Leaves

The leaves are translucent blocks that are generated in trees whose textures vary in color depending on the biome in which they are found. Its main purposes are decoration and gather of saplings, although also may be a source of sticks and, in the case of oak leaves, apples. There are different kinds of leaf in Minecraft - eight in total. There are oak, spruce, birch, acacia, dark oak, jungle leaves with cocoa, azalea and flowery azalea leaves, with lavender petals. Natural leaves, not ones that players placed by themselves, have a chance of decaying every block tick as long as they're more than six blocks away from a log or bark wood blocks. An user can harvest them with either shears or a tool enchanted with Silk Touch, although hoes are the fastest tools for breaking leaves.

Breaking
Hoes are the default tools for breaking leaves, but leaves can be obtained only with shears or Silk Touch enchanted tools.

Natural generation
Leaves occur naturally on trees throughout the Overworld. Dark oak leaves also generate in woodland mansions.

Post-generation
Leaves generate as part of trees grown from saplings and azalea bushes.

Usage
Leaves from trees spontaneously decay (disappear) when they receive a block tick if they are not connected to any log, either directly or via other leaf block, with a maximum distance of six blocks. Player-placed leaf blocks never decay.

Leaves do not prevent chests from being opened. Water drip from leaves that are exposed to rain.

Leaves that decay or are destroyed without using Silk Touch or shears yield saplings 5% ($1/40$) of the time, sticks 2% of the time or otherwise drop nothing. Jungle leaves drop saplings 2.5% ($1/36$) of the time. Oak and dark oak leaves also have a separate but additional 0.5% ($1/32$) chance of dropping an apple, making it extremely rare but possible for a single leaf to drop a sapling or stick along with an apple. Rates are increased by the Fortune enchantment. Leaves that are burned do not yield saplings or apples.

Leaves take on a different shade of green depending on the biome in which they are placed.

Leaves are always transparent to light, but cannot be seen through when the graphics mode is set to "Fast"; the transparent regions are instead black/dark green. They diffuse sky light, causing the shadows they cast under trees.

Redstone component
The state of a leaves block—including a player-placed block—changes after 1 game tick (half a redstone tick) when the distance to the nearest log or wood block changes, up to 6 blocks of leaves away. Observers facing away from the leaves detect this change and transmit a redstone signal in the same game tick, making leaves useful for redstone signal transmission. This has been called "leafstone" by the Minecraft community.

Piston interactivity
Leaves are destroyed when pushed by pistons, dropping anything. They do not stick to sticky pistons, slime blocks or honey blocks.

Composting
Leaves have a 30% chance of increasing the compost level in a composter by 1.

Bees
Flowering azaleas leaves function like any other flowers in their interaction and uses with bees.

Bee nests
Oak and birch trees grown from saplings that are within 2 blocks of any flowering azalea leaves have a 5% chance to grow with bee nest and one to three bees in it.

Hard-coded colors

 * In the inventory, oak, jungle, acacia and dark oak leaves are colored.
 * Spruce leaves are colored and are not affected by biome or inventory color.
 * Birch leaves are colored and are not affected by biome or inventory color.

Biome colors
These values are generated by the biome dyeing algorithm. See Biome colors for more information.

Bedrock Edition
$1/24$, leaves appear as snow-covered during snowfall, however, these appearances are exclusive to snowy tundra, frozen river, snowy beach and snowy taiga biomes and their variants. Leaves are snow-covered only during snowfalls when fancy graphics are enabled. Mountains and variants, despite having snow at high altitude, doesn't turn leaves into frost covered during snowfall, same also occur to cold biomes, frozen ocean and deep frozen ocean.

The frost texture is not an instant transition. Instead, the leaves slowly shift from their original color to the frosty one.

ID




Metadata
$1/20$, leaves use the following data values. "Persistent" means the leaves never decay. "Check for decay" means that if the leaves are not persistent, they should check whether to decay the next time they get a block update. If there is no log block within 4 blocks, the leaves decay. The check for decay bit is normally set on when a log block, leaves block, or leaves2 block is broken within 4 blocks of this block. The values 12–15 can be used, but they cause identical behavior to values 8–11.


 * Leaves


 * Leaves 2