brushwood

plural brushwoods

1. countableuncountableBranches and twigs fallen from trees and shrubs.

   His pupils assemble every evening before his tent; where, by the light of a large fire, made of brushwood and cow’s dung, they are taught a few sentences from the Koran, and are initiated into the principles of their creed.

   1799, Mungo Park, chapter 12, in Travels in the Interior of Africa, volume 1

   1 more example

   Small streams with hollowed-out banks came into sight, and the tiniest mill-ponds with frail dams, and little villages with low peasant huts under dark roofs, often with half their thatch gone, and small threshing barns all tilted to one side with walls made out of woven brushwood and gaping openings beside dilabidated hay-barns […]

   1991, Ivan Turgenev, chapter 3, in Fathers and Sons, Oxford University Press, page 14

2. countableuncountableSmall trees and shrubs.

   Houses had been deserted, and the thick brushwood of the tropics had grown up over everything, obliterating the brief authority of man.

   1920, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, chapter 12, in A Brazilian Mystic, Being the Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro, London: Heinemann, page 169

   3 more examples

   The river above Goet-accord becomes very narrow, being lined on each ſide with impenetrable bruſh-wood, like the river Cottica, between Devil's-Harwar and Patamaca; [...]

   1796, J[ohn] G[abriel] Stedman, chapter XVI, in Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; […], volume II, London: J[oseph] Johnson, […], and J. Edwards, […], →OCLC, page 6

   Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and other copseware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing.

   1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter XV, in The Woodlanders […], volume II, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 279

   Mr. Greenshields was the contractor selected to build the embankment, and over a hundred thousand tons of marl and moss compacted with brushwood were used in its construction.

   1952 July, W. R. Watson, “Sankey Viaduct and Embankment”, in Railway Magazine, pages 486-487