Canada Yew

Size, growth and what to expect

It grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. It makes a low, spreading shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet wide, and wild plants often stay 1 to 3 feet tall. Its branches root where they touch the soil, so a patch widens as its oldest parts die back.

Its tiny male and female cones open in April and May. Each female cone becomes a single seed held in a bright red, cup-shaped aril up to 3/8 inch long, ripe from July into September. Ruffed grouse, cedar waxwings, robins and other birds eat the arils and spread the seed. Moose and deer browse the foliage all year.

It grows wild from Newfoundland west to Manitoba and south to Iowa, Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia, and in the mountains of North Carolina. It lives in cool, damp woods, wooded swamps, ravines, stream banks and bog margins. It is a rich source of paclitaxel, a cancer drug, and a commercial harvest for it began in Ontario in 2003.

How to grow Canada Yew

Canada yew grows best in part shade and takes deep shade. Shelter it from winter sun and wind, heat and drought. It wants a cool, moist soil that drains well, rich in organic matter and acid to slightly alkaline. Plant it 4 feet from a wall, and set plants 4 feet apart for a ground cover. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant in early spring or early fall, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and mulch with leaves, clear of the stems. Seed has a double dormancy, so most of it waits until the second spring after a fall sowing outdoors. Indoors, keep cleaned seed damp at cool room temperature for five to seven months, then in the refrigerator for two to four more. Sow it half an inch deep and shade the seedlings through their first summer.

Water weekly through the first two summers, and keep a mulch of leaves over the roots. Deer browse it hard enough to kill it, so fence or cage young plants wherever deer are common. It needs little pruning and takes clipping well.

Canada yew usually carries male and female cones on the same plant and the wind pollinates it, so one plant can bear alone, though plants set more seed with neighbors close by. Small plants are often male only, and plants that stand far apart set fewer seeds. Plants bear some seed almost every year. Insects and spider mites sometimes damage it, and root weevils attack young plants.