Boxwood Traditional Cache

The Boxwood is in a special spot on top of Libe slope. Almost impossible parking. At night and weekends you may be in luck. You can drive close to the cache, but very restricted parking and $$ for violations.

Boxwood

Buxus is a genus of about 70 species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box (majority of English-speaking countries) or boxwood (North America).

The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, with the majority of species being tropical or subtropical; only the European and some Asian species are frost-tolerant. Centers of diversity occur in Cuba (about 30 species), China (17 species) and Madagascar (9 species).

They are slow-growing evergreen shrubs and small trees, growing to 2–12 m (rarely 15 m) tall. The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate, and leathery; they are small in most species, typically 1.5–5 cm long and 0.3-2.5 cm broad, but up to 11 cm long and 5 cm broad in B. macrocarpa. The flowers are small and yellow-green, monecious with both sexes present on a plant. The fruit is a small capsule 0.5-1.5 cm long (to 3 cm in B. macrocarpa), containing several small seeds.

The genus splits into three genetically distinct sections, each section in a different region, with the Eurasian species in one section, the African (except northwest Africa) and Madagascan species in the second, and the American species in the third. The African and American sections are genetically closer to each other than to the Eurasian section.

Cultivation

Box plants are commonly grown as hedges and for topiary.

In Great Britain and Mainland Europe box is subject to damage from caterpillars of Diaphania perspectalis which can devastate a box hedge within a short time. This is a recently introduced species first noticed in Europe in 2007 and in the UK in 2008 but spreading. There were 3 UK reports of infestation in 2011, 20 in 2014 and 150 in the first half of 2015.

Owing to its fine grain it is a good wood for fine wood carving, although this is limited by the small sizes available. It is also resistant to splitting and chipping, and thus useful for decoarative or storage boxes. Formerly, it was used for wooden combs. As a timber or wood for carving it is "boxwood" in all varieties of English.

Owing to the relatively high density of the wood (it is one of the few woods that are denser than water), boxwood is often used for chess pieces, unstained boxwood for the white pieces and stained ('ebonized') boxwood for the black pieces, in lieu of ebony.

The extremely fine endgrain of box makes it suitable for woodblock printing and woodcut blocks, for which it was the usual material in Europe. In the 16th century, boxwood was used to create intricate decorative carvings; as of 2016, the largest collection of these carvings is at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

High quality wooden spoons have usually been carved from box, with beech being the usual cheaper substitute.

Boxwood was once called dudgeon, and was used for the handles of dirks, and daggers, with the result that such a knife was known as a dudgeon. Although one "in high dudgeon" is indignant and enraged, and while the image of a dagger held high, ready to plunge into an enemy, has a certain appeal, lexicographers have no real evidence as to the origin of the phrase.

Musical instruments

Due to its high density and resistance to chipping, boxwood is a relatively economical material, and has been used to make parts for various stringed instruments since antiquity. It is mostly used to make tailpieces, chin rests and tuning pegs, but may be used for a variety of other parts as well. Other woods used for this purpose are rosewood and ebony.

Boxwood was a common material for the manufacture of recorders in the eighteenth century, and a large number of mid- to high-end instruments made today are produced from one or other species of boxwood. Boxwood was once a popular wood for other woodwind instruments, and was among the traditional woods for Great Highland bagpipes before tastes turned to imported dense tropical woods such as cocuswood, ebony, and African blackwood.

Historical

General Thomas F. Meagher decorated the hats of the men of the Federal Irish Brigade with boxwood during the American Civil War, as he could find no shamrock.

Boxwood

Common box, Buxus sempervirens

Buxus sempervirens (common box, European box, or boxwood), is a species of flowering plant in the genus Buxus, native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, from southern England south to northern Morocco, and east through the northern Mediterranean region to Turkey. Buxus colchica of western Caucasus and B. hyrcana of northern Iran and eastern Caucasus are commonly treated as synonyms of B. sempervirens.

 Description

 Buxus sempervirens is an evergreen shrub or small tree growing to 1–9 m (3 ft 3 in–29 ft 6 in) tall, with a trunk up to 20 centimetres (7.9 in) in diameter (exceptionally to 10 m tall and 45 cm diameter.

Arranged in opposite pairs along the stems, the leaves are green to yellow-green, oval, 1.5–3 cm long, and 0.5–1.3 cm broad.

The hermaphrodite flowers are inconspicuous but highly scented, greenish-yellow, with no petals, and are insect pollinated; the fruit is a three-lobed capsule containing 3-6 seeds.

 Distribution and habitat

 The species typically grows on soils derived from chalk, limestone, usually as an understory in forests of larger trees, most commonly associated with Fagus sylvatica (European Beech) forests, but also sometimes in open dry montane scrub, particularly in the Mediterranean region. Box Hill, Sorrey is named after its notable box population, which comprises the largest area of native box woodland in England.

 Cultivation

 In Britain, three burials of the Roman era featured coffins lined with sprays of the evergreen box, a practice unattested elsewhere in Europe.

 Box remains a very popular ornamental plant in gardens, being particularly valued for topiary and hedges because of its small leaves, evergreen nature, tolerance of close shearing, and scented foliage. The scent is not to everyone's liking: the herbalist John Gerard found it "evill and lothsome" and at Hampton Court Palace Queen Anne had box hedging grubbed up because the odor was offensive, Daniel Defoe tells.

 Timber

 Slow growth of box renders the wood ("boxwood") very hard (possibly the hardest in Europe) and heavy, and free of grain produced by growth rings, making it ideal for cabinet-making, the crafting of clarinets,engraving, marquetry, woodturning, toolhandles, mallet heads and as a substitute for ivory.

The noted English engraver Thomas Bewick pioneered the use of boxwood blocks for engraving.

Other uses

The leaves were formerly used in place of quinine, and as a fever reducer. 

The cache is a tied in, camoed, small, "small" pill bottle, that you have to push hard to open and close. Please BYOP and put things back as you found them.