BOX

22nd March 2024

Photo Credits: Landscape (unkas_photo), Inset (Bethamber) - Getty Images, CANVA

QUOTATION

Get you all three into the boxtree.

Malvolio’s coming down this walk.

He has been yonder i’ the sun

practicing behaviour to his own shadow this half hour.

Observe him, for the love of mockery, for I know

this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him.

MARIA: Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5

BOX (Buxus sempervirens)

Malvolio’s tormentors hide in a box tree, a familiar part of formal gardens of the period. Box was often cut into hedges of various heights as a frame to the garden and other plants, as it copes well with close clippings and is evergreen. Box can grow to the height of up 9 or 10 m if left to grow unclipped.

John Gerard (1597) tells us that “the box tree groweth upon sundry waste and barren hills in England and in divers gardens….the leaves of the Box tree are hot, dry and astringent, of an evil and loathsome smell, not used in medicine”.

Box trees still grow wild in certain parts of Britain. Some of the more celebrated wild Box sites and woodland are Box Hill in Surrey, the North Downs, the Chilterns and the Cotswolds.

More Information

BSBI Plant Atlas: Buxus sempervirens

Folger Shakespeare Library: Search Shakespeare’s Works

Walks in the Chilterns Native Box Woodland: Map

Woodland Trust: Box