Life Sciences Commons^™

Boxwoods, Samuel J. Record, George A. Garratt

Yale School of the Environment Bulletin Series

True boxwood, commonly called Turkish boxwood, is derived from a small group of plants, of which the common evergreen ·box of our gardens is the type. To this group the famous botanist Linnaeus gave the generic name of Buxis, the Latin for box tree. He called the best known member of it Buxis sempervirens, which is' but another form of Ovid's "buxus perpetuo virens," the evergreen box. For long this was considered the only species, though various forms and varieties came to be recognized, several of which have since been elevated by other botanists to specific rank.