Boxwood

Description

Jacaranda caerulea (boxwood or cancertree) is a flowering tree belonging to the genus Jacaranda. It is native to the West Indies, including Cuba and the Bahamas. Jacaranda caerula was described in 1805 by French naturalist Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire. It grows up to 12 metres (39 ft) in height and has 40 cm long, bipinnate leaves each with 8 to 26 pinna. The flowers are purplish blue in colour with a tubular shape, being narrower towards the base and larger at the tip. They measure 3.5 to 4 cm long and 1 to 1.4 cm wide at the mouth. It flowers intermittently throughout spring and summer, rather than having one big bloom during spring. The tree is native to the Bahamas and Cuba, but can also be found in Florida where it was introduced for landscaping purposes. It most commonly found in limestone areas between sea level and 300m. The leaves are used in some places for their antiseptic properties. In the Bahamas, decoctions are made from the dried leaves and used as an alternative treatment for a variety of skin complaints, including skin cancer. In Cuba, decoctions of leafy branches are used to treat eczema and acne. The species are shrubs to large trees ranging in size from 20 to 30 m (66 to 98 ft) tall. The leaves are bipinnate in most species, pinnate or simple in a few species. The flowers are produced in conspicuous large panicles, each flower with a five-lobed blue to purple-blue corolla; a few species have white flowers. The fruit is an oblong to oval flattened capsule containing numerous slender seeds. The genus differs from other genera in the Bignoniaceae in having a staminode that is longer than the stamens, tricolpate pollen, and a chromosome number of 18. Jacaranda is a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. A cosmopolitan plant, Jacaranda mimosifolia is quite common in Paraguay, Uruguay, Southern California, Florida, Mexico, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Spain (particularly in Málaga) and Zambia and has been introduced to most tropical and subtropical regions to the extent that it has entered popular culture. It has been planted widely in Asia, with trees visible in many parts of Nepal, Pakistan and India.