WOW

the real question that comes to mind ... mine anyway .. lol ..

do you not plant them around the house with kids because they are poisonous....

or... or... wait for it ...

because they attract stupid bears ...

i am thinking i might not appreciate bears ...

ken

Our bears go for the corn (upper left of the photo). The yews are the exclusive diet of the deer - yews never get as far as creating berries here since they don't have enough leaves.

I'm a little doubtful..I don't have yew but neighbors do..I've seen deer eating their yew..we haven't had dead deer..toxic to bears but not deer?

saw story in news,,,,,kinda don't believe,,,did they prove bears ate ?

ron

Al sorts of plats are deadly to one species and harmless to another. Chocolate is the obvious answer (harmless and delicious to humans, poisonous to dogs) but grapes are also poisonous to dogs, and deer can eat all sorts of things that can kill us. As specialized plant browsers, deer probably have all sorts of defenses to plant-based poisons that most generalists (omnivores) don't. I know the food deer are ruminants...ruminants let symbiotic bacteria process food before they digest it. The bacteria of many ruminants break down many toxins before they enter the animal's system.

Taxus canadensis-Canada yew-is all but extirpated in the wild. Deer-now at unnaturally high numbers due to human activities-relish this plant. It is now absent from all but those rare places where heavy winter snows or some other factor keep deer down in little areas, like certain sections of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I lived and worked up there for a couple years back when and did come across the plant on occasion. But not much.

Yes, deer are not affected by the toxin in Taxus species. Other ruminants are however, as I know of cases of goats and cows dying from yew ingestion.

Deer eat death-angel mushrooms w/o effect, so they're immune to most any poison.

Big spreading English yew in an abandoned west MD nursery. Notice the foliage is absent below a certain height -- deer chewing:

I removed all my true Yews (deer friendly food) and replaced them with Cephalotaxus (False/Japanese Plum Yew). (There are horizontal and vertical cultivars of the species where hardy.) These are on lots of deer proof lists, and mostly they are ignored but were munched on in those awful winters of multiple polar vortices. This winter, no snow, and very mild so no deer issues at all.

Beng, that yew is beautiful. I love "open grown" unshorn yews!

Thanks, treeguy -- get down close & it is bigger than it looks.

One thing of interest is that the old, abandoned nursery is choke full of deer, but the hollies there have little to no damage! They leave hollies mostly alone while yews, rhododendrons & anything else green is candy.

Sometimes, it really is surprising what they will eat and not eat and I wonder if there are strong regional differences (perhaps based on snow cover or lack there of). I have not had deer eat my holly either; but neither to they ever eat my rhododendrons. English Laurel, Camellias, and Southern Magnolias are largely ignored too. For years, I protected the Camellias by planting them in the most unfriendly of deer sites based on location, I was amazed that they were ignored when planted out in the open and within easy reach. On the other hand, when there was deep snow cover a few years ago, I saw them resort to eating Magnolia, Japanese Holly, and Yucca leaves.

A friend that wandered into a thickly holly infested wood in Ireland said the only reason he was able to get around at all is because the deer had eaten away the bottom branches.

Rhododendrons are prevalent on New Zealand country places because the ubiquitous sheep won't touch them.

My experience with camellias in my region is that deer may zero in on them.

Oddly, winter starvation is routine for these animals widely distributed in cold climates. They browse plants ignored the rest of the time in winter out of desperation. Otherwise they appear to react to novelty, so that plants new to particular deer may be nibbled by them repeatedly. Whereas other deer elsewhere may show little interest in the same, already familiar kinds.

Specific location within a range, or some other factor such as chemical condition also seems to affect whether or not individual specimens become subject to repeated cropping. For instance on my girlfriend's large, mostly wooded property there is one spot where the bottom of a single Thuja plicata is kept at. And another one location (as far as I have seen) where a section of Rubus spectabilis are kept down to nubs. Multiple other cedars are in the vicinity of the one tree, and the salmon-berry forms large thickets over much of the property.

Such variables underscore the need for effective fencing, if one's efforts and investment are not to be continuously subject to the unpredictable inclinations of wild animals.