Primary succession is one of two types of biological and ecological succession of plant life, occurring in an environment in which new substrate devoid of vegetation and usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from retreated glacier, is deposited. In other words, it is the gradual growth of an ecosystem over a longer period.

In contrast, secondary succession occurs on substrate that previously supported vegetation before an ecological disturbance such as forest fire, tsunami, or flood destroyed the plant life.

In primary succession pioneer species like lichen, algae and fungus as well as other abiotic factors like wind and water start to "normalize" the habitat. This creating conditions nearer optimum for vascular plant growth; pedogenesis or the formation of soil is the most important process.

These pioneer plants are then dominated and often replaced by plants better adapted to less odd conditions, these plants include vascular plants like grasses and some shrubs that are able to live in thin soils that are often mineral based.

Enchanted Rock (16710 Ranch Rd 965, Fredericksburg TX) is an enormous pink granite pluton rock formation located in the Llano Uplift approximately 15 miles (24 km) north of Fredericksburg, Texas, USA and 15 miles (24 km) south of Llano, Texas. Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, which includes Enchanted Rock and surrounding land, spans the border between Gillespie County and Llano County, south of the Llano River. Enchanted Rock covers approximately 640 acres (260 ha) and rises approximately 425 feet (130 m) above the surrounding terrain to elevation of 1,825 feet (556 m) above sea level. It is the largest such pink granite monadnock in the United States. Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, a part of the Texas state park system, includes 1,644 acres (665 ha). Designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1936.

The prominent granite dome is visible for many miles in the surrounding basin of the Llano Uplift. The weathered dome, standing above the surrounding plain is known to geologists as a monadnock. The rock is actually the visible above-ground part of a segmented ridge, the surface expression of a large igneous batholith, called the Town Mountain Granite of middle Precambrian (1,082 ± 6 million years ago) material that intruded into earlier metamorphic schist, called the Packsaddle Schist. The intrusive granite of the rock mass, or pluton, was exposed by extensive erosion of the surrounding sedimentary rock, primarily the Cretaceous Edwards limestone, which is exposed a few miles to the south of Enchanted Rock