[f. SPRING sb.1 10 and 6 b.]
1. a. collect. Wood growing in a spring or copse of young saplings.
1523. Fitzherb., Husb., § 135. To kepe sprynge-wodde.
1893. Heath, Eng. Peas., 92. He was employed in cutting down small, or ‘spring-wood’ … used for the purpose of making supports to the cuttings in the lead mines.
b. A copse or wood of springs or young trees.
1623. in Fabric Rolls York Minster (Surtees Soc.), Gloss., One springwood called Hagsett, lately bought of Robert Greaves.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 362. For a general rule, newly weaned calves are less hurtful to newly cut spring-woods than any other cattle.
1815. Farey, Agric. Derbysh., II. 219. Spring-woods, as those are here called, which bear underwood as well as timber, and are cut at stated periods.
1828. Carr, Craven Gloss., Spring-woods, young woods fenced off for cattle, and allowed to spring.
1881. Leicester Gloss., 252. Spring-wood, a wood of young trees.
2. A ring or layer of wood formed round a tree each spring.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner., 475. It is … called an annual zone, annual layer, or annual ring, and its limiting layers just mentioned are called spring-wood and autumn-wood.
1885. Goodale, Physiol. Bot. (1892), 139. That [wood] which is produced earliest (spring wood) has somewhat larger ducts and wood-cells than that which is formed later (autumn wood).
