Hi, I come to petition to the all knowing group for help.

My wife and I were out hiking last week in teh east texas piney woods
region and stumbled across a very bad plant.

I say bad - the plant just looked evil - pliant green woody stems
seemingly only there to support the vast number of thorns, which
ranged from an inch to 5 inches long. The main mass of the plant was
thorn, the stems and thorns looked very similar, smooth and green.
The whole tree looked vaguely cloud-shaped, but smaller plants were
quite vine like. The largest trunk we saw was about four inches in
diameter, plants were all free standing.

The leaves were trefoil and smooth edged, obovoid (new word for me),
and were mostly shed for winter i suppose. No flowers that we could
see. The stem holding the leaves (pinnate?) seemed to be trying to
form a leaf of its own, with a central thickened area and flat leafy
part sticking out from it on 2 sides in the plane of the 3 leaves,
kind of like the flap of skin a flying squirrel uses to glide.

Anyway, it was nasty, and i was wondering what it was. I couldnt find
it online or in any of the barnes and noble books i looked in (though
most of these were on gardening or landscaping and no one in their
right mind would actually plant one of these).

Thanks!
Jo