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Thank you, both. That’s some good detective work! It looks a lot like a bay laurel, but the leaves don’t smell like a bay leaf. It could be a Longstalked Holly. I had never heard of that tree, so thanks for the link.
Mine is growing under a large live oak tree, so it gets some shade, but it was 108 here a few days ago. I need to decide what to do about it, before it gets much larger.
This is just playing guessing games from looking at the leaves alone and that is not the only way to identify vegetation, one must look at the whole.
If you can stand back and take a full daylight picture of the whole tree that shows it from top to bottom so we can see the form of the tree that would be helpful to ID it since all trees naturally take on forms that are characteristic of their individual species. Unless you have previously cut and pruned it to a completely different shape of your choice, if it's a Bay Laurel or Rhododendron it will naturally have the naked lower trunk but fat, round, bushy, top heavy looking spreading form of laurels or rhodies. If it's a Longstalked Holly it will be naturally shaped like a squat pyramid or a wide upside down cone. If it's a Japanese holly it will be round and bushy and very thickly leafed out so you can't even see into the interior without manually spreading the branches apart.
Also a shot of the bark of the trunk to show the colour and texture of the bark would be helpful.
And use all of your physical senses, don't just smell a leaf, you can feel and compare the texture and you can taste it too. Nibble with your front teeth only on a piece of both a fresh leaf and a dried leaf and taste the leaf with the tip of your tongue. Just a tiny taste that you let sit on your tongue for a couple of seconds and then spit it out and rinse your mouth with water, don't swallow. Does the leaf taste salty or bitter or sweet or spicy or piney or acrid and puckery or sour or earthy like a mushroom or does it burn the tip of your tongue or make it feel numb?
You can eliminate rhododendron because those are not rhodie branches or leaves. Rhododendron's don't have straight branches and their leaves grow in rosette clusters near the ends of twisted or curving branches that are naked close to the trunk, they do not grow as single sharp tipped leaves in an alternating pattern along the full length of straight branch stems the way your tree is doing.
I tentatively bit the the leaf that I set out to dry, and it was a little bitter. The aroma of almonds was much stronger than last night. No more lemony scent noted. It smells delicious!
I took a few more pictures with my Ipad. The tree is pyramidal in shape. It has been through two bad hailstorms lately (goodbye roof), but fared pretty well. I haven’t pruned it lately, but did cut it back in the past due to the live oak it is sheltering under. It doesn’t get much water.
I always liked the tree and hoped it would stay small, but it is getting quite tall now.
Thank you hbd, Ellie, Bamaman1, Cambium,and everyone else who replied. I agree that it does look a lot like a Carolina Cherry Laurel as well as a Longstalked Holly. I think that the almond scent would put it more in the Cherry Laurel category, though, but I could be wrong.
That is a cherry laurel, it has cherry laurel bark and tree form and foliage. The bitter taste and nice almond smell of the leaves is a toxin typical of cherry laurels and is what makes all parts of cherry laurel so poisonous. The toxin is hydrogen cyanide, a.k.a. prussic acid and the toxin is mostly concentrated in the leaves and seeds but is in all parts of the plant. If you keep it and continue to prune it to keep it small you need to be careful to wear gloves and eye protection so you don't get any of the sap or leaf juices absorbing into your skin or in your eyes.
To be frank, I think if you are in a residential neighbourhood and if there is any chance that any young children or animals might have access to your property and might nibble on the leaves (or potential flowers and berries) because of attraction to the delicious almond smell then you could have liability problems. I'm inclined to say you should cut it down to be on the safe side that nobody else gets into it and suffers harm from it, and monitor the ground for any suckers coming up from the roots and cut them out too. That's just my own personal opinion, but if you keep the tree please take all necessary precautions with it.
Thanks, Zoisite. I will cut it down instead of transplanting it.
I appreciate everyone’s help with this!
You're welcome. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I think you are being wise to destroy it. That tree probably wasn't planted on purpose, more likely it's the result of cherry laurel seeds that came from a bird that ate cherry laurel berries and was sitting in the oak tree when it pooped out the seeds. Some kinds of birds do eat the berries and the toxic seeds pass intact through their digestive systems without doing harm to the birds. It's how plants can get spread over long distances.
This is one of those cases where it’s better to know than to not know! I wouldn’t want a child or animal being harmed by this, so that tipped the scales.
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