Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Buxales > Buxaceae > Buxus > Buxus sempervirens

Buxus sempervirens (common box)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Buxus sempervirens (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. Buxus colchica of western Caucasus and B. hyrcana of northern Iran and eastern Caucasus are commonly treated as synonyms of B. sempervirens.
View Wikipedia Record: Buxus sempervirens

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-High
Dispersal Mode [6]  Ballistichory, Myrmecochory
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Monoecious
Hazards [2]  All parts of the plant are poisonous, especially the leaves and bark;
Janka Hardness [3]  2940 lbf (1334 kgf) Very Hard
Leaf Type [2]  Evergreen
Lifespan [4]  Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Bees, Flies
Scent [2]  The foliage is pungently scented, especially when wet.
Specific Gravity [7]  0.78
Structure [2]  Shrub
Usage [2]  Box makes an excellent hedge from 45cm to 4.5 metres tall according to the variety grown; It is quite slow growing but very tolerant of cutting and is often used in topiary, where the hedge is trimmed into different forms for ornamental effect; The leaves and sawdust, boiled in lye, have been used to dye hair an auburn colour; Wood - hard, close grained, heavy. Although the wood is rather small, it is highly valued on account of its hardness - it is twice as hard as oak (Quercus species); It is used for engraving, printing blocks, bowls, combs etc; The root especially is much liked by turners and cabinet makers;
Height [2]  16.4 feet (5 m)
Width [2]  16.4 feet (5 m)
Light Preference [5]  Mostly Shady
Soil Acidity [5]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [5]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [5]  Mostly Dry
View Plants For A Future Record : Buxus sempervirens

Protected Areas

Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Hymenochaetopsis corrugata (Glue Crust)[8]
Phyllactinia guttata[8]
Puccinia buxi[8]
Suttoniella arnaudii[8]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3Wood Janka Hardness Scale/Chart J W Morlan's Unique Wood Gifts
♦ 4PLANTATT - Attributes of British and Irish Plants: Status, Size, Life History, Geography and Habitats, M. O. Hill, C. D. Preston & D. B. Roy, Biological Records Centre, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (2004)
♦ 5ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 6Paula S, Arianoutsou M, Kazanis D, Tavsanoglu Ç, Lloret F, Buhk C, Ojeda F, Luna B, Moreno JM, Rodrigo A, Espelta JM, Palacio S, Fernández-Santos B, Fernandes PM, and Pausas JG. 2009. Fire-related traits for plant species of the Mediterranean Basin. Ecology 90: 1420.
Paula S. & Pausas J.G. 2013. BROT: a plant trait database for Mediterranean Basin species. Version 2013.06.
♦ 7Chave J, Coomes D, Jansen S, Lewis SL, Swenson NG, Zanne AE (2009) Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Ecology Letters 12: 351-366. Zanne AE, Lopez-Gonzalez G, Coomes DA, Ilic J, Jansen S, Lewis SL, Miller RB, Swenson NG, Wiemann MC, Chave J (2009) Data from: Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Dryad Digital Repository.
♦ 8Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 9Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 10Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 11New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 12HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0