Anyone know what kind of plant, tree, bush thing this is?

[Tawmis]

So, it's weird. There's three of them popping up in my front yard. At first I believed them to be weeds. But then they're taking on a form that resembles a very young tree or bush. Yet... when I look at them - they don't resemble any other tree in or around my yard - so I can't figure out - if they are indeed a bush or tree of some sort - how it is that three seeds have landed in my yard to begin growing.

Anyone have any idea what kind of plant/bush/tree this is?

(Images removed/archived)

[BBP]

I'm looking through plant keys on-line. It's a little hard working from those photos (like defining the plant texture), but maybe you could check the key here or post the images of the plant on the forum there.

[Jules]

I'm 95% sure it's a plum tree. My neighbor has two and gave one to us and the leaf shape and whorl look very similar. I've seen many plum trees but never seen one with leaves shaped like this until my neighbor gave us one. It may be an ornamental?

[Rath Darkblade]

It's definitely not a burning bush... or a George Bush...

Sorry, I have no idea about bushes. But I hope my little crack raised a smile.

[Tawmis]

It's definitely not a burning bush... or a George Bush...
Sorry, I have no idea about bushes. But I hope my little crack raised a smile.

Thank the gods it's not a George Bush... I am growing three of them!

I'm looking through plant keys on-line. It's a little hard working from those photos (like defining the plant texture), but maybe you could check the key here or post the images of the plant on the forum there.

OoOoOooOoo. Very cool. I will have to check that out more!

I'm 95% sure it's a plum tree. My neighbor has two and gave one to us and the leaf shape and whorl look very similar. I've seen many plum trees but never seen one with leaves shaped like this until my neighbor gave us one. It may be an ornamental?

I believe, you may be right, missy! (Not a surprising - being the gardener of the group and all!)

So I did a search for "plum tree" - and had too many results in the images, of entire trees. So I did "plum tree leaf" and found a site that had this on it:

From this site - and by all means, that looks like a full sized version of it.

I am just baffled where the seeds came from that landed in my yard... while there's three growing now (the one I photoed in the first message is the tallest, the other two are smaller) - the first one I had believed, as I said, a weed, and ripped it out. These three I had left alone to see what they were this time...

[Jules]

I’m so glad you found it! I tried googling ‘plum tree’ but got WAY too many diverse results.

Since the seeds would be too heavy to be blown by the wind, a bird or squirrel might have pooped them in your yard.

[BBP]

Just a silly tip Tawm: be careful with falling in love with baby trees.

One day, many years go, we found a tiny acacia sapling in our front yard (which has little but rocks and weeds). My sister was enamoured with it and planted in the rear corner of the back yard. We already had an acacia on the other side of the garden, that was growing to be very pretty.

And next year, we had 6 baby acacias. We removed all of those, but one near the yuccas was overlooked. So we had 3 acacias growing.

The year after the two new ones had grown too big to our liking, so Dad cutoff all the branches. They came back during the summer, and a stray branch with thorns gave me a puncture.

The year after he repeated these moves, only to find the trees had grown further. The big acacia had grown so big it's taking all the light away from my strawberry patch, causing them to crawl into the lawn.

This year he had enough. We discovered that acacias gan also grow by roots and that many saplings were attached to the root of the large tree.
As we had a big patch of sand (to re-sow a bit of over-mossed lawn) we sudenly had twelve babies. We removed them and Dad chopped off the roots. And we got a few thorn stings.

Be careful with those: the website you found that on says those trees can grow 30 feet, that's 10 metres, that takes away a LOT of sun from the surrounding plants!

[Tawmis]

I’m so glad you found it! I tried googling ‘plum tree’ but got WAY too many diverse results.

Since the seeds would be too heavy to be blown by the wind, a bird or squirrel might have pooped them in your yard.

Those are some determined squirrels (or birds)... because they were growing last year as well, and the gardener yanked them out. This time I told him to leave them because I was curious about them.

Just a silly tip Tawm: be careful with falling in love with baby trees.

Be careful with those: the website you found that on says those trees can grow 30 feet, that's 10 metres, that takes away a LOT of sun from the surrounding plants!

If they are indeed Plum Trees, I will attempt to move them to a better area. Not because I am concerned about the surrounding plants... but more so because where they are growing there is already a very massive tree... so I'd move them to a more bare portion of the yard, and be sure to water them and grow them. Because if they are plum trees, that's pretty cool.

I should snap a few pictures of my front yard (for as long as we have this house, anyway...)