Brake is a word with several meanings. Aside from those to do with stopping, there are also these to do with the enviorment:
From the Oxford Dictionary: a botanical term for a thicket; from the old English bracu; first recorded in the plural in fearnbraca, meaning ‘thickets of fern’; related to the Middle Low German brake, which means ‘branch’ or ‘stump’.
The Merriam-Webster has a slightly different interpretation: a geographical term meaning rough or marshy land overgrown usually with one kind of plant, as in cedar brakes or coastal brakes.
The Collins Dictionary agrees with the Oxford: an area of dense undergrowth, shrubs, brushwood, etc., a thicket.

The word is often seen in English place names as, for example, in Boughton Brake (a forest in Nottinghamshire), Huxham Brake (a coniferous woodland in Devon), Stratfield Brake (a broadleaf woodland near Oxford, owned by the Woodland Trust), and Combe Brake (another Woodland Trust woodland, this one in Exmoor National Park).