Some types of Figs have 5 lobed large leaves. Google some photos and look at different types of leaves for figs.

Can you upload your photos to a storage site like Photo Bucket and then link it here? Photo Bucket is free.

Also, where are you located? Not many areas that are zone 8 in midatlantic region...

Thanks for the good idea, Cynthia. Here's the ling to my photobucket album

http://s1085.photobucket.com/albums/j432/EOGB/
2 photos of the leaf and one of the tree.

I don 't think it's a fig because the nursery sells several kinds of figs. I'm right on Western Avenuem DC/`md line, gratuitously heated by the city traffic, therefore zone 8, presumably.

Thanks again, and take a look. Not like any fig I've seen.

Lisa

Here is a link that might be useful: EOGB album

I thought it was a castor bean at first. But when I look closely at the leaves, they are not deeply cut like yours.

http://blog.agriculture.ph/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/tangantangan.jpg

Castor bean leaves are similar, but not an exact match for your leaf. I'll keep looking!

Cathy, Thanks. I posted to NAME THAT PLANT also, so maybe someone in NC and further south will recognize. Lisa

Some type of Aralia - Fatsia Japonica - close.

Check under Tetrapanax too (first thing I thought of was 'rice paper tree' but couldn't remember botanical name). Can't find an exact match but T papyriferus very close.

Thanks for suggestions. Someone also said papaya. Does look like tetrapanax...I sent photos to MD extension to see if they could determine. Lisa

Papayas apparently grow fast, and, if you eat papayas at home, it might answer the question of how it got under your holly tree in the first place. I have found good-sized mango and avocado seedlings in the garden, where we evidently had dumped the seeds with the kitchen scraps. There is at least one papaya tree at the Botanical Garden; I will try to go look.

Thanks, everyone. The general consensus is that this is probably a papaya which neither flowered nor fruited because too much shade an that it will die off before spring if we have any freeze at all. I toyed with the idea of transplanting, but it won't transplant well, so I will let it rest and see what time does, or if that little bird comes back with another seed, or, if my kids gifted me with that papaya, they do so again! Lisa