• Family : Buxaceae
  (Boxwood Family)
• Family (Hindi name) : SHAMSHAD FAMILY (शमशाद फैमिली)
• Family (as per The APG System III) : Buxaceae
• Species Name (as per The IPNI) : Buxus wallichiana Baill.
• Common name : Himalayan Boxwood, Himalayan Box Tree
• Vernacular name : Papri, Shamshad (Himachali); Papri, Shamshad, Chikri (Hindi)
• Habit : Shrub
• Habitat : In shady rocky ravines; often gregarious
• Comments / notes : Wood hard, fine-grained, and durable, used for fine carving, engraving, turning, geometrical instruments, and combs. Extracts from the leaves. bark, and wood are used medicinally.
• Key identification features : A dense leafy evergreen shrub to 2 m or a small tree to 7 m, with 4-sided branchlets, and with soft corky yellowish-grey bark fissured into crocodile-scales' on old stems. Flowers yellowish, in dense rounded axillary clusters 6-8 mm. Leaves entire leathery, linear-lanceolate to elliptic-oblong, 1.5-6 cm, with a blunt or notched apex, shining above and hairless. Capsule ovoid 7-12 mm, with 3 diverging styles, 3-valved.
• Flower, Fruit : March-May
• Distribution :
  • Himachal Pradesh : Mandi district
• Native : Afghanistan, East Himalaya, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, West Himalaya
• Exotic/Native : Native
• Literature : Oleg P & Adam S (1984). Flowers of Himalaya. Oxford University Press: 1242
• Citation : Sankara Rao, K., Navendu Page, Deepak Kumar (2020). Pan India Bouquets. http://flora-peninsula-indica.ces.iisc.ac.in/pan/plants.php?name=Buxus wallichiana. Downloaded on 7 December 2023.

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