Unveiling the provenance of cultivated Taxus baccata L.(Taxaceae) on the island of Madeira

Abstract

Taxus baccata L. (yew) is native to the island of Madeira and wild plants have been shown to belong to a relict lineage, that only exists in Macaronesia. In Madeira, this species has been used as an ornamental plant since at least the 19th century. But, scarcity of native plants, mostly due to over exploitation since the 15th century, which pushed the species to the fringe of extinction, led to the introduction in Madeira of yew plants from Europe. Currently, there are several yew plants in gardens and parks in Madeira, but there are many doubts as to their origin and the possibility of their use in programs for the conservation of the Macaronesian lineage of T. baccata. This work aims to clarify the provenance of these yew specimens, through the sequence analysis of the chloroplast trnS-trnQ intergenic spacer. All the wild yew plants analysed belong to the Macaronesian haplotype group, whereas all cultivated yew plants in the dataset are consistent with the Euro-Mediterranean lineage and indicative that all these plants are from Continental provenance.