A dark green tree stands on the north side of the medieval stone church in Defynnog. The tree is broader than it is tall and has divided into two quite separate trees over the centuries. Beneath its low boughs, multiple trunks resemble molten lava. Some limbs twist like sinews; others are ramrod straight. Some patches of wood are as smooth as liquid; other parts are as spiny as a sea urchin. There are stag’s antlers of dead branches but also spiky fresh foliage that turns ancient stumps into enormous shaving brushes.

All forms of tree seem to be present in this fantastical, sculptural yew in a small Welsh village in the Brecon Beacons. But the most extraordinary feature of this ancient tree is that it is less protected than the much younger church beside it. Now a petition calling for legal protection for ancient yews has gained 230,000 signatories. The trees’ fate has been discussed by the ancients of the House of Lords and barristers are drawing up plans for new legislation.

Britain is home to far more ancient yews than any other country in Europe. The Ancient Yew Group has identified 978 ancient or veteran yews (more than 500 years old) in England and 407 in Wales; France has 77; Germany and Spain just four each. But some tree champions claim that proposals to protect them will never become law because powerful landowners – and one landowner in particular – are opposed to extra protections.

For Janis Fry, an artist and yew expert who started the petition, the yew at Defynnog possesses “every possibility of creation”. Its red berries (the flesh – but not the poisonous seeds inside – is the only edible part of a notoriously toxic tree) show it is female but, unusually, this tree also has one male branch.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The yew tree in Fortingall, Scotland.

Photograph: Jim Richardson/NGC/Alamy

It is notoriously difficult to determine the age of an old yew, and extravagant claims about such trees abound, but several experts have put the Defynnog yew at more than 5,000 years old – as ancient, if not more so, as another churchyard yew at Fortingall, Scotland. Other authorities suggest it is a mere 1,500 years old but even if it isn’t the oldest living thing in Europe, this unique tree currently has less legal protection than any of the estimated 530,000 listed buildings, including bus stops and skate parks, in England and Wales. If anyone damaged or destroyed the Defynnog yew, they could escape any legal punishment. Damage to the church at Defynnog, a Grade I-listed building of “exceptional interest”, could be punished with two years in prison or an unlimited fine.

The yew is cherished by its local vicar and parish but some visitors who come to worship it have stripped yellow-coloured needles from its unusual, small “golden boughs”. Fry tuts as she points to them. “The pagans have been taking needles off it,” she says – they believe these strangely-coloured needles possess healing powers.

This is one small sign of the yew’s cultural and religious heft. Many are found in churchyards, where their sacred status has protected them well for centuries. Many old yews were planted by Norman church-builders; others by Celtic Christians; and some predate Christianity, showing how the new religion supplanted older sacred sites.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yew trees and door of St Edward’s church, Stow-on the-Wold, Gloucestershire. Photograph: Stuart Black/Alamy

“It’s the tree of life, death and resurrection and it’s known as the tree of life in all cultures across the northern hemisphere,” says Fry. The chevron pattern of its needles is a motif in religions both ancient and modern; Fry is alive to the yew’s spiritual symbolism but it took a friend of hers to point out that the badge of her car, a Citroën, shares the yew’s chevron symbol.

The tree’s mystical qualities are derived from its ability to regenerate, producing fresh shoots from apparently “dead” wood – such as the staffs of holy men or beams within buildings. Today, the species triggers fierce debate among ancient tree experts. Rings cannot be counted and carbon dating cannot be undertaken on most yews because their ancient hearts rot and disappear. Some dismiss estimates of 5,000 year-old trees as “romantic”, although most accept the verdict of international dendrologists who have dated certain British yews at 2,000 years old.

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But even if the Defynnog tree has only witnessed two millennia, there is something slightly eerie about its enduring virility, with fecund fresh growth sprouting from what resembles dead wood at its heart.

The yew can regenerate us too – the anti-cancer drug Taxol is derived from the bark of the Pacific yew – while the ancient trees are home to an as-yet unknown wealth of other life. According to entomologist Keith Alexander, yews are not thought to support many of the beetles and invertebrates that live on decaying wood (ancient oaks are ecosystems for a myriad of such species) but ancient yews have not yet been subject to much targeted entomological study. The trees’ evergreen foliage provides abundant cover for birds and winter shelter for moths, barkflies and spiders. One spider associated with the yew is the nationally scarce Hyptiotes paradoxus, “an odd-looking thing with wonky eyes”, says Alexander.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A song thrush in a yew tree. Photograph: David Chapman/Alamy

Fry fell under the yew’s spell when she moved to Wales in the early 1970s and began exploring her local area. Returning home at dusk one day, she passed a magical-looking pair of wrought iron gates, slightly ajar. She crept up a bramble-covered drive, poked her head through a hole in the hedge and, like Alice in Wonderland, “fell in to this most amazing ancient tunnel of yews. It was like a great gothic cathedral. I just thought, ‘This is the eighth wonder of the world.’”

Fry had stumbled upon the then-derelict gardens at Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire, which have since been restored. As she learned more about ancient yews, she became more amazed at their failure to be protected in law. According to Fry, documentary evidence suggests about 500 ancient yews have been destroyed in the last century. Most were destroyed before the 1980s but there are more recent losses. Fry cites the chopping down of an ancient yew in Penegoes, Wales.

An ancient yew was also cut down on the boundary of Ashford Carbonell churchyard in Shropshire in 2011. And Fry says churchyard trees are often neglected. “At one time these trees were considered to be sacred. They were revered. What happens now is that they are used as repositories for rubbish. Ivy grows all over them and acts as a sail in the wind and breaks their branches,” she says. Fry has found stowed in ancient yews the remains of an old oil tank, lawn mowers, bags of cement, breeze blocks and piles of grass cuttings.

These smaller slights against ancient yews are revealed on a tour of the ancient yews of Shropshire with Rob McBride, a campaigner who scours the country identifying ancient trees. (The boot of his old Audi contains an axe, a tape measure for recording tree girths and numerous maps.) A magnificent yew in the churchyard at Uppington has a hollow inside containing a garden rake and lawnmower grass box. It has ivy growing up it, as do the ancient yews in Kenley churchyard.

“I love ivy but you’ve got to value it against what it’s growing on,” says McBride, tearing the ivy off. At both locations, he points to stumps where branches have been cut. “I wish they hadn’t cut them. There is this mentality of tidiness and keeping nature in check.” Cutting branches may prevent an old tree from stabilising itself and stop a yew from regenerating.

Left alone, a yew’s branches will touch the ground and take root, allowing the tree to very slowly stroll through the landscape. Although most church wardens are well-meaning, says McBride, there is no legal requirement for churches to call upon specialist ancient tree surgeons when trimming an old yew “instead of Fred down the road who has got a saw”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ancient yew tree in the churchyard at Hope Bagot in Shropshire. Photograph: MH Country/Alamy

McBride is astonished that there is no legal protection for ancient yews. “If I take a chisel to the church at Uppington, it would be a criminal offence. So how can people just cut bits off ancient yews?” he says. “Someone was saying on social media, it’s only three prime ministers until Christmas. That’s part of the reason these trees haven’t got protection – this country is very short-termist.”

He believes that moves to protect ancient trees have been quietly kiboshed by landowners who resist “interference” with their land. “Interference is what they hate, unless you’re giving them money. They don’t mind filling forms out for subsidies. I’m convinced that’s the reason why we’re not getting proper protection.”

Fry is heartened by the success of her petition but believes any moves to translate it into government legislation are being scuppered by lobbying from the church. “If we’ve got the largest collection of ancient yews in the world, why aren’t they protected? It’s because the church won’t have it. The church has always considered such moves an unnecessary challenge to its authority and jurisdiction over its own property.”

The Church of England says it won’t support a campaign for extra protection for yews because there is already adequate protection for ancient yew trees, which can be given “tree protection orders”, or TPOs, by the local authority. Yews are also protected if they are in a conservation area and the C of E’s own law requires churches to seek permission to remove any churchyard trees. The C of E is wary of adding to the legislative burden its church managers already face. And it points to the vast majority of ancient yews being found in churchyards as proof that church folk have been excellent tree guardians over the ages.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ancient yew in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Shropshire. Photograph: MH Country/Alamy

Its senior figures won’t go on record for this story but David Shreeve, an environmental adviser to the Church of England, says the church’s environment working group makes “every effort to protect the ancient trees in our churchyards. Many yew trees were in place before churches were even built – they are an important part of our national heritage.”

Alex Glanville of the Church in Wales strikes a more emollient note. “Clearly we want them celebrated and it’s a really important thing that we happen to own. I’d love them to have special acknowledgment and maybe special [legal] protection is a way of doing that,” he says. “But if things get designated something, is that actually going to improve things?”

Glanville admits that some churches have made “ill-informed” decisions about cutting or trimming of churchyard yews in the past. The Church in Wales has introduced a new requirement for churches with ancient yews to seek advice from ancient tree specialists before undertaking any tree surgery; the church provides funding for that specialist advice. “We’re not sure ancient yews are desperately under threat,” says Glanville, “because what’s going to threaten them? It’s going to be ill-informed work.”

Paul Powlesland, a barrister who founded Lawyers for Nature, believes “the church’s heart is in the right place”, but says the TPO system is “not brilliant protection” for ancient trees. TPOs only tend to be granted by a local authority if a tree is threatened. A TPO is often too late, and too little.

“The punishments [fines] for breaching a TPO are quite simply not reflective of the importance of these trees,” argues Powlesland. “It’s an anomaly in our law that we haven’t grappled properly with the idea of protecting living things. If an ancient oak was chopped down in 1700 and turned into a building, that oak in the building would now be protected. If it carried on growing, it wouldn’t be protected.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ankerwycke or Magna Carta yew ( Taxus baccata) near Runnymede, Windsor, a 2,000-year-old tree. Photograph: Oxford Scientific/Getty Images

Not every ancient tree expert is calling for legislative protection. Through her work with the Woodland Trust and the Ancient Tree Forum, Jill Butler says there could be a “trees of national interest” register with landowners informed of their importance. “We need something that is the lightest possible touch,” she says. There needs to be “funding support” for ancient tree owners, just as owners of precious wildflower meadows can obtain money for their management via agri-environment schemes.

“The church has come a long way in the last 10 years or so,” says Butler. “But the poor old church ought to be eligible for funding to help these trees as well. It’s not just about control, it’s about getting the right advice in how to look after them.”

Fry fears that many ancient yews will outlive the church. Churches are being closed. Although the consecrated ground of churchyards mean they are very rarely built on, Fry says new private owners of church buildings may quietly sabotage a yew for taking “their” light. Responsibility for the maintenance of old churchyards in England also sometimes passes to poorly resourced local councils.

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She hopes new legal protection for Britain’s ancient trees, and especially its yews, could be a kind of positive nationalism for a country mired in Brexit. “The UK could make something of that – we are independent and we’ve got the largest collection of ancient yews on earth,” she says.

Powlesland agrees. Protecting ancient trees “crosses political divides – it can unite environmental lefties and political conservatives”, he says. “It speaks to who we are as a country. What is this land? What does it mean to be British? It’s a chance for politicians to make themselves part of history. These yews have existed for thousands of years. Hopefully, if we protect them they will still exist when this entire civilisation is consigned to the history books. That’s a magical thing.”

• This article was amended on 30 September 2019 to clarify that while the flesh of yew berries is edible, the seeds inside are poisonous.