew)
Taxus floridana (Florida yew)
Taxus globosa (Mexican yew)
Taxus sumatrana (Chinese yew)
Taxus wallichianayew (mountain yew [in the philippines])

Tasux spp. of the family Taxaceae

This attractive, golden-tan colored, intricately-grained softwood is quite hard and easily worked but the trees are small and large sizes of lumber are not available. It is fine textured but rarely uniform, being more often interspersed with "pips" and streaks and flaws. In addition to Europe and the Americas, there are yew varieties that grow in Asia as well. I'm not clear on what the distinctions are, if any, as far as craftsmen are concerned.

The famous English longbow, long a staple of medieval warfare, was originally made of English (European) yew, but Spanish yew became more prevalent since it is actually better for bows (it grows straighter). Yews are known to have reached 2000 years of age even though older trees tend to become hollow inside.

my samples --- colors are accurate throughout.

veneer sheet with half moistened with mineral oil

both sides of a sample plank

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

several small planks, all freshly sanded --- all are from the same tree and have the same color; the 3rd pic show a little too much red tint and the other pics have very accurate color.

the web pic for part of a batch of yew that most of my plank samples directly above came from. The planks are very rough-cut in these pics and in mine they have been sanded down.

small planks

one of the small planks from the set above, but shown closer up (oh, and I seem to have flipped it to the other side)

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

small stick ... pic provided by Iain Rankin, whom I thank for this and other contributions to the site. Iain also sent me the small turning and tiny plank in the 2nd pic. All these are English yew. My color correction on the 2nd pic did not put back as much yellow as there actually is in the wood; it isn't really quite this dull, but it's not as bright as the piece in the first pic.

The following are all veneer from many different veneer lots and show a wide variety of color (from pale tan to honey-golden brown) and grain (from clear to grainy and some with knotholes and some with pippy areas). Some of these pics have 2 levels of enlargement; all have at least one.

veneer --- color is accurate

veneer --- there is just a little too much red tint in these pics.

"pippy" veneer sheet and closeup --- the amount of dotting needed to cause a vendor to designate this veneer as "pippy" clearly ranges down to just about none. As you'll see below, many veneer sheets shown on the web have more dotting than this but are not designated as "pippy"

both sides of a sample plank sold to me as Japanese yew / Podacarpus macrophyllus (the "Podacarpus" is a misspelling of the correct genus Podocarpus; this sloppiness about correct names was fairly common in the samples I got from the IWCS). This wood is also called "yew pine" and it DOES look more like pine than yew but in addition to not being a "normal" yew (genus Taxus) it is also not a pine. In other words, this piece is on this page only because it has the misleading common name yew and I have nowhere else to put it, but it is NOT what we in the USA (or Great Britain for that matter) think of as yew. See the sample below this one for an ACTUAL sample of Japanese yew.

end grain and end grain closeup of the sample plank directly above

both sides of a sample plank of Japanese yew listed botanically only as Taxus spp.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

The Wood Book pics

flat cut, quartersawn, end grain
California yew (Taxus brevifolia, also listed as Pacific yew and Oregon Yew) from The Wood Book --- both levels of enlargement are avaiable for all 3 views

web pics

English yew planks, moistened for the pics (except the first one)

English yew plank

English yew tree that has been sliced into sections

log sections

end grain shot of Taxus baccata

pacific yew planks

both sides of a set of Pacific yew planks ... pics provided by Daniel Dill, whom I thank for these excellent pics ... both levels of enlargement are available so you can really see the grain.

Pacific yew plank and closeup

yew planks, no indication of subspecies

turning stock

three pieces labled "American Pacific yew veneer". All three of these are of the same set of pieces and are presented just to show how differently the color can be presented for a given piece. I'm confident that the last one is the closest to the true color. These sheets are from the same vendor as the ones directly below

veneer sheets all from the same vendor --- some of my own samples are from this vendor so I can say with confidence that these pics are missing the salmon-red color of the wood

veneer --- I'm VERY dubious about the pale pink color of some of these.

veneer with a very unlikely yellow color

bookmatched veneer with unlikely color --- this is clearly pippy even though it wasn't listed as such. Interestingly enough, I found a second picture at a different vendor's site that is clearly the same picture rotated 90 degrees and with the color radically changed. This is the kind of Internet nonsense that got me started on this site in the first place.

"European" yew veneer

yew burl

Oregon yew burl

pacific yew burl plank, two views. Actually, this is not technically a burl but rather a plank with some burls on the edges, but that's the kind of honest distinction that is not made by the BogusColorVendor