Quick! A question!

[desperance]

So I had cause to enquire online about definitions of quick the noun, and I found - inter alia - this:

Chiefly British .
a.
a line of shrubs or plants, especially of hawthorn, forming a hedge.
b.
a single shrub or plant in such a hedge.


Now I am in fact chiefly British, and I have never come across this usage. Is this just my gardeny ignorance? Do people talk all the time about a quick of hawthorn? I think it's rather lovely, but it's utterly new to me.

Comments

[flick]

Not in the Peaks, they don't. May be a Southerner thing?

[hunningham]

How about a quickset hedge? That's one I have come across. I think you can have a quickset hedge, or a laid hedge but am extremely vague about the meanings.

[desperance]

I know about laying a hedge, but that's process rather than constituents. I too have heard quickset - good call! - but I don't know what it means, whether it stands in opposition to laid or somewhat else entirely.

*googles*

Aha! Very good call:

1.
a. a plant or cutting, esp of hawthorn, set so as to form a hedge
b. such plants or cuttings collectively
2. a hedge composed of such plants

[inamac]

Ooooh, that's interesting. I know 'quickset hedge' so assume that 'quick' is the root form and has the same meaning of 'quick' as opposed to 'dead' (a quickset hedge being upright and growing, while a laid hedge is, well, cut through at the base and laid prone/dead.)

You learn something every day!

[desperance]

...except that laid hedges aren't dead, that's the whole art of it: prone certainly, but you leave enough connection at the base that they don't die.