| Pat Kenny: Who do you aim your book at? I mean, clearly a botanist might find it a diverting tale… certainly I found it fascinating, children will find it interesting. Guido Mina di Sospiro: I hope so. I would think so, because it’s written for them. Well, for example, when the publisher wanted to put something at the back as a category he didn’t really know what to do, and so we wound up with: Literature, Fiction, Natural History, Ecology, Fantasy, Biography/Memoirs… we could have gone on with Irish interest, etc., etc., so in theory this should appeal essentially to everyone from twelve years old onwards, you know? It’s very unusual. I don’t know that anything like this exists. Pat Kenny: The whole idea is that the story of the Yew mirrors the passage of human history. Guido Mina di Sospiro: Indeed, yes. From a completely different perspective. In other words, it’s not man speaking about trees but rather the opposite. Pat Kenny: Now, it’s an anthropomorphic approach to things. The tree has a voice and creatures have voices… Guido Mina di Sospiro: Yes. |
| Pat Kenny: So what sort of character is the Yew tree? Now, it’s a female… Guido Mina di Sospiro: She’s a female, yes. Pat Kenny: … therefore she would be different. Guido Mina di Sospiro: Although the actual Yew tree at Muckross is a male… Pat Kenny: But she would have a different character if you had decided to do the life story of a male Yew tree. It might be different. |
| Guido Mina di Sospiro: Yes indeed, by all means. Yes, I think so. That’s why I switched gender, I’m afraid, and I apologise to the Yew tree, but I just needed a matriarch. I didn’t want to have a patriarch, I wanted a matriarch in it because of the offspring and all of that she does and how she takes care of her woods, because she’s the princess at first and then she’s the queen of the woods and various things happen. It’s also a book about the loss of tradition. I mean, this tree used to be venerated by the druids and then it was held in great importance also by the Christians. I mean, St. Patrick was wise and decided to turn it into the symbol of immortality – the church Yew… you know, every churchyard, graveyard, has a Yew tree in Ireland. Unfortunately we’ve lost this sort of sacred approach to nature and now all over the world trees are suffering. Now, the Yew is a link with the past, with a very deep geological past. It’s 250 million years old. The fossils that have been unearthed, dating before the dinosaurs, are identical to the Yew tree now, so this tree has not evolved. This is a living fossil. It’s a remarkable tree, and also living monument, in a sense. |
| Pat Kenny: The Yew tree would have its enemies, though. I mean, man is the enemy of all trees at the moment. Guido Mina di Sospiro: The great pathogen, yes, the great pathogen. Pat Kenny: But I mean, there’s the battle of the Yew and the oak, for instance. |
| Guido Mina di Sospiro: Yes, exactly. Well, that happens because the Yew tree… the Yew tree’s mother dies and the Yew tree didn’t realise that that was happening, so she feels terrible about this, that she was so vain and immersed into other things. Then she decides to go into a sort of coma for 30 years. But this is such a resilient tree that despite that she just won’t die. In the meantime, the oaks take advantage and try to usurp her reign and infiltrate and kill other trees. Now, all of this actually happens – this is no fantasy. It’s called “allelopathy”, in botanical terms, and it means the chemical war that occurs among trees. They release substances, chemical substances… hormones that can retard growth or actually kill growth; they can choke roots by sending out roots that girdle the other tree’s roots, they can shade out trees – they do all of this. And yes, the oaks were doing it. |
| So the Yew tree decides to form a council of war which she calls the Evergreen Club and in the Evergreen Clubs are the hollies, the strawberry trees, the pines, the ivy, the junipers and herself – and the Yew – so that’s a lot of evergreen people. They have the advantage… they sort of… they are more awake, you know? |