There is plenty of sand in the Rub Al Khali, but for the scattered few oasis, there is little life in the Empty Quarter. You can imagine my surprise when I saw this tree. The ground water is only about 5 meters below the sands. The rock is limestone, at least in this region of the Rub Al Khali near the Oman and Saudi border, so the water moves through the rock like an underground river. This tree is rooted in the limestone bedrock rock not in the sand and has created it's own place in the desert. As for it's age that's difficult to estimate, but I figure the tree is a few meters in diameter and looks to be healthy and around 80-500 years old.
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