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Although the leaf shape is somewhat similar to a Maple, an easy way to tell that it is not a Maple is by the arrangement of the leaves. Most tree species have alternate branching patterns, but a few species, including Maples, have "opposite" branching--meaning the branches, twigs and leaves are aligned and located on opposing sides of a stem. This branching pattern helps to identify trees even when there are no leaves on a tree.
The predominant trees with opposite branching are Maple, Ash, Dogwood and Horse chestnut. A simple way to to remember these tree species is to remember the acronym "MAD Horse", representing Maple, Ash, Dogwood & Horse chestnut.
Well, after a little looking around, it might be a mulberry after all. Not one like I have ever seen, but apparently there are a few varieties where the young plant's leaves look very different from an adult tree.
Yeah, I agree that this is a hard case. I searched the net for a (long) while and couldn't find anything exact. Similar, yes -but not the same.
It must be Texas native, but growing wild in another plant pot.
Well, all I can add is that if it is indeed a mulberry, do not let your white horses graze under it, or park your car under it.
We learned two lessons about mulberry trees in our travels. Once, we found a very good parking spot at a hotel, because we didn't know that everyone else knew better than to park under it. Apparently, birds love mulberries, and birds who love mulberries, poop in purple.
At the Pleasant Hill Shaker Museum in KY, they had some white horses which loved to roll in the fallen mulberries. You can imagine how that went.
Elnina, you didn't state how big the leaves are but I'm pretty sure that's a fig (ficus). It could have come from anywhere, delivered by a bird that ate fig seeds and pulp somewhere then pooped out the seeds in your plants.
There are many, many species of figs (in the hundreds) all with variations in the shapes and sizes of leaves but yours looks like it might be what's called Common Fig, although there are other figs with similar shaped leaves as yours.
Do some image searches online of various fig species and their leaves. The image below of a sample of various fig leaves is just to give you an idea so you can see here that different fig species have different shapes and sizes of leaves but it is only a small sample and there are many more.
If it's a fig and you want to keep it you definitely need to identify it to determine if you will need to plant it in the ground or can keep it in a container. You should put it in a BIG container because that's going to turn into a tree with a big root system. You can control the size of it by pruning it back and get it to turn into a shorter, round, bushy tree.
Your plant certainly looks extremely happy, healthy and robust.
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