Kept tiger, male, without fences, living close to ground (7)

I believe the answer is:

epigeal

'living close to ground' is the definition.
(botanical term)

'kept tiger male without fences' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'male' could be 'al' (shortened version of Alex or Alistair) and 'al' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).

(Another definition for epigeal that I've seen is " On the ground".)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.

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