This reminds me of hardy, gnarled little trees seen on wind-blasted hilltops in England, shaped by and leaning with the prevailing gusts.   And here’s a forgotten word: ‘tussock’.
‘The beeches and oak-trees and bushes of golden gorse giving place to solitary groups of wind-twisted pines, with here and there boulders of grey rock pushing their way through the tussocks of heather.’
Source: Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse, illus. C. Walter Hodges (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2011 (1946)), p. 82
