buZZsaw BRAD here's a standout I walked past today. Nothing I could see on the ground matched, shape or size.
Noted your scale of reference was a ten dollar bill- and previous scale was one dollar. I guess like The Jeffersons we are moving on up…..to the hoarding side
Looks like a pin oak leaf...on steroids. Dont know if scarlet oak grows around here. EDIT: just looked it up and all of my state in its range. Very cool and thanks for sharing.
I'd not bet any money on all three being right, but looks like Northern red oak, swamp oak, and Southern red oak. I'm certain about the red oaks - I knew the Southern Red as "turkey track oak" for obvious reasons growing up, although a lot of the leaves will have five lobes instead of just three. The center one is definitely in the white oak family, too short and fat for a chestnut oak, so I'm guessing swamp oak although we don't have them here. I think swamp oak distribution is patchy in NC; I don't recall which part you live in. Certainly open to corrections/ other opinions...
The center is Black Oak. It has the biggest oak leaf, although all 3 are big. Southern Red is correct. The Northern Red Oak leaf seemed too big to be N Red and had me wondering if it has some Black in it.
The photo makes it look like the center one has rounded lobes (white oak family). If not, and the lobes are sharp, then I'd agree black oak. If you'd put up a Benamin for scale, then we could tell that the left leaf is too big for a Northern Red.