Minecraft has hundreds if not thousands of blocks that you harvest and craft into several different items needed to fight off hostile mobs and survive in the game. 

In this article, we’re talking about the leaf block in Minecraft and, more specifically, how to get leaves in the game.

Also read: How to make a picture frame in Minecraft?

Finding leaves in Minecraft

If you’ve played the game for anything longer than a minute, you’ll realise that leaves are relatively easy to come by. Leaves generate naturally on trees throughout the overworld. Dark oak leaves are also generated in woodland mansions. Alternatively, they also generate trees grown from saplings or azalea. 

However, when you try to harvest them, you’ll end up breaking the block. That’s because leaves can only be harvested using a hoe in Minecraft. Any other tool will break the block unless you’re using the Silk Touch enchantment. One more option to collect leaves is using the Shear tool. 

What good are leaves in Minecraft?

Leaves spontaneously decay when they’re not connected to a wood block either directly or through another leaf block with a maximum of six blocks (Java edition) or four blocks (Bedrock edition). Player-placed leaf blocks don’t decay at all. 

This can be useful as leaves that decay or are broken with a tool without the Silk Touch enchantment either yield saplings 5% of the time, sticks 2% of the time or nothing at all. This number can vary for different types of leaves. For example, jungle leaves drop 2.5% of the time, while oak or dark oak leaves have a 0.5% chance of dropping an apple. These chances are affected by the Fortune enchantment. Leaves that are burned do not drop anything. 

If you’re playing the Java edition, leaves can also be used to transmit Redstone signals as the state of a leaf block changes after one game tick when the distance to the nearest log or woodblock changes up to six blocks of leaves away. Observers facing away from the leaves detect this change and transmit a Redstone signal in the same tick.

Also read: How far does water flow in Minecraft?