Texas Gardening: What is this?, 1 by frostweed

frostweed wrote:
It was about 20 feet tall with 9 trunks, so it occupied a lot of space.
It died down to about 6 feet from the ground, and some of the trunks died all the way down so they had to be romoved at ground level. I think we have 6 trunks left, and two of them don,t look very good.
That tree has died to the ground 2 times in the 35 years we have had it, but never when it was so big.
Here is a picture of it taken in winter.