BOX TREE. 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



HE Box is an evergreen free, and in its natural state 

 reaches a height of about twenty feet. Its stems 

 ramify somewhat abruptly, producing a rounded or flat 

 top of dense leafage, and from top to base the tree is 

 hung with slender branchlets, thickly covered with tiny dark leaves, 

 which sparkle in the sunlight. Here and there a lighter piece of 

 foliage floats out, with its bright leaves as though powdered against 

 the sky ; or lying across a stem somewhat separate from its fellows, 



accentuates the grace of its line. 



Standing under this tent of 



foliage one can better appreciate the fine patterns between the stems 



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due to the variety of their poise as they rise side by side, now 

 curved, now twisted, into the deep shadow of the greenery overhead. 

 Considering that the girth of the trunk rarely exceeds one and 

 a half feet the bark is moderately rough, and marked with irregular 

 incisions which run vertically. 



THE LEAF. 



The youngest pair of leaves, while still not fully developed, lie face 

 to face in line with the shoot ; the next pair of leaves in the order 

 of development, which are already beginning to spread 

 outwards from the shoot, are set at right angles to the 

 first pair, and partially enclose them at the base. 



The leaf-buds are small and pale-green, and the 

 newly-opened leaves paler than those in maturity, and 

 usually tinged with yellow; sometimes they have a 

 blucish-rrreen bloom on the surface ot the blade. The old leaves 



