Red Poplar Leaves are the red variant of poplar tree foliage, added to Minecraft in Java Edition 26.3 together with orange and yellow poplar leaves. Poplar trees with red, orange, and yellow leaves grow in the dappled forest biome, and poplar leaves also generate in abandoned camps there. A hoe is the default tool for breaking Red Poplar Leaves, but the block itself drops only when mined with shears or a Silk Touch tool. Broken without shears, Red Poplar Leaves drop a poplar sapling 5% of the time — up to 10% with Fortune III — and sticks 2% of the time. A poplar sapling grows into a red, orange, or yellow poplar tree, so felled poplars can be replanted.

Like other leaves, Red Poplar Leaves decay over time when no log remains reachable through a chain of leaves within 6 blocks in Java Edition or 4 blocks in Bedrock Edition, while leaves placed by players never decay. The red color comes from the block texture instead of biome tinting, so Red Poplar Leaves keep the same shade in every biome and under snow. A furnace smelts Red Poplar Leaves into Leaf Litter, and a composter accepts Red Poplar Leaves with a 30% chance to raise the compost level by 1. A signature detail: Red Poplar Leaves emit soft ambient sounds audible up to 12 blocks away when a leaf block is surrounded by one non-stripped log and three same-color poplar leaves on its four horizontal sides.