What kind of maple tree? 3 & 5 lobed leaves

daygan

Okay, now I really do want to know what kind of maple tree this is, and I have a lot of pictures. Its leaves are usually three lobed, and I had assumed at first that it was a trident maple, but then I read that trident maples' leaf margins are entire, whereas this tree's leaves are serrulate / serrrate. Often I find individual trees that have mostly three-lobed leaves but then an occasional leaf with five lobes, or entire branches that have mostly five-lobed leaves, and sometimes I find entire trees that have mostly five-lobed leaves but also some three-lobed leaves.

Location: Zhejiang, China.

Three-lobed leaves:



Five-lobed leaves:





three and five-lobed leaves together:





Mostly Five-lobed growth:



Close up of the leaf margins:







Stipules:

Stipules are small hair-like appendages at the base of the leaf-stalk, and new growth is often somewhat red and pubescent.







Underside of mature leaf (pubescent, whereas the top side is glabrous)





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Attached Thumbnails

           

     

daygan

Bark:






View looking up trunk:



Entire Tree:



Trunk width:


Trunk width: approx 13 cm
Tree height: approx 10 meters (though I'm a poor judge of height)
leaf size: larger leaves are about 13 cm in length and 16 cm in width

Attached Thumbnails

       

Eden Keeper

Maples have opposite leaves, but this tree has alternate leaves. A combination of various visual cues (lobe shape, teeth, green stem, etc.) indicate sweetgum, which is often confused with maples due to the lobes, while the location narrows it to Oriental sweetgum, Liquidambar orientalis Mill., and images found in a search collaborates this identification.

daygan

oh, cool! Thanks. I can't believed I overlooked such an obvious identification characteristic as alternate vs. opposite leaves.