Some “arid” Australian rockfaces cause some humans to revise their notions of trees’ “minimum requirements”.
The pictured ghost gum is growing on the eastern wall of Ormiston Gorge, 135 kilometres west of Alice Springs.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken in Ormiston Gorge, Western MacDonnell Ranges, at 11.05 am on 17 June 2023.
Q: what is going on here?
A: I am not sure, but I think that a larger ghost gum had previously thrived in the same location, until it was either killed by fire, or fatally wounded by a too-strong wind, or (most likely, I suspect) it had simply snapped off after too much of its own weight had extended too far from the tree’s stump/rockface anchor.
Seemingly-deceased eucalypts sometimes manage to reshoot, then start afresh; a “new” tree can rise out of an old one’s apparently-lifeless stump.
In this instance, the new tree has also wrapped its new roots/anchors around the old stump.