The Lingering Leaves
Leaves may still cling to the newest growths of underwood long after the older underwood is gaunt and bare. The sap, perhaps, is fresher and more vigorous in the younger wood—prolonging the period of ripening—and the new buds have not pushed out far enough to dislodge the leaves. In coppices that have been thinned one sees how unusually big, and how strong and enduring, are the leaves on the shoots of tree-stumps—as though the whole energy of what was once a tree is concentrated in the few shoots and leaves. Where hedges are clipped, dead leaves remain in place far into the winter, possibly because, owing to injury, the growth is retarded of those layers of cork which form to assist the buds in dislodging the worn-out leaves. On the sides of rides trimmed annually the leaves form quite a screen in late autumn—to which one sportsman put down his many misses at rabbits, and ordered his keepers to walk along every ride and pick off all the leaves that remained. The shoots of underwood that has been cut always grow more luxuriantly in a hot, dry summer than in a rainy one; every copse-worker will tell you this is the case, though we have not come across one who could solve the riddle.
