"brakes" means bushes; "grides" may mean "grates;" and "iron horns" must be the dry hard forked boughs; but how distinguished from the "leafless ribs" of the wood, unless as descriptive of the forms of different trees in the wood, is difficult to understand.
"A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'"
Alfred Gatty
Still, Nasmyth crossed the divide, struggling against a bitter wind, and then went down the other side, floundering over fallen branches, and smashing through thickets of undergrowth and brakes of willows.
"The Greater Power"
Harold Bindloss W. Herbert Dunton
They saw a procession to a priest's funeral-one of the regular shows of Burmah, I only saw jungle, and brakes of white roses with rather larger blossoms than our sweet briar, growing to about twenty feet high.
"From Edinburgh to India & Burmah"
William G. Burn Murdoch