Can you tell us the location where this maple is growing. It helps to speed up and narrow down the search for an exact ID. Different maples grow in different parts of the continent.

please also learn how to add pix to your post ...i dont like hitting links

The second photo is a maple, perhaps a red (Acer rubrum) or silver maple (Acer saccharinum) or a hybrid of the two if you are in the northeast or Great Lakes states.

I think the first photo has alternate leaf arrangement, and so I don’t think is a maple.

I am getting messages malicious web page and malicious link when hitting the first one. Did not try the second.

First picture strikes me as being a Ribes.

Yes, I'm located in Michigan. The trees are right next to each other in my backyard. The area is very marshy as it's near the drainage for our development. The ground is heavy clay.

Jason, the Ribes will never be a tree. So don’t expect a trunk. It’ll be a shrub. Crush a leaf and sniff. Do you get essence of tom cat?

I will check that today. Thank you so much!

Since I miss ID'd the one I figured I'd go grab another time (hoping for a maple) but most of those show the same kind of stuff on their leafs. So same questions for this tree:

1- is it a maple?

2- what's on the leafs/trunk of this tree?

Yes it’s a maple. The leaves have been nibbled on by some tiny creature, possibly a leaf miner but I can’t see enough detail. Not worth bothering about in the woods. And the trunks have lichen. Not a pest and nothing to worry about.

Thank you floral_uk. I plan to pull it out of the woods and to the back edge of my yard. Just wanted make sure I was putting the effort into a decent tree this time.

Silver maple. Look at leaf undersides with magnifier in both the case of the currant and the maple to see if sucking pests are present.