Buxus sempervirens | |
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Mature specimen | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Order: | Buxales |
Family: | Buxaceae |
Genus: | Buxus |
Species: | B. sempervirens |
Binomial name | |
Buxus sempervirens | |
Distribution range of Buxus sempervirens |
Buxus sempervirens, the common box, European box, or boxwood, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Buxus , native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, from southern England south to northern Morocco, and east through the northern Mediterranean region to Turkey. [1] [2] [3] Buxus colchica of western Caucasus and B. hyrcana of northern Iran and eastern Caucasus are commonly treated as synonyms of B. sempervirens. [4] [5]
Buxus sempervirens is an evergreen shrub or small tree growing 1 to 9 m (3 to 30 ft) tall, with a trunk up to 20 centimetres (8 in) in diameter (exceptionally to 10 m tall and 45 cm diameter [6] ). Arranged in opposite pairs along the stems, the leaves are green to yellow-green, oval, 1.5–3 cm long, and 0.5–1.3 cm broad. The monoecious flowers are inconspicuous but highly scented, greenish-yellow, with no petals, and are insect pollinated; the fruit is a three-lobed capsule containing 3-6 seeds. [1] [3]
The species typically grows on soils derived from chalk, limestone, usually as an understorey in forests of larger trees, most commonly associated with European beech ( Fagus sylvatica ) forests, but also sometimes in open dry montane scrub, particularly in the Mediterranean region. Box Hill, Surrey is named after its notable box population, which comprises the largest area of native box woodland in England. [7] [8]
The species is locally naturalised in parts of North America. [9]
In Britain, four Roman burials featured coffins containing sprays of the evergreen box, a practice unattested elsewhere in Europe. Box leaves have also been found from several towns, villas and farmsteads in Roman Britain, indicating ornamental planting. [10]
Box remains a very popular ornamental plant in gardens, being particularly valued for topiary and hedges because of its small leaves, evergreen nature, tolerance of close shearing, and scented foliage. The scent is not to everyone's liking: the herbalist John Gerard found it "evil and lothsome" and Daniel Defoe recounts that at Hampton Court Palace Queen Anne had the box hedging removed because she found its odour offensive. [11]
In the American South, it has sometimes been called "rich man's hedge," [12] and was often used to anchor the landscape plantings on either side of the front door of a house. The scent, most pungent on warm summer days, is not found disagreeable by all[ according to whom? ], despite its having been likened to cat urine.[ citation needed ]
Several cultivars have been selected, including 'Argenteo-variegata' and 'Marginata' with variegated foliage; such "gilded box" received a first notice in John Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629). [13] 'Vardar Valley', a slow-growing particularly hardy semi-dwarf cultivar, [14] [15] was selected in 1935 by the American botanist Edward Anderson in the upper Vardar valley and sent to the Arnold Arboretum for evaluation. [16]
The following varieties and cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:-
A pest which spreads through Buxus sempervirens is Cydalima perspectalis , the box tree moth. [19] A kind of box, B. microphylla is more injured by C. perspectalis than B. sempervirens. [19]
The boxwood is identified with the Hebrew word תְאַשּׁוּרtə’aššûr oft-mentioned in the Book of Isaiah. Catholic households in climates where palms are scarce or nonexistant often use boxwood twigs instead to adorn their crosses on Palm Sunday. [20]
Slow growth of box renders the wood ("boxwood") very hard (possibly the hardest in Europe along with Cornus mas) and heavy, and free of grain produced by growth rings, making it ideal for cabinet-making, the crafting of flutes and oboes, engraving, marquetry, woodturning, tool handles, mallet heads and as a substitute for ivory; the wood is yellow in color. "Digging sticks" fashioned by Neanderthals more than 170,000 years ago in Italy were made from boxwood. [21] The British wood-engraver Thomas Bewick pioneered the use of boxwood blocks for wood-engraving. [3] [15] [22]
In Old English, a box was originally a receptacle made of boxwood. [23]
This section needs more reliable medical references for verification or relies too heavily on primary sources .(May 2018) |
The leaves were formerly used in place of quinine, and as a fever reducer. [22]
Buxus sempervirens is a medicinal plant used to treat many diseases. It contains steroidal alkaloids such as cyclobuxine. [24] [25] It also contains flavonoids. [26]
B. sempervirens was not known for its medical use until the beginning of the 1600s. [27] After this it was found that the leaves (containing alkaloids, oils and tannin), the bark (containing chlorophyll, wax, resin, lignin and minerals) and the oil from the wood had a medical effect. [28] It then was used to treat gout, urinary tract infections, intestinal worms, chronic skin problems, syphilis, hemorrhoids, epilepsy, headache and piles, [29] but also had the reputation of curing leprosy, rheumatism, HIV, fever and malaria. [30] [31] For treating malaria it was used as a substitute for quinine, but because of the side effects and the fact that there are better medicinal alternatives than B. sempervirens it is normally not used any more to treat these diseases. [32]
Homeopaths still make use of the leaves against rheumatism. While herbalists have used box leaf tea to lower fevers, it is very rarely used today. [15] [33]
In Turkey, where the plant is called Adi şimşir, this tea (one glass a day) is still consumed for antihelminthic, diaphoretic, and cholagogue purposes. [34] Also, the leaves from B. sempervirens were used as an auburn hair dye. [35]
The plant Buxus sempervirens has been well investigated chemically. During late 1980s, Dildar Ahmed while working on his PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof Atta-ur-Rahman, isolated a number of steroidal alkaloids from the leaves of the plant. A new system of nomenclature for buxus alkaloids was also proposed based on buxane nucleus. He also isolated a flavonoid glycoside, and named it galactobuxin based on the fact that it contains a galactose ring.
Mānuka, also known as mānuka myrtle, New Zealand teatree, broom tea-tree, or just tea tree, is a species of flowering plant in the myrtle family Myrtaceae, native to New Zealand and south-east Australia. Bees produce mānuka honey from its nectar.
Carpenteria, the tree anemone or bush anemone, is a genus of flowering plants in the hydrangea family Hydrangeaceae. It is closely related to the similar genus Philadelphus and is monotypic, being represented by the single species Carpenteria californica which is a flowering evergreen shrub native to the Sierra Nevada foothills in California.
The Buxales are a small order of eudicot flowering plants, recognized by the APG IV system of 2016. The order includes the family Buxaceae; the families Didymelaceae and Haptanthaceae may also be recognized or may be included in the Buxaceae. Many members of the order are evergreen shrubs or trees, although some are herbaceous perennials. They have separate "male" (staminate) and "female" (carpellate) flowers, mostly on the same plant. Some species are of economic importance either for the wood they produce or as ornamental plants.
Buxus is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box and boxwood.
Prunus laurocerasus, also known as cherry laurel, common laurel and sometimes English laurel in North America, is an evergreen species of cherry (Prunus), native to regions bordering the Black Sea in southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe, from Albania and Bulgaria east through Turkey to the Caucasus Mountains and northern Iran.
Chamaecyparis pisifera is a species of false cypress, native to central and southern Japan, on the islands of Honshū and Kyūshū.
Ilex crenata, also known as Japanese holly or box-leaved holly, is a species of flowering plant in the family Aquifoliaceae, native to eastern China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin.
Ilex aquifolium, the holly, common holly, English holly, European holly, or occasionally Christmas holly, is a species of flowering plant in the family Aquifoliaceae, native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia. It is regarded as the type species of the genus Ilex, which by association is also called "holly". It is an evergreen tree or shrub found, for example, in shady areas of forests of oak and in beech hedges. In the British Isles it is one of very few native hardwood evergreen trees. It has a great capacity to adapt to different conditions and is a pioneer species that repopulates the margins of forests or clearcuts.
Vinca minor is a species of flowering plant in the dogbane family, native to central and southern Europe. Other vernacular names used in cultivation include small periwinkle, common periwinkle, and sometimes in the United States, myrtle or creeping myrtle.
Nandina domestica commonly known as nandina, heavenly bamboo or sacred bamboo, is a species of flowering plant in the family Berberidaceae, native to eastern Asia from the Himalayas to Japan. It is the only member of the monotypic genus Nandina. It is widely grown in gardens as an ornamental plant with a number of cultivars that display bright-red fall foliage in the cool months, and attractive new foliage growth in spring. Although a popular ornamental shrub, the berries are toxic to birds, especially towards the end of the winter when other food sources become scarce.
Iberis sempervirens, the evergreen candytuft or perennial candytuft, is a species of flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae, native to southern Europe. The species is often used as an ornamental garden shrub because of its decorative flowers. Iberis is so named because many members of the genus come from the Iberian Peninsula in south west Europe. Sempervirens means "always green", referring to the evergreen foliage.
Sambucus nigra is a species complex of flowering plants in the family Viburnaceae native to most of Europe. Common names include elder, elderberry, black elder, European elder, European elderberry, and European black elderberry. It grows in a variety of conditions including both wet and dry fertile soils, primarily in sunny locations. The plant is widely grown as an ornamental shrub or small tree.
Buxus colchica is a species of Buxus native to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and Turkey. It is threatened by habitat loss and defoliation by the caterpillars of an introduced moth species, Cydalima perspectalis.
Buxus microphylla, the Japanese box or littleleaf box, is a species of flowering plant in the box family found in Japan and Taiwan. It is a dwarf evergreen shrub or small tree growing to 1 m (3.3 ft) tall and wide.
Jasminum officinale, known as the common jasmine or simply jasmine, is a species of flowering plant in the olive family Oleaceae. It is native to the Caucasus and parts of Asia, also widely naturalized.
Cydalima perspectalis or the box tree moth is a species of moth of the family Crambidae, first described by Francis Walker, the English entomologist, in 1859. Native to Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, far-east Russia and India, it has invaded Europe; first recorded in Germany in 2006, then Switzerland and the Netherlands in 2007, Great Britain in 2008, France and Austria in 2009, Hungary in 2011, then Romania, and Spain. It has been seen in Slovakia, Belgium and Croatia.
Steroidal alkaloids have the basic steroidal skeleton with nitrogen-based functional groups attached to the skeleton. More specifically, they are distinguished by their tetracyclic cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene skeleton that marks their close relationship with sterols. They fall in two major categories: Solanum alkaloids and Veratrum alkaloids. A Steroidal alkaloid has also been found in Chonemorpha fragrans, 'chonemorphine' was used to treat intestinal infections in Wistar rats..
Cyclobuxine is an alkaloid, which can be found in Buxus sempervirens better known as common boxwood, and is derived from the cholesterol skeleton. Alkaloids can be found in the whole plant, but the largest amounts of alkaloids including cyclobuxine can be found in the leaves and bark.
Chonemorpha fragrans, the frangipani vine or climbing frangipani, is a plant species in the genus Chonemorpha. It is a vigorous, generally evergreen, climbing shrub producing stems 30 m (98 ft) or more long that can climb to the tops of the tallest trees in the forests of Southeast Asia. It has scented, white flowers and large shiny leaves. It is native to China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand. It is very commonly used in Ayurveda and it is also cultivated mostly worldwide in frost-free places.
Buxus 'Green Velvet' or Green Velvet Boxwood is a hybrid boxwood cultivar. Its parent species are B. sempervirens × B. microphylla var. koreana. It is a broad, compact shrub that grows to 3 to 4 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide. The leaves are evergreen, glossy and borne oppositely. It has small pale green flowers. If not pruned this shrub will develop a natural rounded shape. Buxus Green Velvet is a hybrid between Buxus sempervirens and buxus microphylla var. Koreana.