I'm doing a science experiment that requires me to identify every plant within randomly generated square meter plots. Alas, I am only an undergraduate student who has yet to take plant taxonomy; I need a lot of help. Anyways, does anyone know what this viny looking plant may be?

The leaves in the foreground look like a young Hackberry tree - but that can't be it if it really is a vine.

Can you please give us some idea of what part of Hot Springs, Arkansas?

Can you step back and take a photo of the area? Then take a few very clear, in-focus images of the different parts of the plant - front of leaf, back of leaf, stem, etc. Doing that may help you get better answers and hopefully a better grade on your assignment.

Edited to add 'Hot Springs'.

Um... I guess you didn't see: in the title Emily said Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Leftwood, thank you for correcting me. I had been looking in the upper right corner for the profile information.



Punkyemy, Is the plant/plot located in the National Park?

I see Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) in the upper right corner and the lower left corner. Its the one with the five leaflets on a leaf stem.
Don't know what is in the middle of the photo.

The center plant might be a Sugarberry/Celtis laevigata or a Hackberry/Celtis occidentalis.

To my eyes the upper right and lower left look more like a type of blackberry leaf.

greene said:To my eyes the upper right and lower left look more like a type of blackberry leaf.

Yes, it could be. You will know, Emily, if the stem has bristles or thorns (Rubus species - blackberry), or smooth (Parthenocissus).

Yep, we need better photos, more photos, lots of photos.

Right, I don't know why this plant threw me off so much, but I do believe it is a hackberry plant. We have tons of them in our experimental field. And to clarify, this is for a job and not for a class assignment. My supervisor is aware that I am using other resources to help identify these plants. I apologize for the image quality and angle... there isn't always time to take decent photographs in the field. Thank you all for your help!

I found a link to 50+ images of trees found in Hot Springs National Park...however, there were errors as the photos did not match the plant names. I send a message to the park and hope they can soon make the necessary corrections.

If you could send me the link, I can try to get it fixed.

https://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn...

Click on the image to see all 51 images. I notices some errors but I may not have caught all of them as I don't know my Oak trees all that well.

Start looking on page 2. The dogwood image is labelled as Cedar.

On page 3 the Cedar image is labelled as Black Cherry;
Black Cherry image is labelled as Paw Paw;
Paw Paw is labelled as Crepe Myrtle;
Crepe Myrtle image is labelled as Peach;
Peach image is labelled as Northern Red Oak;
Northern Red Oak is labelled as Elm;
Elm image is labelled as Laurel Oak;
some type of Oak is labelled as Royal Paulownia.
I do not see an image of Royal Paulownia.

Hope you can get this corrected; thanks!