I have a tree that needs to go because it is a hazard to my shed and fence and is dying but I was wondering what it is. A bark shot and a leaf shot IIRC the leaves never do get very big but these are just emerging. In the middle of summer they are maybe an inch long.
Really hard to see those leaves but the smooth bark makes me want to say cherry or alder but alders are pretty broad. Any fruit or nuts come from the tree? If not then Im going to guess willow.
I have never noticed any fruit but I am sure it must reproduce somehow. I do have a cherry maybe 8 feet from this tree that also needs to go but this is not at all the same. The smooth looking bark and the rough bark behind it are 2 stems of the same tree. The smooth bark is just a much younger branch that sprouted down near the base. This is my nearby cherry: You can see the tree I am trying to ID in the background on this last picture.
The box elder sugestion made me do a bit of research and go back out and cut off a short piece of branch to compare to tree ID sites. It has simple leaves, not compound and I found some seeds starting to develop that are sort of flat round objects with the seed bulge in the center and a very thin border around that seed. I am going back out now to get a picture showing both. It looks like if the seed pod fell off a tree it would tumble to the ground slowly due to the large surface area to weight ratio. Well, not immediately, the camera battery is dead.
While the camera battery is charging I went looking based on leaf shape on an Iowa school site. I think it may be some kind of elm. In my mind a university reference beats a wiki any day. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/forestry/publications/PDF_files/PM1384.pdf ISU Forestry Extension - Tree Identification: American Elm (Ulmus americana) The seeds I found starting to develop definitely look like the elm seed pictures but mine are still a very light green. The leaves are also heavily serrated like they show for an elm but do not match in another way. Supposedly elm leaves are fairly large at several inches long and I am almost certain these never get very big.
I feel it's some type of elm...I've cut a few Siberian Elms- and your other thread about dropping this tree looks similar, in that it's new wispy branches and greenery are very much the same as here. Bark ain't far off either.
