"brushwood" is a perfectly correct and usable word in written English.
You can use it when you want to refer to a type of woody shrubbery that is typically used to make things like fuel, building materials, and tools. For example, "The villagers gathered brushwood to build a makeshift shelter."
Students are told that if they want to succeed they must be like King Goujian, sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall that great accomplishments come only with sacrifice and unyielding purpose.
He replaced it with less demanding native grasses, and cleared out some of the brushwood.
He slept on brushwood and hung a gall bladder in his room, licking it daily to feed his appetite for revenge.
Removing small trees and brushwood from a forest requires heavy machinery or large teams of workers with chainsaws and axes.
In the Talish Mountains, forests of chestnut-leaf oak and ironwood (Parrotia persica) flourish on yellow soils, while farther north on the heights backing the dry Kura-Aras Lowland grow forests and brushwood of xerophytic (drought-resistant) species.
The high foothills in the east support grass, and forests and brushwood appear on the hills.
At sea level along the Slovene Littoral is a typically Mediterranean cover of brushwood, including maquis.
The higher parts of the Chittagong Hills are forested, while the lower portions are covered predominantly with brushwood.
In the lower elevations of the mountains themselves, at altitudes between 2,000 and 3,000 feet, arboreal brushwood and broad-leaved forest predominate.
Deforestation there had made the land barren, the lake's water levels were falling and, with the disappearance of brushwood, torrential rains had washed away the soils on the surrounding slopes.
