Birch Leaves

Birch Leaves

Java Edition

Bedrock Edition

Bedrock Edition

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Renewable	Yes
Stackable	Yes (64)
Tools
Blast resistance	0.2
Hardness	0.2
Luminous	No
Transparent	Partial (diffuses sky light)
Waterloggable	Yes
Flammable	Yes (30)
Catches fire from lava	Yes
Map color	7 PLANT
Note block instrument	Default (Harp)

Birch leaves are evergreen leaves that form the canopy of birch trees.

Obtaining

Breaking

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

Block	Birch Leaves
Hardness	0.2
Tool
Breaking time (sec)[A]
Default	10.3 (JE) 0.3 (BE)
Wooden	10.15 (JE) 0.15 (BE)
Stone	10.1 (JE) 0.1 (BE)
Copper	10.1 (JE) 0.1 (BE)
Iron	10.05 (JE) 0.05 (BE)
Diamond	10.05 (JE) 0.05 (BE)
Netherite	10.05 (JE) 0.05 (BE)
Golden	10.05 (JE) 0.05 (BE)
Shears	10.3 (JE) 0.3 (BE)
Sword	10.2 (JE) 0.2 (BE)
Options
Efficiency	000
Haste	001 1JEBE

Legend

• incorrect tool, drops nothing
• correct tool, drops nothing or something other than the block itself
• correct tool, drops the block itself
• italicized can be instant mined

Without shears, birch leaves can drop 1 birch sapling, and 1—2 sticks. Fortune increases the chances.

Drop	No Fortune	Fortune I	Fortune II	Fortune III
Birch Sapling	5% (1⁄20)	6.25% (1⁄16)	8.33% (1⁄12)	10% (1⁄10)
1-2 Sticks	2% (1⁄50)	2.22% (1⁄45)	2.5% (1⁄40)	3.33% (1⁄30)

Natural generation

Birch leaves occur naturally on birch trees throughout the Overworld. They can also generate as part of abandoned camps in birch forests, flower forests and forests.

Post-generation

Birch leaves generate as part of birch trees grown from birch saplings.

Usage

Birch leaves that decay have the same drop chances as when broken by players, yielding birch saplings 5% (¹⁄₂₀) of the time, sticks 2% of the time, and otherwise nothing. Leaves that are burned do not yield saplings.

Smelting ingredient

Name	Ingredients	Smelting recipe
Leaf Litter	Birch Leaves + Any fuel	0.1

Redstone component

This feature is exclusive to Java Edition.

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.

Piston interactivity

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

Composting

Birch leaves have a 30% chance of increasing the compost level in a composter by 1. A stack of leaves yields an average of 3.05 bone meal.

Color

Unlike most other leaves, the color of birch leaves does not change with the biome they are placed in, but always stays green. The texture is always colored with
 #80a755.

In Bedrock Edition, this color is picked from a colormap which allows biome tinting, though the color is the same in every biome.

Snowy leaves

This feature is exclusive to Bedrock Edition.

In any biome with a base temperature of below 0.15, birch leaves gradually fade to white once snowfall begins, giving them a frosted appearance for the storm's duration. During transition, the white color is blended with the regular color in eight steps. After snowfall ends, leaves gradually fade back to their normal coloration.

This does not affect leaves in biomes with a higher base temperature, even at altitudes that allow snowfall. The change is entirely invisible to the client if the graphics mode is set to Simple, though it still takes place, and leaves are the correct color phase for the time if the option is re-enabled.

Particles

Birch leaves produce falling leaves particles underneath the leaf block, where they slowly fall to the ground. Their color corresponds to the leaves block they fall from, which can change during snowfall.‌^{[BE only]}

Sounds

Java Edition:

grass sound type
Sound	Closed captions	Source	Description	Identifier	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
	​Block broken	Blocks	Once the block has broken	block.grass.break	subtitles.block.generic.break​	1.0	0.8	16
	​Block placed​[until: JE 26.4]	Blocks	When the block is placed	block.grass.place	subtitles.block.generic.place​	1.0	0.8	16
	​Block breaking	Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	block.grass.hit	subtitles.block.generic.hit​	0.25	0.5	16
	​Something falls on a block	Entity-Dependent	Falling on the block with fall damage	block.grass.fall	subtitles.block.generic.fall​	0.5	0.75	16
	​Footsteps	Entity-Dependent	Walking on the block	block.grass.step	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps​	0.15	1.0	16

Bedrock Edition:

grass sound type
Sound	Closed captions	Source	Description	Identifier	Translation key	Volume	Pitch
	​Block broken	Blocks	Once the block has broken	dig.grass	subtitles.block.generic.break​	0.7	0.8–1.0
	​Block placed	Blocks	When the block is placed	place.grass	subtitles.block.generic.place​	0.8	0.8–1.0
	​Block breaking	Blocks	While the block is in the process of being broken	hit.grass	subtitles.block.generic.hit​	0.3	0.5
	​Footsteps	Players	Falling on the block with fall damage	fall.grass	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps​	0.4	1.0
	​Footsteps	Players	Walking on the block	step.grass	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps​	0.3	1.0
	​Shovel flattens	Blocks	When a shovel creates a dirt path	use.grass	subtitles.item.shovel.flatten​	1.0	0.8
	​Footsteps	Blocks	Jumping from the block	jump.grass	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps​	0.11	1.0
	​Footsteps	Blocks	Falling on the block without fall damage	land.grass	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps​	0.21	1.0

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Form	Block tags	Item tags	Translation key
Birch Leaves	birch_leaves	Block & Item	lava_pool_stone_cannot_replace leaves mineable/hoe	leaves	block.minecraft.birch_leaves

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Alias ID	Numeric ID	Form	Item ID[i 1]	Block tags	Translation key
Birch Leaves	birch_leaves	leaves / 2	1056	Block & Giveable Item[i 2]	Identical[i 3] (Numeric: -801)	minecraft:is_hoe_item_destructible minecraft:leaves	tile.leaves.birch.name

Block states

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

History

For the different historical leaf decay algorithms, see History of leaf decay.

Java Edition

Java Edition Beta
1.2							Added birch leaves, which are colored  #80a755, and do not vary across biomes.
							Birch leaves that decay, or are destroyed, drop oak saplings.
1.5							Birch leaves now drop birch saplings.
1.6			Test Build 3				Leaves are no longer considered solid with Fast graphics, meaning that certain blocks can no longer be placed on leaves and mobs cannot spawn on top of them.
1.7							Added shears, which collect leaves. Before, leaves could be obtained only via inventory editing.
							Leaves no longer appear gray (blank and uncolored, default texture before the application of biome coloration) in the inventory.
1.8			Pre-release				Leaves placed by the player or an enderman no longer decay like normal leaves do.
Java Edition
1.0.0			Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4				The Silk Touch enchantment can now be used to collect leaves.
			Beta 1.9 Prerelease 6				Silk Touch now preserves the data value of broken leaves rather than always dropping oak. This now includes non-species metadata, allowing for the collection of invalid data value leaves as an item.
							Birch leaves are now available directly in the creative inventory.
1.3.1			12w18a				Birch leaves now have a unique name.
			12w22a				Water now slowly drips through leaves during rain.
1.4.6			12w49a				Leaves now always drop the correct data values when collected via Silk Touch, making invalid data value leaves unobtainable in survival from this point onwards.
1.8			14w25a				Leaves now render differently with the "Fast" graphics setting.
							Leaves no longer have distinct texture files for fast and fancy graphics.
			14w25b				Leaves now render differently in the "Fast" graphics setting - all transparent pixels are rendered fully opaque, causing them to appear black with the default textures.[1]
1.13			18w22a				Naturally-generated leaves now survive at a distance of up to 6 blocks from logs, instead of 4.
1.14			18w43a				Leaves now have a small chance to drop sticks when decaying.
							The textures of birch leaves have changed. This also results in birch leaves having visually distinct textures from oak leaves.
			19w03a				Placing leaves into the brand-new composter has a 10% chance of raising the compost level by 1.
			19w05a				Leaves now have a 30% chance of increasing the compost level in a composter by 1.
1.16			20w15a				Hoes can now break leaves quickly.
1.19			22w12a				Leaves are now waterloggable.
1.21.5			25w02a				Leaves can now be smelted into leaf litter.
							Birch leaves now emit falling leaf particles.
1.21.11			25w41a				The transparency of leaves is now controlled by the "See-Through Leaves" setting.
			pre1				Opaque leaves render differently due to a bug.[2]
			pre2				The appearance of opaque leaves has been changed. When the "See-Through Leaves" setting is disabled, all the transparent pixels are set to the darkest opaque color, further darkened by 25%.
26.3			snap1				Spruce leaves no longer emit falling leaf particles.
							Birch leaves now generate as part of abandoned camps.

Bedrock Edition

Pocket Edition Alpha
Demo							Added birch leaves, which are tinted with  #339933.
v0.1.0							Added opaque item models for the block and item form of leaves when the graphics setting is not set to "Fancy".
v0.2.1 alpha2							The textures of birch leaves have been changed.
							The textures were taken from Java Edition Alpha v1.1.2_01 and earlier.
v0.3.0							Birch leaves with shears would drop strange leaves items that had a durability bar, and would stack to 1, sometimes appearing as infinity.[3]
v0.3.2							The tint of birch leaves has been chaned to  #80a755.
							Added item form for birch leaves. They use oak leaves in item form model.
							Birch leaves no longer dropped glitched items when broken by shears.
							Birch leaves now have a small chance to drop birch saplings when broken.
v0.5.0							The texture of inventory icon for birch leaves has been changed.
v0.6.0							The texture of inventory icon for birch leaves has been changed, once again.
v0.8.0			build 1				The textures of birch leaves have been changed.
							Leaves now use rendered item models for inventory icon.
v0.9.0			build 1				The models of leaves have been changed.
							Leaves now release spiders, creating a higher amount of spiders in tree-rich biomes at night (version exclusive).
v0.12.1			build 1				Leaves in snowy biomes now gradually become frost-covered during snowfall.
Bedrock Edition
1.10.0			beta 1.10.0.3				Leaves now have a small chance to drop sticks when decaying.
							The textures of birch leaves have been changed.
1.11.0			beta 1.11.0.1				Leaves can now be used to fill up composters.
1.17.10			beta 1.17.10.20				Birch leaves are affected by biome tinting if the Caves & Cliffs experimental gameplay toggle is enabled.[4]
1.17.30			beta 1.17.20.20				Birch leaves are no longer affected by biome tinting.
1.21.60 Experiment Drop 1 2025			Preview 1.21.60.25				Birch leaves now emit falling leaf particles.
26.40 Experiment Drop 3 of 2026			Preview 26.40.27				Birch leaves now generate as part of abandoned camps.
26.50			Preview 26.50.22				All features from the "Drop 3 of 2026" experiment have been fully implemented.

Legacy Console Edition

Legacy Console Edition
Xbox 360	Xbox One	PS3	PS4	PS Vita	Wii U	Switch
TU1	CU1	1.00	1.00	1.00	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added birch leaves.
TU5							Leaf blocks placed by the player no longer decay like normal leaves do.
TU14		1.04					Water drip particles appear underneath leaves if it's raining.
			1.90				Leaves now have a small chance to drop sticks when decaying.
							The textures of birch leaves have been changed.
			1.91				Leaves can now be used to fill up composters.

New Nintendo 3DS Edition

New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0							Added birch leaves.

Issues

Issues relating to "Birch Leaves" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

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.
• Some trees seem to occasionally drop saplings without being destroyed due to creation of leaf blocks not supported by logs.

Gallery

Renders

• 
  "See-Through Leaves" turned off in Java Edition
• 
  "Fancy Leaves" disabled in Bedrock Edition

References