I'm trying to build a redstone machine that makes chopping down trees more efficient. Speficically, I want to arrange for leaves to be destroyed by a piston (strictly speaking: by a block pushed by a piston) so that I don't have to do it manually/wait. In this scenario, will saplings drop normally?
(With early prototypes, I get the impression that I get fewer sapling than expected, and there's always a considerable number of left-over leaves so I'm not sure where the few saplings that I get are coming from.)
Best Answer
Leaves destroyed by a piston or pushed block can drop saplings and/or apples.
Keep in mind the drop rate of saplings is 5% (2.5% with jungle leaves), so a low yield should be expected.
It might be worth pointing out, that a TNT explosion has a 100% drop rate (no increased drop loss) since version 1.14 (snapshot 19w11a) as seen here, so destroying the leaves with carefully placed TNT could be more efficient than using multiple pistons.
The drop rates are taken from the Minecraft Wiki page for leaves.