Taxus

Taxus bent the longbows of Agincourt and now keeps a churchyard. The yew's heartwood — orange-brown, springy, nearly immortal — was the weapon-wood of England, and they remember every bow: the draw weight, the archer's name, the field. Then the wars ended, or moved on, and the yews were left in the churchyards where they had always stood, poisonous and patient, older than the churches themselves. "I was a weapon," they say, "and now I am a witness. It is the better post." Their needles and seeds are deadly; their shade is where the village buries its dead. The Deep Root trusts them with the Missing Ring's ledgers — who better than a tree that has kept ten centuries of secrets? Asked what the ledgers say, Taxus only tends the graves. Some records, they believe, are kept by not being read.