Live tree ID stymie. Blimey!

[Woody Stover]

These two trees look somewhat similar but I'm not entirely convinced...
Haven't been able to nail anything down in the book as yet, but will continue to look.

Tree #1. Not a landscape tree...lot is relatively new, and is in the woods.
Abruptly long-pointed alternate leaves, simple, un-toothed.
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Tree#2. Maybe a couple hundred feet away from the first tree. Similar leaves, but these are more glossy and have the "fruit," two per stalk. Stalk emerges from the crotch of the leaf stem.
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A few of these leaves had little spur points on the top edge...
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This tree was on the edge of a long-established yard, so probably got better light over the years.
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[TimJ]

I have trees with a similar leaf................I call them black gum

 

[Brewmonster]

Yup. Black Gum, Nyssa sylvatica. Nice dense wood, but the devil to split.

 

[TimJ]

I read on here a week or so back about someone dealing with a sweet gum. They said that it was impossible to split, had high moisture content, and rotted quickly.
I just cut down a dead sweet gum last night. It had no top and was 50 feet of straighted grained trunk about 16 inches in diameter. It yielded 35 rounds and I brought them back to my process area. I split 15 rounds by hand in short order and never had a problem. Maybe it was the condition of the tree being that it was dead for awhile. The condition of the splits in my opinion is that the wood was dry without too much moisture. I put the splits under my lean to so they would not be exposed to any rain until burn time.

 

[Brewmonster]

Not disputing anything you say, TimJ, but remember that Sweet Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) and Black Gum, also called Sour Gum, Tupelo, or Pepperidge, are very different trees.

 

[Woody Stover]

Wow, awesome get TimJ and Brewmonster! Black Tupelo, AKA Blackgum. When quickly paging through bark/leaf section of the Audubon guide, I had dismissed it because the bark pic they had looked very different (not the first time this has happened with the the Field Guide.) If the fruit section I was looking for something green...they showed purple mature fruit...and upon looking again, there is one green one amongst the purple. The pic also shows the red stem, which is visible in my pics where the fruit is gone. Tree #1 especially shows "conical crown with slender, horizontal branches" and "light-brown twigs with some short spurs." I'm guessing that tree #1 is a male since no fruit was evident.

Yup. Black Gum, Nyssa sylvatica. Nice dense wood, but the devil to split.

Yep, I think captoneleg has talked about splitting that stuff and even had some nasty pics. Thankfully, these will be left to grow for now!

I read on here a week or so back about someone dealing with a sweet gum. They said that it was impossible to split, had high moisture content, and rotted quickly.
I just cut down a dead sweet gum last night. It had no top and was 50 feet of straighted grained trunk about 16 inches in diameter. It yielded 35 rounds and I brought them back to my process area. I split 15 rounds by hand in short order and never had a problem. Maybe it was the condition of the tree being that it was dead for awhile.

I've got a Sweetgum here that might have to come out, and was wondering if drying it first might be they way to go. Thanks for the confirmation!

 

[Woody Stover]

Not disputing anything you say, TimJ, but remember that Sweet Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) and Black Gum, also called Sour Gum, Tupelo, or Pepperidge, are very different trees.

There have been some pics posted on here of Sweetgum splitting that looked very bad...tearing more than splitting.

 

[Wood Duck]

I agree it is Black Gum - both trees. Black Gum is among the first trees to turn red in the fall and among the brightest red. The berries are a favorite fruit for many birds - very high in fat which is what a bird wants in a berry.

 

[Woody Stover]

There is another one in the yard near tree #2...maybe I should start keeping bees.