Thread: English Box wood

Matt, it doesn't look like any box I've seen (not that I've seen a huge number!); the leaves are too pointy, the bark doesn't look right & the growth rings on that cut branch are very wide, they should be very tight & hard to see. My first thought was it looks like a privet (one species at least is used for hedges), or perhaps one of the lilly-pillies. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for buxus.....

The name "box" gets applied to a huge number of totally unrelated plants for reasons that usually escape me. The various eucalypts that get 'box' in their name (red, grey, yellow, etc.) have no resemblance whatever to buxus that I can see, & the woods are about as unlike 'true' box wood as they could be, so how on earth did they get the moniker of box??! I've got a bit of wood I picked up at the last Maleny wood show called 'orange box' (Denhamia sp., formerly Maytenus sp.) It's pretty stuff, with a fine ray-fleck grain pattern, but with nothing that suggests the European box wood at all. TTIT has a good entry on it....

Cheers,

Possibly Common Myrtle Myrtus communis less likely Brazilian Cherry.

Thank you gentlemen, I let my client keep thinking they have English Box wood, and I go my mire way.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

..... I let my client keep thinking they have English Box wood......

Wot's in a name, eh Matt?

At least you can feel fairly certain you didn't míss out on a bunch of nice chisel handles, though a lot of hedge woods can make decent handles. I grubbed out a couple of large Mock orange bushes (Murraya sp.) on our place years ago (it's gone feral round here), and on a whim I saved the butts, which were ~150mm diameter. I just tossed them under the house & didn't even split them down the middle, so they cracked a bit here & there, but I got a few turnable pieces from them. It's yet another wood that resembles box, in fact quite a good resemblance & turns very nicely, tho a bit softer than the real thing. Next one I dig out I'll treat with a bit more respect....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Wot's in a name, eh Matt?

At least you can feel fairly certain you didn't míss out on a bunch of nice chisel handles, though a lot of hedge woods can make decent handles. I grubbed out a couple of large Mock orange bushes (Murraya sp.) on our place years ago (it's gone feral round here), and on a whim I saved the butts, which were ~150mm diameter. I just tossed them under the house & didn't even split them down the middle, so they cracked a bit here & there, but I got a few turnable pieces from them. It's yet another wood that resembles box, in fact quite a good resemblance & turns very nicely, tho a bit softer than the real thing. Next one I dig out I'll treat with a bit more respect....

Cheers,

Wots in a name ,eh Matt,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds ya [emoji6] that’s what.

Been a client for quite a few years, so I’m not going to rock the boat over a Botanical issue with them.

I do have one small piece of Box wood at home(I’m currently in Melbourne again working [emoji849]), well I brought it at a Wood supplier down hear, who had written on it “Box wood” so I’m just going on that.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Wots in a name ,eh Matt,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds ya [emoji6] that’s what....

That's more or less what I was implying - if they are happy to call it 'box' then who are we to argue?

Originally Posted by Simplicity

..... I do have one small piece of Box wood at home(I’m currently in Melbourne again working [emoji849]), well I brought it at a Wood supplier down hear, who had written on it “Box wood” so I’m just going on that......

There are not many other woods that have the colour & texture of Buxus. There are a few potential substitutes that are very close, but they are unlikely to find their way into the market,they'd likely be even more expensive, but would probably do the job as well, or nearly as well. The kamala tree growing on our property is one example, but it only grows north from Sydney so you won't be able to cultivate it in Ballarat! The wood is as fine as box, but a bit whiter when fresh (it yellows up with time). It grows to a small tree yielding good-sized pieces, but it won't dry 'in the round' like box does (usually) & has a tendency to split a bit, but once dry it's stable. It also has a 'fault' that would make it less attractive as a commercial substitute for box, it gets random streaks of black in it (caused by a type of spalting fungus?) & the older the tree, the more streaks, it seems. It can look ok in some situations, but not if you want a pure white wood. It's as nice to turn as 'real' box & this lot of handles has stood up well to the light pounding they've had in the year or so since I made them: 5 set re-handled.jpg

Cheers,

Hi, Matt

I know English boxwood as a single species of plant - Bruxux sempervirens - which usually grows as a dense evergreen shrub, often as a hedge or topiary specimen

The leaves and bark in your photos do not look right.

English boxwood leaves.jpg Bruxus sempervirens


Neither does the bark.


English boxwood bark.jpg Bruxus sempervirens


Wikipedia describes the timber as follows:

" ... Wood[edit]

Slow growth of box renders the wood ("boxwood") very hard (possibly the hardest in Europe along with Cornus mas) and heavy, and free of grain produced by growth rings, making it ideal for cabinet-making, the crafting of flutes and oboes, engraving, marquetry, woodturning, tool handles, malletheads and as a substitute for ivory; the wood is yellow in color. "Digging sticks" fashioned by Neanderthals more than 170,000 years ago in Italy were made from boxwood.^[21] The British wood-engraver Thomas Bewick pioneered the use of boxwood blocks for wood-engraving.^[3][15][22]


19th-century English flute made of boxwood (detail)

In Old English, a box was originally a receptacle made of boxwood. ... "


It is extremely hard - Janka = 13.1 kN - but trunks are quite small. Biggest I have seen is probably 70 mm diameter, but most is smaller. It is difficult to find stuff big enough to make chisel handles.

Hi Greame

Your to images regarding the Brutus and Bruxux are not showing up for me and I've also tried pasting the img file in a seperate tab to see them with no luck

You’ll need to edit your post and upload the images again.

Thanks, DJ, fixed.

The curious thing to me about (genuine) box wood is that it's dense & hard (Janka 2940 lbs ft), though far from the league of bull oak & gidgee with Janka hardness approaching 4,000 lbs ft), yet it's a doddle to work, it planes easily & turns like butter - takes beautiful threads. Pity it's such a small tree and the stuff is so darned expensive.

The Mallotus I was rabbiting on about ealier is whiter & not quite as dense as box (~.7-.75 for the bit I measured, vs .8-.85 for box) and not quite as hard but it's a tolerable substitute for some applications. It is generally only a small tree so doesn't make large sections of timber.

Morris Lake's book describes a tree called 'yellow boxwood' (Planchonella pohlmaniana) that grows along the east coast from northern NSW northwards. It has a density very similar to buxus and an extremely fine grain. It looks from Lake's picture to be more yellow than buxus but otherwise superficially similar. He doesn't include Janka hardness but the accompanying notes say it is relatively easy to work and the uses it has been put to are very similar to what box is valued for. It grows to a fair-sized tree at 20M & 0.5M trunk diameter. Love to get my hands on some, but if I ever do come across a tree I'll not recognise it from Lake's picture - he shows 3 or 4 feet of trunk which would match about 50 other species in the rainforest around here!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Morris Lake's book describes a tree called 'yellow boxwood' (Planchonella pohlmaniana) that grows along the east coast from northern NSW northwards. It has a density very similar to buxus and an extremely fine grain. It looks from Lake's picture to be more yellow than buxus but otherwise superficially similar. He doesn't include Janka hardness but the accompanying notes say it is relatively easy to work and the uses it has been put to are very similar to what box is valued for. It grows to a fair-sized tree at 20M & 0.5M trunk diameter. Love to get my hands on some, but if I ever do come across a tree I'll not recognise it from Lake's picture - he shows 3 or 4 feet of trunk which would match about 50 other species in the rainforest around here!

Cheers,

Here 'tis
Planchonella pohlmaniana : Black Apple | Atlas of Living Australia


Grey Box has mechanical properties around or surpassing buxus, although I doubt it is a joy to work, but I wonder if the naming parallel is significant
Gray Box | The Wood Database (Hardwood)

Thanks Michael - now all I have to do is find a tree that has just blown over in a storm & not in a national park....

I have not tried to work grey box other than split it for firewood (there's plenty around here), but my impression is it would not make a very good substitute for Buxus. It's a pretty typical Eucalypt sort of timber, the grain is much more interlocked and coarser than boxwood. Like I said before, I cannot fathom how many of our trees that get "box" in their names came by it. It seems to me either wishful thinking, or the namers had never seen the original....

Cheers