Tree ID help please!

Hi Folks,

I found these trees growing near my house. They were roaring with honey bees apparently after nectar.

The leaf shape is similar to a beech tree, but the flowers suggest it is not (unless I'm mistaken about what beech looks like flowering!).

These trees topped out at about 12ft tall, but I don't know if they are full sized yet.

Cheers

Mike

Looks like a kind of buckthorn to me, but I could be wrong. We have the native, non-invasive Carolina Buckthorn here and I don't think that is it -- leaves aren't exactly like those, though close -- but there is at least one species in the eastern US that forms very invasive clumps. Look up Buckthorn (or Rhamnus species) in a Google image search and see if any of those look like your tree. If it is a buckthorn, the berries are edible (at least those on our variety are) and birds love them, but personally I think they taste really awful. I would eat them in an emergency, but I think I would rather eat grass or bark first!

Crush and smell those leaves, that looks a lot like spicebush to me, if it is it will smell like lemons.