the.com/boxwood
The shrub patient enough to be tortured into spheres, hedges, and the occasional peacock.
means A dense, slow-growing evergreen shrub or small tree (genus Buxus) prized for its fine, hard wood and for clipping into hedges and topiary.
from A plain compound of "box" plus "wood." The "box" here is the plant-name box, from Old English box, borrowed from Latin buxus, which is likely related to Greek pyxos — the same root that gave us "pyxis," a little box, since the wood was so often turned into small containers. So "boxwood" is, in a sense, the wood that boxes are named after, doubling back on itself.
- slow grower
- Some hedges took centuries to reach full height
- that smell
- Foliage notoriously reeks like cat urine
- chess pieces
- Dense wood carved into pieces and instruments
- ancient art
- Romans clipped it into shapes 2,000 years ago
- toxic leaves
- Poisonous to humans, dogs, and horses
boxwood hedge at versailles — 17th-century french royal garden with 39 km of boxwood hedges and topiaries
boxwood blight fungus — calonectria pseudonaviculata disease that devastated us gardens starting 2011
boxwood tree at runnymede — ancient specimen in surrey, england where magna carta was signed in 1215