African boxwood
Myrsine africana
Family · Primulaceae · Harmless
The low dense shrub with small hard leaves covering slopes and crater rims in the Azores, which at first glance everyone takes for box.
Scrubland · Uplands · Oak woods
Also known ascape myrtle, African boxwood
How to tell it
A shrub half a metre to two metres, much branched and stiff. Small alternate leaves, one to two centimetres, leathery, with a few sharp teeth on the upper half and translucent dots against the light. Minute reddish flowers pressed to the branch. Small purplish blue berries. Range: the Azores, plus Africa and Asia.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No relevant use
It matters for a curious reason: it is the same species that grows in South Africa and the Himalayas, and its presence in the Azores is one of the archipelago's biogeographic puzzles.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.