Exhausted soils within forest, say, providing shock (7)
I believe the answer is:
tresses
'providing shock' is the definition.
'tresses' can be an answer for 'shock' (thesaurus). I am not certain of the 'providing' bit.
'exhausted soils within forest' is the wordplay.
'exhausted' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (the word is emptied out or exhausted).
'within' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'forest' becomes 'trees' (a forest is made up of trees).
'soils' with its centre taken out is 'ss'.
'ss' going into 'trees' is 'TRESSES'.
'say' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tresses that I've seen before include "The hair of the head" , "Long locks of hair" , "Long braids of hair" .)