For the life of me, I cannot understand why whole hops are labeled “leaf hops” when they are actually female flowers. It is just one of those ingrained brewing terms that defies logic.
Technically most of what you see is a Bract, or modified leaf that is associated with the hop flower. There are many plants which we commonly mistake the brace for the flower, such as dogwood. The white petals of the dogwood are not the flower, but the bracts surrounding the much smaller flower.
It’s generally believed that flowers evolved from leaves. Thus, flowers are just highly specialized leaves that have evolved a different function. Calling them “leaf” hops isn’t, strictly speaking, wrong.
That’s one that bugs me too. I always refer to them as whole cones.
Technically, hop cones are strobiles. However, they are distinct from the plant’s leaves. Referring to hop cones as “leaf hops” is a prime example of one cannot fix stupid. The crazy part is that term is most heavily used by hop brokers.
Here is a CTZ plant in my old hop yard that threw female and male flowers:
It’s quite possible that they use the term because it’s perfectly correct. If the body of the cone (or strobile) is made of bracts and bracts are specialized leaves, then it seems quite reasonable to describe the leafy hop cone as “leaf hops”. I can quote other sources, but my wife’s horticulture textbooks are all the way down in the basement.
The anatomy of the dogwood bract and flower:
Edit: First pic wasn’t showing up.
My Nugget did the same thing. I dug out the 10 year old plant because there were less female flowers than there were male ones. Going to plant one moe Cascade rhizome in its place.
BTW, I see some Japanese Beetle holes in your leaves as well. I have that problem here too, but the beetles don’t eat the flowers, just the leaves. 
At Hop School there was a plant with mixed female and male flowers. Someone asked if that was a cross pollination issue, and would it be ripped out. The guide in the yard said, no those male flowers were sterile. He would know, it was Jason Perrault, one of the top hop breeders in the world.
It’s an imprecise term but visually makes sense. If you tear into a pound or pallet sack of whole cones you’re usually looking at a pile of what looks like…leaves. It probably derived from sales material to distinguish from pellets where space matters and “leaf hops” takes a lot less space than “whole cone hops” on labeling or sales forms. While imprecise, everybody buying hops pretty well knows exactly what that means.
Don’t get me started- flying lemurs aren’t lemurs and do not fly. Language is tricky and often imprecise.
But wouldn’t we like lemurs to fly?