Description:

• Trees or shrubs, evergreen, monoecious
• Leaves opposite, shortly petiolate, simple, entire; stipules 0
• Flowers regular, unisexual, small, sessile or shortly pedicelled in compact, axillary racemes or cymes, with terminal flowers usually female and remainder male, rarely a few bisexual
• Perianth (calyx) usually of 2 sepaloid whorls
• Male flowers: perianth segments 4, sometimes 6, usually in 2 series, imbricate; stamens 4-6, rarely more, when 4 then opposite perianth segments, when 6 then 2 pairs opposite inner segments; filaments free, exserted; anthers 2-thecous, dorsifixed near base, opening lengthwise, often large; pistil absent or rudimentary
• Female flowers: perianth segments 4-6; lobes imbricate, outer smaller; ovary superior, 3-locular, with 2 pendulous, anatropous ovules from outer angles in each locule; styles 3, free, often diverging, thick, undivided
• Fruit a somewhat woody loculicidal capsule with 3 horns (persistent styles)
• Seeds somewhat 3-angled, black, shiny; testa crustaceous; embryo straight; endosperm firm
• x = 14 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Buxus L.
  • Linnaeus: 983 (1753)
  • Hutchinson: 108 (1967)
  • Friis: 293 (1989)
  • Glen: 37 (1996)
• Notobuxus Oliv.
  • Oliver: t. 1400 (1882)
  • Hutchinson: 375 (1915) as Euphorbiaceae
  • Phillips: 138 (1943)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 80, mainly north temperate, 9 in Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape