Abstract
Member of the genus Taxus have been valued for centuries for their wood, foliage, seed and even their role in religious rites. The root word for Taxus comes from the Greek, taxos,which is very similar to taxon, the word for bow. This may reflect the fact that yew wood was highly valued for making bows and other weaponry. Long bows made from yew wood used by English archers have been considered the “atom bomb” of their day and were responsible for English victories at the battle of Crecy (1346) and Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years War (Hartzell, 1991). Taxos is also the root of toxic, and primitive hunters were known to dip their arrow tips in poisonous extracts from yew to help bring down their quarry.
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Wann, S.R., Kaphammer, J., Veazey, R.L. (1999). Somatic Embryogenesis in Taxus . In: Jain, S.M., Gupta, P.K., Newton, R.J. (eds) Somatic Embryogenesis in Woody Plants. Forestry Sciences, vol 55. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3032-7_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3032-7_23
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