The boxwoods (North America) or boxes (all other English-speaking countries) are a genus (Buxus) of about 70 species of evergreenshrubs and trees in the family Buxaceae.
The boxes are found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central America. They are quite commonly used for hedges and topiary, and the dense wood (called "boxwood" in all countries) is valued for wood carving. They have small leaves opposite each other, usually rounded and leathery. The flowers are small and yellow-green, with both sexes present on a plant, and thus boxwoods are usually grown for their foliage. They are particularly favoured for hedges and topiary in formal gardens. Given time, neat low hedging can grow to enormous size, as at Powis Castle in north Wales. Often, however, they are kept dwarfed, as in the famous gardens at Château Villandry in France.
The most familiar species is Buxus sempervirens, the English Box, Common Box, or Common Boxwood, which comes in both "American" and "European" types.
The American Boxwood Society specializes in the study of boxwoods, and has produced a number of publications.
The plant has lent its name to numerous places, for example Bexhill_on_Sea in Sussex and Box Hill in Surrey, and to other things, including the Boxwood Festival for flutists.
Some of the ways boxwoods can be used are as foundation plantings; to separate or screen areas; to provide background for other plantings; to provide a framework of a formal garden; to outline a terrace, walkway or parking area; for planter boxes; and as topiary pieces.
Boxwoods may be sheared to encourage additional branch development and to maintain a desired shape.
Boxwoods are susceptible to many insects and diseases including boxwood leaf miner, boxwood psyllid, boxwood mite, foliage and twig blights, and Phytophthora root rot.
BOXWOOD, the wood obtained from the genus Buxus, the principal species being the well-known tree or shrub, B.
The common box is grown throughout Great Britain (perhaps native in the chalk-hills of the south of England), in the southern part of the European continent generally, and extends through Persia into India, where it is found growing on the slopes of the western Himalayas.
The use of boxwood for turnery and musical instruments is mentioned by Pliny, Virgil and Ovid.
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