A slow-growing evergreen with tiny leathery oval leaves, best known wild on a Surrey hill that gave it a name
Box — Box Hill.
Nature · Trees
Box
Native · evergreen, to 12 m · chalk and limestone slopes, e.g. Box Hill
Buxus sempervirens — Buxaceae
Common box is a slow-growing native evergreen of chalk and limestone hillsides, best known wild at Box Hill in Surrey and on the Chilterns and Cotswolds. It is also the classic topiary and hedging plant of formal gardens. Its dense yellow wood is the heaviest of the native timbers and will not float. All parts are toxic.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Small oval leathery glossy dark green leaves, 10–25 mm, on short stalks
- ▸Evergreen with a sweet, sometimes unpleasant, smell when crushed
- ▸Green-yellow flower clusters in April–May, several male with one female
- ▸Woody brown seed capsule
- ▸Wild on chalk and limestone slopes; clipped in gardens
How to know it
The heaviest native timber, which will not float in water, used for engraving blocks and violin pegs
Box.
Sprigs of it were given to mourners at funerals to throw onto the coffin
Box.
A garden hedge and topiary plant devastated by a blight and, since 2011, by a moth caterpillar that can defoliate it in days
Box — box blight and box-tree caterpillar.
All parts of this shrub are toxic and can irritate skin or upset the stomach if ingested
Box.
Native from southern England to Morocco and Turkey, with wild colonies in the North Downs, Chilterns and Cotswolds
Box (Buxus sempervirens).
Quick-fire facts
- •Buxus sempervirens: sempervirens means always green
- •Woodland Trust: the heaviest of the native timbers and will not float
- •The best-known wild population is at Box Hill in Surrey; others are on the North Downs, Chilterns and Cotswolds
- •Box wood is yellow, hard and fine-textured, used for wood engraving and musical instruments
- •Box-tree caterpillars were detected in Britain in 2011 and can defoliate plants in days
- •Box blight is a fungal disease causing bare patches and dieback
- •All parts are toxic
- •Sprigs of box were thrown on coffins by mourners
- •Can live several hundred years and flowers in April and May
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Box (Buxus sempervirens)