Solved!!!!!!....Gum Bumelia. What is This?

[WDH]

I agree with Bro. Noble.  Ironwood is usually used to refer to american hornbeam(Carpinus caroliniana) and eastern hophornbeam (Ostrya virginia).  Hornbeam has the very smooth gray bark with flutes in the bark that look like muscles.  Hophornbeam bark is brown and very scaly.  Both are understory species.

The leaves of gum bumelia are very soft and velvety underneath.  The leaves are not hard and stiff like live oak.  It looks like that in your website, SD, but the leaves are actually pliable.

I have some other pics that I will post tomorrow.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah those hophornbeam can take over a sugar bush. You can start out with 20 hophornbeam on 10 acres and do some thinning in the stand, then before long you have 100,000's of them.  :

[tcsmpsi]

I agree with Bro. Noble.  Ironwood is usually used to refer to american hornbeam(Carpinus caroliniana) and eastern hophornbeam (Ostrya americana).  Hornbeam has the very smooth gray bark with flutes in the bark that look like muscles.  Hophornbeam bark is brown and very scaly.  Both are understory species.

The leaves of gum bumelia are very soft and velvety underneath.  The leaves are not hard and stiff like live oak.  It looks like that in your website, SD, but the leaves are actually pliable.

I have some other pics that I will post tomorrow.

They have mild, non-acidic, pleasant taste.  Unlike the ironwood family.    ;D

[WDH]

I posted the scientific name of hophornbeam wrong.  It is Ostrya virginia not Ostrya americana.

I have never liked the taste of ironwood either ;D.

You hit the nail on the head, SwampDonkey.  Hophornbeam is a very efficient colonizer on my property.  I burned a hardwood stand on my place 5 years ago.  Now the understory is a hophornbeam thicket .

[WDH]

My backyard gum bumelia is in full bloom.  The flowers cluster at the base of the leaf petiole.  The bees are loving it, too.



Sorry that the pic is blurry.