My sister asked me if I could identify this, so I’m asking you guys!
She’s in Sherman Oaks, CA. Looks like a mulberry to me, any ideas?
Mulberry.
I’m guessing it’s female, even though they’ve never seen the berries ripen on it. Can you take a stab at what kind it might be? Just some wild something or other?
Looks like a mulberry with little green mulberrys on it to me.
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That must have been a giant before someone cut it back in recent years!
Damn ugly Pollarding 
Not sure if I should admit this or not…but I had to google “pollarding” just now! Across the street where I work some genius had the bright idea of cutting about 8 huge, beautiful maple trees back like that. They weren’t in the power lines and didn’t seem to be threatening any buildings, so for the life of me I can’t figure out why someone would cut a healthy, beautiful 50 foot+ tree back to 15 feet. They look like stubby lollipops now. I don’t get it. At least now if I talk to the people who did it I can sound good by throwing out words like pollarding! 
lol, that was my intent! Around here, it is favored by gardeners and landscapers for Mulberries. Hack them off once and the tree grows a thousand water sprouts. The only way to keep up is to hack it back every year. Guaranteed pruning jobs every year!
Self-fulfilling prophesy: the landscaper who says your mulberry needs pruning!
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Looks like white mulberry, but I cannot be sure. Definitely not red mulberry.
Around here we have a thing worse than pollarding that we call crepe murder. Instead of hacking the poles off to a knob, they just clean cut the top right off, leaving four or five crepe myrtle poles. It’s a shameful thing to do to a beautiful umbrella shaped tree!
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I always heard it called coppicing, and like you, I had to look up pollarding also…lol. I was relieved to see they mean essentially the same thing.
BTW…I see people doing that to beautiful trees all the time around here for no apparent reason. I think in a lot of cases they are lawn junkies who want a full nice lawn up under the trees. I just want to slap them…hahaha…just kidding…sort of.
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