Leaves

Leaves are blocks that grow as part of trees. Leaves mainly drop saplings and sticks. They may also drop apples (oak and dark oak trees only).

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.

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 6 blocks. Player-placed leaf blocks never decay.

Leaves that decay, or are destroyed without using shears, yield saplings or sticks 5% ($1/40$) of the time, and 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 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.

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

Hard-coded colors

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

Sadly no one has any good way of changing these if you are looking to make a resource pack changing the colors of leaves. (For 1.16+)

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, snowy taiga, and mountain biomes and their variants. Leaves are snow-covered only during snowfalls when fancy graphics are enabled.

ID




Block data
$1/20$, 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

Original leaf decay algorithm


In Alpha, leaves would decay using an algorithm that checks whether it has a solid or leaf block underneath it or is adjacent to a solid block. If it doesn't, it must be connected to a leaf block that is also supported as long as it is no further than five blocks away from said support.

Trivia

 * Occasionally, leaves grow through other blocks, acting as though they are still connected to the tree. They may also completely replace blocks they try to grow into.
 * Leaves do not prevent chests from being opened.
 * Some trees seem to occasionally drop apples or saplings without being destroyed due to creation of leaf blocks not supported by logs.
 * The frost texture $1/16$ is not an instant transition. Instead, the leaves slowly shift from their original color to the frosty one.
 * Leaves disappear when pushed by pistons.
 * Leaves Z-fight with blocks such as carpet that are placed on top; a bug that Mojang decided not to fix.
 * Leaves have three breaking tools (hoes, shears and swords), the most of any block.