Anyone know if yew cuttings are especially hard to get to develop roots? I have some that are still green, but are beginning to die. Most died months ago. I’ve tried 2 different rooting hormones. No dice at all, after over 6 months... Online info has been no help. :-(
They might be just really hard to grow. I have several yew shrubs that are 26 years old. They have not grown two inches in height in all that time. In the exurbs near Baltimore. Might be my soil, might be the partial shade; but holey moley.
The largest yew I have encountered stateside was in a spot with lots of sun, in Virginia, and was around 6-1/2 ft tall. The largest yews I saw in Europe were on the Hill of Tara in Ireland, misted every morning, sun most daytimes in season. They were near the prison mound. (Yes, there was an ancient, earth-covered jail on the Hill of Tara.)
Even though that large group of yew bushes had been there for who knows how many decades or even centuries, they, too, were only about 6 feet tall at the tallest. And they had a tangled mass of sheep's wool snagged across them around 3 feet off the ground, from the wandering sheep scratching their backs! Wish I had gathered enough to knit a souvenir Irish sweater!
(The sheep are the stewards of "mowing" the grass on the sacred hill of Tara.)