I wonder if it could be hackberry... ???

Possibly, what is that little green ball in the upper right.

what is that little green ball

A hackberry tree berry.

OK, so that would mean that this sprig, which is coming out of the base of a dead 80-foot tree (which was NOT a hackberry) isn't progeny of the original tree. Now, on this sprig, (which has a one-inch diameter trunk), the bark is perfectly smooth. That doesn't sound like hackberry. See below.

And yes, there are a couple of those green bumpy balls on this thing. Hadn't noticed that. Maybe four or five on the whole tree-let. They each have a leaf coming out of them, and look like this ...

Might not those be just fungal galls?

It looks like a Hackberry to me. They start out smooth barked and then get their bark going as they get older.. Yes, that is a gall.

Look at the leaf base which is uneven . That's a characteristic of hackberry.

Yes, the fact that the base of the leaf isn't symmetric around the stem indeed says hackberry. The final key fact is that immature hackberrys have smooth bark. I didn't know that. Thank you everyone!

Yes actually even in the first shot the green ball looked kind of big to be a fruit

Yes, those galls are about half an inch across. Hackberry tree berries are half that size or less, and all purple.

After warm winters around here, the hackberry leaves will be darker and glossier like you are seeing there.