"On his 'days out,' those flecks of light in his flat vista
of pollard old men,' it was at once Mrs Plornish's delight and
sorrow, when he was strong with meat, and had taken his full
halfpenny-worth of porter, to say, 'Sing us a song, Father.' "

A "pollard" is a tree which has had top cut off, so that it
cannot grow tall, and spreads out for ornamental effect.

I always thought it was done to produce more small limbs for firewood. when pollarded(?), the tree would send out many smaller branches that would grow faster.

Dear etaoin: I think "coppice management" in some cases means harvesting branches for firewood. while leaving the tree to grow more branches. Here in Van Nuys big trees quickly get sickly when their tops expand beyond the capacity of root to expand, because of turf being replaced by asphalt. They cut all the branches four inches in diameter off, so that I thought the trees would die. But they recover amazingly rapidly. To bad there is no demand for
firewood here.

I found this, Bill, via OneLook, about pollarding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
and this, about Coppicing:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

very interesting stuff!

here's a pic of pollarded trees:
http://www.western-road.info/images/pollard3.jpg
the pictures of coppices were less satisfactory...