brushwood

brush +‎ wood

brushwood (countable and uncountable, plural brushwoods)

1. Branches and twigs fallen from trees and shrubs.
   • 1799, Mungo Park, chapter 12, in Travels in the Interior of Africa‎, volume 1:

     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.

   • 1991, Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, Oxford University Press, Chapter 3, p. 14,

     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 […]

2. Small trees and shrubs.
   • 1794, John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition, London: J. Johnson, Volume 2, Chapter 16, p. 6,

     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 […]

   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, chapter 31, in The Woodlanders‎:

     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 copse-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing.

   • 1920, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, A Brazilian Mystic, Being the Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro, London: Heinemann, Chapter 12, p. 169,

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

• OED2