seed within is not chewed or swallowed, with a cherry jello-like taste. Birds eat such cups and spread the seeds. Moose feed on the tree in winter in forests of the Rocky Mountains. The chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (taxol), used in breast, ovarian, and lung cancer treatment, can be derived from Taxus brevifolia and other species of yew. As it was already becoming scarce when its chemotherapeutic potential was realized around the 1990s, the Pacific yew was never commercially harvested from its habitat at a large scale; the widespread use of the paclitaxel was enabled circa 2003 when a semi-synthetic pathway was developed from extracts of cultivated yews of other species. Gallery References Further reading Heiken, D. (1992). The Pacific Yew and Taxol: Federal management of an emerging resource. Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 7: 175. External links US Forest Service: Taxus brevifolia (pdf file) UCLA text on "Economic Botany" brevifolia Trees of the Northwestern United States Trees of the Southwestern United States Trees of Western Canada Trees of Alberta Trees of Alaska Trees of British Columbia Trees of Subarctic America Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Medicinal plants of North America