According to the Metro of 29 May, the Fortingall (Perthshire) Yew (Taxus baccata] ‘could be dead within 50 years because tourists … rip off parts of branches as souvenirs’.  The tree ‘under which Pontius Pilate is rumoured to have been born, is thought to be between 3,000 and 5,000 years old’.

(The suggestion that Pontius Pilate was born, or suckled, under the Yew, while his father was a legionary on an early Roman expedition, is, to say the least, improbable.  Pilate served as Roman governor of Judaea from AD 26 to 36, approximately 35 years before the Roman army ventured into Scotland).