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.

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. :-)
It's definitely Not L. chinense. There are no L. chinense trees in this rural area of the state, and if there is it would likely be a tiny seedling in one of the larger cities about 50 to 100 miles away.

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.

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.

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
If that happened, I would be thrilled because it would be like a Cottonwood: (triangular leaf, fluttering leaves, thick bark, fast growth) but with little to no pest and disease problems.

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Thanks toronado3800, I'm going to really try and transplant it, or graft it.

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

Graft it and call it 'Onelip'.

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.

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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.

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From far back the leaves almost remind me of a Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) :-)

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LOL bboy!

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.

That's interesting alabamatreehugger, do any of the illustrations below look like the ones down there?

Here are variations of Tulip Tree:
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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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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):

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!

Did you follow up on this? What is it looking like now?

Any phenoxy herbicides (2-4D) sprayed in area lately? That alone could account for this minor leaf anomaly. People spraying their lawns like fiends up here right now, with this very chemical class. Does that go on down there this time of year too?

+oM

If you have let's say 500.000 seedlings there is always the possibility that one is a little different from all the others. There are already some Liriodendron tulipifera cultivars that have leafs that are different from the standard type. Google Liriodendron tulipifera Heltorf, Liriodendron tulipifera Roothaan and Liriodendron tulipifera Ardis and you see Liriodendrons with 'atypical' leafs.

Non-necrotic herbicide reaction in my area (Vancouver Island) causes Liriodendron leaves to crinkle and curl in, without the distinctive shape of treeguy's "mutation." Alabamatreehugger, those "mittens" probably belong to a swamp ecotype; similar trees at the southern limit near Orlando may have the species' best tolerance to flood, wind, transplanting *and* drought.