Botanists argue about whether the perhaps-5,000-year-old Fortingall Yew, which stands in what is now a churchyard in highland Perthshire, is Europe’s oldest tree. But it is now certainly Europe’s oldest transsexual. Until recently the yew was male, its boughs holding little capsules of pollen. But on a recent visit Max Coleman of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh discovered bright red berries growing on a branch in the outer part of the tree’s crown. That branch “has switched and now behaves as female”, he reported. Some of those berries have since been harvested and will soon be planted. Not content with its sex change, at the age of five millennia the Fortingall Yew is to become a parent.