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Dragon's blood tree

A stout trunk forking and forking again, its many branches fanning up like an umbrella blown inside out into a thick, round-topped mushroom of leaves.

About 4.5 m tall out in the open.

Land How many of the trees
Desert Very rare: one tree spot in twenty away from water

Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

It leafs out in spring, its bare twigs budding green first. In autumn its leaves turn yellow, orange or red, tree by tree, each tree in its own time, then fall pixel by pixel until the crown is bare twigs. It stands bare through the winter. In the warm south, where it never grows cold, it keeps its leaves all year.

Its trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. Wildfire leaves it black and bare, and burnt or felled ground grows back over about four years.