Blackened trunks on a white clay pan, ringed by orange dunes: this is Deadvlei in Namibia. Once, shallow pools fed a stand of camelthorn trees. Then the water table dropped, rivers shifted and the pan was cut off from regular flooding. The trees died, but instead of collapsing into soil, they stalled in a kind of ecological pause.The key lies in the desert’s extreme aridity and salt-rich substrate...More