leafed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of leaf.

   The historian leafed through the brittle manuscripts in search of a date.

   By April the orchard had fully leafed, hiding the old fences in green.

   Note

   One regular -ed form does double duty: she leafed and the orchard had leafed use the same spelling. When it describes a plant putting out foliage, it stands alone and takes have in the perfect. When it describes dividing a vegetable into separate leaves, it needs an object. The same spelling also belongs to the adjective meaning 'having leaves', which comes from the noun rather than the verb.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having leaves of a stated kind, shape, or number, as in narrow-leafed or densely leafed.

   The densely leafed canopy filtered the afternoon light into soft patches.

   Botanists distinguish the narrow-leafed species from its broader-leafed cousin.

   Similarleaved

   Note

   Here the -ed is the one that means 'having', added to the noun leaf, much as in bearded or walled. The word does most of its work as the second half of a compound: narrow-leafed, broad-leafed, densely leafed. Such compounds are hyphenated before a noun. It does not take more or most, since a plant either has leaves of a given kind or it does not. Leaved is a synonym with the same meaning.

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