Box Tree -شمشاد:

 

RECKLESS destruction of both the commoner and the more valuable kinds of timber trees has been, and is, only too frequent in all parts of the world. In not a few cases its effects are already being experienced in an insufficient supply of wood either for general use or for some special purposes. The rapidly increasing demand for the wood of the Box, especially for engraving, and the carelessness in the past as to the Caucasian forests of this timber, have now for some years excited apprehensions among the consumers, and stimulated inquiry as to suitable substitutes for this material.

 

 

The Box (Buxus sempervirens) is a member of the large and mostly acridly poisonous Order Euphorbiaceae, an order in which the flowers are usually small and inconspicuous, destitute of a corolla, and sometimes of a calyx also, and having the sexes divided. The genus Buxus, is the best known representative, includes less than twenty species of evergreen shrubs, or small trees. Their juice is not milky like that of the allied Spurges (Euphorbia); their leaves are either opposite or alternate, leathery and glossy; and the two sexes are borne on the same plant in greenish-yellow flowers. They have a wide distribution through the warmer temperate zones.

The species (Buxus sempervirens) occurs in Japan, in the Western Himalayas, in Northern and Western Asia, in North Africa, and as far north as Belgium and this country, where, as we shall see presently, there is considerable reason to believe it to be either indigenous, or a denizen the introduction of which dates from a very early period. In a wild state in this country it is seldom more than twelve or fifteen feet high, or, when fully grown, more than six or eight inches in diameter; but in Turkey and Asia Minor, and even in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, trees thirty feet high and ten inches in diameter are recorded. Such specimens must, however, be at least a hundred years old, as the Box is a very slow-growing plant, rarely making shoots of more than six or eight inches high within the year, and not increasing in diameter more than an inch in ten years. The tree is not only apparently of great longevity, but is so hardy as to be the only evergreen that can withstand the continental cold of the open air of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna without protection.

The young branches, which have generally an upward direction, are downy and have a smooth, yellowish bark; but the older trunks are rough and gray. The leaves vary from "ovate" to "oblong," i.e., they may be wider across the lower third of their length, or may have parallel sides; they have very short stalks, edged with two lines of minute hairs; they vary in length from half an inch to an inch; their points are rounded or slightly notched; and their color depends considerably on their age and position. When young they are of a bright grass-green, to which the Box owes the epithets of "greener" and "youthful," as compared to the Holly, in Herrick's verses on "Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve," previously quoted with reference to the Yew (p. 60). This brightness also renders it acceptable, as Herrick's rhymes tell us, for house and church decorations between Candlemas and Easter. When produced in the shade, however, or when grown older, the leaves are of a very dark shade of green, which gives groves of this tree an effect as somber as that of the Yew itself.

The minute pale-colored florets appear in April or May, forming crowded spikelets of sessile blossoms in the axils of the leaves. In each spike the lower flowers are staminate, the upper ones pistillate. In addition to minute bracts, each flower is surrounded by a calyx, which in the staminate flowers consists of two alternating pairs of sepals, and in the pistillate flowers of a larger number, commonly six, nine, or twelve, in alternating whorls of three. Similarly, while one kind of flower contains two pairs of stamens and a rudimentary ovary, the other kind has three carpels, united below into a three-chambered ovary, but with distinct spreading styles. The filaments of the stamens are comparatively long, so that the pollen is very probably carried from the extruded anthers by the wind. The ovary ripens into a dry capsule, about half an inch long, surmounted by the horn-like remains of the three styles; and, when mature, this capsule splits into three valves, each formed of two adherent half-carpels, so that each of the stylar horns splits longitudinally. There are two black seeds in each chamber of the ovary.

The largest numbers of wild Box trees in Europe occur in France, in the Forest of Ligny, at St. Claude, in the Jura, and in the Pyrenees; but in these localities it is more mixed with deciduous trees than is the case where it occurs in England.

 

De Candolle points out that the name of the tree, which at first sight appears so indubitably of Latin origin, has its analogues not only in Slavonic but also in Keltic and even Tartar languages. The Greek Pyxos, Latin Buxus, French Buis, and German Buchs, are at least traceable in the Illyrian Bus, the Breton Beuz, the Calmuck Boschton and the Georgian Bsa; so that the Box may have been carried westward with the earliest migrations of the Indo- European races, or have been found indigenous by them and given a name previously used by their common ancestors.

 

On the other hand the Box does not occur in the Channel Islands or in Ireland, whilst in Holland, Belgium, and the north of France it grows mainly in hedgerows and in the immediate neighborhood of cultivation. Its introduction at a date which is at least remote would seem to be indicated by the fact that a sprig of Box forms the badge of the clan M'Intosh, and one of its variegated form that of the M'Phersons.

The Romans employed the Box both when growing for "topiary" work, and as timber. Both Pliny and Vitruvius allude to the clipping of the shrub into hedges ornamented with the figures of animals, whilst Virgil and Ovid refer also to the use of its wood for musical instruments, employing the word Buxus as meaning a flute. It may, therefore, well be to them that we owe the introduction of the tree into England.

 

The wood is remarkably heavy, being the only European timber that will sink in water; it is yellow, very hard, compact, and even-grained, so as to be susceptible of a fine polish; it is, as Dryden describes it, translating Virgil--

 

"Smooth-grained, and proper for the turner's trade,

Which curious hands may carve, and steel with ease invade."

 

It is still employed, both here and on the Continent, for a variety of purposes besides wood-engraving, for which art, however, the finest quality of Boxwood is mainly reserved. It is used in inlaying, for mathematical instruments, especially foot-rules, for weaving-shuttles, and other turned articles. Some of these, however, are made at St. Claude, not from the stem, but from the root, the wood of which is often beautifully veined

 

 

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