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| I found a wild Liriodendron here which should be Liriodendron tulipifera, but I could not believe how unusually the leaves are on this seedling when I first discovered it. The most striking feature to me is how it has a center tip. I have never seen any illustration or picture showing a Liriodendron having a prominent tip at the center. The other striking thing is the narrow shape which it also has very large deep leaf sinuses.
I've grow up around Liriodendron tulipifera trees, so I'm very familiar with all there detailed features. The density of Liriodendron tulipifera in the woods here is very high, and I've seen thousands and thousands of tulip trees walking through woods. This is the first time ever in my life to discover a tulip tree so strikingly different from normal Liriodendron tulipifera relatively speaking. Here are pitures:
It makes me wonder the possibly of this being an ancient hybrid with a extinct species that all of the sudden showed its hybrid leaf structure that had been hidden as recessive genes over the millenniums. :-) Here are just some extinct species of Liriodendron found in fossils:
What does everybody think about this discovered tree?
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Follow-Up Postings:
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| To my relatively untrained eye, it certainly looks a little different than normal. Whether it would fall far outside the bell curve of regular North American tulip trees is hard to say. The most likely explanation is genetic variability - just a mutation or sport of a regular tulip tree. I suppose its also possible you've stumbled upon a specimen of the East Asian cousin of our tulip tree, L. chinense. If you do a google search for images of L. chinense, you might notice as I did that your specimen looks a lot like some of the photos of that species, but just as with our native one, there is some range of leaf shapes and appearances. I guess the only REAL way to know would be to take samples to a botanist and see what their opinion is. |
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Sun, Oct 2, 11 at 19:19
| Thanks. Yeah I think it's most likely a mutation of Liriodendron tulipifera. Though it would be really cool if it was a ancient hybrid like I said earlier, with a extinct species that all of the sudden showed its hybrid leaf structure that had been hidden as recessive genes. :-) |
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- Posted by toronado3800 Z6 St. Louis (My Page) on Sun, Oct 2, 11 at 20:12
| If this were a conifer broom folks would be cutting ar it and taking grafts! Congrats treeguy. Good eye. Looks like good fall color as well. Nicely organized post. Go after some grafting material whenever the time is right. This is neat and one of my favorite species. |
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- Posted by salicaceae z8b FL (My Page) on Sun, Oct 2, 11 at 20:41
| A single variant within a species does not constitute a new one. Variation is normal, even if extreme in certain individuals. It could be an interesting cultivar, however. |
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Sun, Oct 2, 11 at 22:02
| Yeah I know salicaceae, I was just having fun thinking about ancient species. A cool new leaf mutation it looks like to me. If you go by the way Liriodendron tulipifera changes from juvenile foliage to mature foliage in the area here, then it will get very close to looking like the shape of a Cottonwood leaf. :-D
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Mon, Oct 3, 11 at 0:35
| Thanks toronado3800, I'm going to really try and transplant it, or graft it. |
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- Posted by ken_adrian z5 (My Page) on Mon, Oct 3, 11 at 9:00
| i cant tell from the pix.. how big is this thing ... is it just those 5 or 6 leaves in the grass .. it might just be immaturity ... i had a real cool oak once ... neat unique leaf shape ... it it turned pink in fall ... the tree peeps here .... suggested that at 2 years old.. it was very premature for me to get too excited about it all.. as leaf shape is not true.. until the tree is mature ... now dont get me wrong.. i want to know the guy who found the next tulip tree ... so i hope you are right ... ken |
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| Graft it and call it 'Onelip'. |
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Mon, Oct 3, 11 at 15:46
| Here is the full tree, I think the stems are probably 2 years old maybe, but I think it might have been cut back many a few times in the past because it has multiple stems coming out of the ground. So it maybe 5 or more years old.
If you compare it to the many other tulip tree sedlings just feet way from this one (all in the same circumstances) then you can see the big difference. All the other seedlings in the same circumstances (all have been cut back as well) have normal seedling leaves. Only this one has the weird narrow leaves. Again, I've never seen leaves like this on any tulip tree seedling in my life.
From far back the leaves almost remind me of a Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) :-)
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| LOL bboy! |
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- Posted by alabamatreehugger 8a/8b south Alabama (My Page) on Sat, Oct 8, 11 at 0:11
| Treeguy, down here in the southern tip of the state, most of the Tuliptrees don't even have pointy tips on the leaves, they're rounded like a mitten. |
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Sat, Oct 8, 11 at 12:36
| That's interesting alabamatreehugger, do any of the illustrations below look like the ones down there? Here are variations of Tulip Tree: And here is the emerging leaf of this new tree compared to a normal tree of the same age and conditions: |
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- Posted by treeguy123 AL 7a (My Page) on Fri, Oct 28, 11 at 20:49
| I thought you all might like this morph I made between a normal Tuliptree seedling and this mutated seedling I found (let it load, it's an animated GIF image):
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| Wow tree guy! I wish had had all the great resources and time you have to put into trees. I'm in awe. You should do this for every native eastern tree...or start a website! |
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