underwood

1670, John Evelyn, Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber, London, Chapter 3, Of the Oak, pp. 16-17, What improvement the stirring of the ground about the roots of Oaks is to the Trees I have already hinted; and yet in Copses where they stand warm, and so thickn’d with the under wood, as this culture cannot be practis’d, they prove in time to be goodly Trees.