Prestigious Plants - Basal Eudicots - Box Tree

Plant Indices

• Alphabetical Index (Genera)
• Alphabetical Index (Vernacular)
• Cladistic Index

BOX TREE (Buxus)
Order: Buxales
Family: Buxaceae
Species: Buxus sempervirens

Buxus sempervirens, Allenbanks, Northumberland, UK.
Own work (presumed)--MPF.

Names: 

• Box Tree
• Aanaar [Inari Sami]
• Aavash [Nepali]
• Almez [Spanish]
• Anchor Plant
• Äännjaarâš [Skolt Sami]
• Bøg [Danish]
• Boj [Croatian/Serbian/Slovenian/Spanish]
• Bòj [Occitan]
• Boje [Norwegian]
• Bojs [Latvian]
• Boks [Danish/Norwegian]
• Boksträd [Swedish]
• Bosso [Italian]
• Box
• Boxwood
• Buchsbaum [German]
• Buis [Dutch/French]
• Buksbom [Danish/Norwegian]
• Buksmedis [Lithuanian]
• Buksmedveđa [Croatian]
• Bukso [Esperanto]
• Buksus [Lithuanian]
• Buxo [Galician/Portuguese]
• Buxus [Dutch/Estonian/Finnish]
• Byuksos [Armenian]
• Cây Hoàng Dương [Vietnamese]
• Common Box
• Common Boxwood
• Común Buxo [Asturian]
• Edging Box
• Európai Puszpáng [Hungarian]
• European Box
• European Boxwood
• Ezpel [Basque]
• Ezpela [Basque]
• Ezust [Hungarian]
• Hare-No-Ki [Japanese]
• Huang Yang [Chinese]
• Krenari [Albanian]
• Ksus [Breton]
• Man Nam [Vietnamese]
• Myrtle
• Pachon [Filipino]
• Puksipuu [Finnish]
• Pušpan [Czech/Slovak]
• Puszpáng [Hungarian]
• Samshu [Korean]
• Scoibuz [Lingua Ignota]
• Sempervirens
• Shamshad [Persian]
• Shimshad [Arabic/Persian]
• Shumshad [Azerbaijani]
• Šimšir [Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Turkish]
• Tisă [Romanian]
• True Box
• Ţujo [Maltese]
• Tzimbriško [Bulgarian]
• Zimostráz [Slovak]
• Zimušķa [Latvian]
• Zimzeleni Šimšir [Serbian]

Distribution (Genus): Western and Southern Europe; Southwest, Southern and Eastern Asia; Africa; Madagascar; Northern South America; Central America; Mexico; the Caribbean. 

Distribution (Species): 

• Africa, Northern: Algeria, Libya, Morocco
• Asia, Northern: Russia (North Caucasus)
• Asia, West: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Turkey
• Europe, Central: Austria, Germany, Switzerland
• Europe, Southern: Albania, Greece, Italy (including Sardinia), North Macedonia, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain
• Europe, Western: Belgium, England, France (including Corsica), Scotland

Physical Description
This is a small order of evergreen shrubs and trees, with a few herbaceous perennials. They possess separate male and female flowers, typically together on the same plant.

Buxus are slow-growing evergreen shrubs and trees growing between 2-12m (sometimes up to 15m) tall. Its wood is fine-grained, making it hard, tough, and good for carving, but is limited by the small sizes available. The wood resists splitting and chipping.

Leaf Properties: Alkaloids, oils, tannins; fever-reducer;
Bark Properties: Wax, resin, lignin, minerals; 
Wood Properties: Hard, fine-grained, tough; oil; 

Symbolism

Victorian Flower Language
In both modern and Victorian flower language (per Greenaway), boxwood is a symbol of stoicism and constancy.

Secrecy/Mystery
Boxwood, being so named because it was useful in the making of boxes, casks, and caskets, takes on the symbolic significance of those receptacles. This makes boxwood associated with the mystery and surprise of hidden contents, especially the hazardous, unpleasant kind. This ties the wood in with the story of Pandora’s Box/Jar, and in psychoanalytic circles, an emblem of the dangers of the unconscious. This receptacle association also makes this wood distinctly feminine in character.

Funerary/Immortality
Like many trees, the box tree is a funerary emblem of immortality. Presently, boxwood is planted in Turkey as a cemetery tree. At least in Skinner's time, it was customary in England that sprigs of box wood were cast into the grave of the deceased during burial.

Culture
The qualities of this wood make it good for box-making, especially of decorative storage boxes, and for carving more generally. In addition to boxes, it was used to make combs, spoons, chess pieces, rosary prayer beads, weave-shuttles, tools, components for stringed instruments, woodwind instruments (especially flutes and oboes), woodcut blocks and printing blocks, etc. It is also used in the making of cabinetry. It was so suitable for carving that it was an effective substitute for [ivory].

Boxwood flute by Goulding & D'Almaine, London, England, 1834-1858.
From the Auckland Museum.

Precision Instruments
Due to its density and chemical stability, it was also favored for use in the creation of measuring instruments prior to the development of plastics. This included rulers, slide rules, scales, set squares, scale rulers, yardsticks, folding rulers, Marquois scales, T-squares, protractors, etc. “Boxwood rules” generally refer to a folding ruler with a brass hinge or hinges.

Landscaping
Buxus is a common plant in hedges and the topiary arts.

Sukkot
Boxwood branches were useful to the Jews when celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles.

Hair Dye
Dye from the leaves was used as an auburn hair dye.

Magic

Fertility Rites
Ancients were apparently careful in the identification of boxwood because of its resemblance to [myrtle] and [laurel], for fear of using it by mistake in the rites of Venus. It was believed that such a mistake would incur the wrath of Venus, and she would smite the offenders with sterility.

Medical
We are not a medical website, do not take health advice from us.

Common boxwood contains steroidal alkaloids, including cyclobuxine, as well as flavanoids.

Leaves
The leaves were used to treat a number of ailments, notedly in tea and presumably in poultice. Boxwood tea is rare today, save in Turkey, where it is called adi şimşir. It has been used for the following:

• Fever reduction
• UTIs
• Gout
• Skin issues
• Piles (hemorrhoids)
• Headaches
• Epilepsy

Considerably less certainly, it has been attributed the ability to cure:

• Leprosy
• Rheumatism
• HIV

(Obviously, do not employ this tea as a substitute for modern HIV treatment. That shouldn't have to be said.)

Antiparasitic
Boxwood leaf tea has been used as a substitute for quinine in malaria treatment and has a history of use against intestinal worms.

Malaria parasite attacking a human blood cell (colorized).
From NIAID on Flickr.

Compiler Notes

• Boxwood is a good material for keeping information secret. Alternately, the breaking of boxwood is good for forcibly revealing information. Exploit.
• Feminine quality and keeping of secrets could be incorporated into the use of hair dye as a magical cosmetic.
• Boxwood topiary could be used to mark geometric formulations on a large property intended to disrupt intrusive divination and ward away those who might reveal the property owner’s secrets.
• Boxwood is dimensionally stable, meaning it doesn't warp or change shape over time as dramatically as other woods. This might make boxwood poor for wood-shaping magic, or an effective ward against spells like woodshape in Dungeons & Dragons (consider adding +2 to resistance against such spells?). One might expand this to boxwood charms or boxwood leaf tea being employed as a potion against any spells that might change the shape of the wearer/consumer.
• Highly receptive to stabilizing and obscuring magic, making it good for healing instruments and certain forms of illusion magic.
• As "worm" is synonymous with a "spirit of disease," boxwood instruments and consumables would be effective in treatment against both parasites and supernatural diseases, possibly even being employed in exorcism against dybbuks and other parasitic intelligences.
• The misuse of boxwood through conflation with myrtle and laurel provides a mechanism for magical backfire. Reagents used improperly could cause devastating side effects, as in the case of sterility in the rites of Venus. This could be a natural consequence of the magical/spiritual properties of the reagents themselves or genuine offense and retaliation by supernatural intelligences. Other mechanisms of action may present themselves contextually in your story.

Image Refs

[Img 01 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buxus_sempervirens.jpg ]

[Img 02 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flute_(AM_1998.60.183-3).jpg ]

[Img 03 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malaria_Parasite_Connecting_to_Human_Red_Blood_Cell_(34034143483).jpg ]

* * * * * * *

See Also:

• Plants
• Flowers
• Trees
• Ferns
• Moss and Lichen [Pending]
• Fungi [Pending]
• Cladistic Index
• Herbal Medicine [Pending]
• Resin, Incense, Balsam, and Lacquer [Pending]

* * * * * * *

-Drury, N. (2004). The dictionary of the esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Greenaway, Kate. Language of Flowers. George Routleage and Sons. 

-Higley, Sarah L. (2007). Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion. Palgrave Macmillan. 

-Skinner, Charles M. “Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants : In All Ages and in All Climes : Skinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery), 1852-1907 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott Co., 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/mythslegendsoffl00skin. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

( https://www.secretflowerlanguage.com/ ) (Defunct)
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buxaceae )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buxales )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buxus )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buxus_sempervirens )

Name assistance provided by Claude 3.5 Sonnet.