box tree

This evergreen plant was formerly used at funerals as a cheap substitute for the customary rosemary or thyme (Vickery, 1995: 43). The mourners would each carry a sprig in the procession, and drop it into the grave; sprigs were also sometimes tucked into the winding sheet. The eccentric Major Labellière, who died at Dorking (Surrey) in 1800, arranged for two carts to pass through the town on the morning of his funeral, one laden with sprigs of box and the other with yew, so that everybody could take one; the crowds were so great that the ten-foot shaft serving as his grave was half-filled by the greenery thrown on his coffin (Charles Rose, Recollections of Old Dorking (1877), 92-8). This presumably explains why it is unlucky to bring box indoors.