FredL

Veblen, back at dear old Rutgers, the final exam in an advanced class in the Forestry Department was to give the student a handfull of litter from the floor of one of the nearby forests and have him(her) identify every stick, leaf and fragment contained therein. Your pictures had me thinking back to that test! Boy, you don't want to make this any easier than you have to, do you?

Well.....the pictures look to me like Red or Sweet Gum, Liquidambar styraciflua, if memory serves me. The leaves appear to be alternate rather than opposite, for one thing and they look thicker and shaped like typical Red Gum leaves. The bark, I'm not sure of. It looks in the ballpark for Red Gum, even if not quite exactly typical. The dead give away is the seed pods on adult trees. This ones a little young for that, but if you know where the parent tree is, check for "Gum Balls" underneath it.

Fred