Trees in Middle-earth

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Oxford Botanic Garden, and was often photographed with them.[1][2] His grandson Michael took the last known photograph of him with this tree, which he named Laocoön.[3]

Trees play multiple roles in

Matthew Dickerson wrote "It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of trees in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien."[4]

Tolkien stated that primaeval human understanding was communion with other living things, including trees. Treebeard, a tree-giant or Ent, herds trees including the Huorns which are halfway between Ents and trees, either becoming animated or reverting to becoming treelike.

Some specific kinds of tree are important in Tolkien's stories, such as the tall

Mallorn trees at the heart of Lothlórien. In Tom Bombadil's Old Forest, Old Man Willow is a malign and fallen tree-spirit of great age, controlling much of the forest. Early in the creation, the Two Trees of Valinor, one silver, one gold, gave light to the paradisiacal realm of Valinor
.

Commentators have written that trees gave Tolkien a way of expressing his eco-criticism, opposed to damaging industrialisation.

"A deep feeling for trees"

Further information: List of fictional plants § In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth
Mallorn
trees

In a 1955 letter to his publisher, Tolkien wrote "I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human mistreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals".[T 1]

Tolkien's biographer

subcreation in Leaf by Niggle; and when his friend C. S. Lewis died, he applied the picture to himself, writing that he felt "like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots".[4][T 2]

The

subcreation of a secondary world. In Dinah Hazell's view, this at once serves a "narrative function, provides a sense of place, and enlivens characterization".[6]

Tree species in Middle-earth

Specific kinds of tree play a role, such as the tall

Mallorn trees of Lothlórien; Galadriel gives Sam Gamgee a seed of the more or less magical Mallorn.[1] After "the Scouring of the Shire", he plants it in the party field, near the centre of the Shire, to replace the much-loved tree there cut down by Sharkey's men.[T 3][T 4] When Frodo enters Lothlórien and first acquaints himself with the Mallorn trees: "He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself."[T 5]

Tolkien was inspired by trees in England.[1] An old oak in Savernake Forest

Tolkien's poem "Sing all ye joyful!" at the end of The Hobbit has in its last verse a mention of six kinds of tree:[T 6]

Lullaby! Lullaby! Alder and Willow!
Sigh no more Pine, till the wind of the morn!
Fall Moon! Dark be the land!
Hush! Hush! Oak, Ash, and Thorn!

— The Hobbit, "The Last Stage"

The last phrase naming three English trees echoes Rudyard Kipling's "A Tree Song", with its refrain:[7]

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

— Rudyard Kipling, "A Tree Song"

The Tolkien scholar

J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia writes that the affinity of Kipling's Puck for these three trees "make him kin to Bombadil and Treebeard".[9]

Individual trees

Mythic symbols

Years of the Trees. The Two Trees of Valinor illuminated the Blessed Realm
.

The

Silmarils, central to the mythology of The Silmarillion.[T 8][T 10]

White Tree was the symbol of the Kings of Gondor
.

Another tree, Galathilion, was created in the image of Telperion. One of its seedlings, Celeborn, was brought to the island of Tol Eressëa. One of its seedlings was given to the Men of

Stewards of Gondor. When Aragorn returned as King, he fittingly found a seedling of the White Tree on the mountain behind the city.[T 11][4] He returns with it to the citadel and plants it in the court, where it quickly comes to flower.[T 11] Saguaro and Thacker call this "deliberately religious language and imagery".[1] Dickerson writes that it is the symbol of Aragorn's kingship, being descended from Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor, itself descended from Telperion.[4]

The Tolkien translator and author Stéphanie Loubechine describes the opposing roles of the beneficial birch and the malign willow in Tolkien's tree symbolism, on the view that plants are not simply a green backdrop but consistently carry meaning.[10] Curry comments that Tolkien's trees are never just symbols, also being individuals in the narrative. He mentions a real-world instance, a "great-limbed poplar tree" that grew by Tolkien's house; when it was "suddenly lopped and mutilated by its owner", he notes that Tolkien described the event as a "barbarous punishment for any crimes it may have been accused of". Within Middle-earth, Curry quotes the Ent or tree-giant Treebeard's account of the traitorous wizard Saruman's destruction in Fangorn Forest: "Curse him, root and branch! many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves".[11]

Fallen nature

Main article: Old Man Willow

Old Man Willow is a malign tree-spirit of great age in Tom Bombadil's Old Forest, appearing physically as a large willow tree beside the River Withywindle, but spreading his influence throughout the forest, who as Tolkien explains[T 12][1]

But none was more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.[T 13]

Notre Dame de Paris

Saguaro and Thacker comment that critics have puzzled over this depiction, as it does not fit with Tolkien's image as an

Revelation (22:2); and that Tolkien succeeds in "bring[ing] all these elements together" in The Lord of the Rings: death, creation, sub-creation, re-creation.[1] Dickerson writes that Old Man Willow indicates both that nature, like Man, is fallen, and that it is actively hostile to Man.[4] The Tolkien critic Jared Lobdell compares the "treachery of natural things in an animate world" seen in the character of Old Man Willow to Algernon Blackwood's story "The Willows".[9][12]

Animated trees

Further information: Ent, Treebeard, and Forests in Middle-earth

Fangorn forest is the realm of Treebeard (also called Fangorn), a tree-giant or Ent (from the Old English for "giant"), one of the oldest living things, or actually the oldest living thing, in Middle-earth. The Ents are tree-herds; they are fully sentient but look much like trees: they have branch-like arms, root-like legs, faces, and the ability to move and speak. Among their charges are the Huorns, which are either trees in the process of becoming animated, or Ents that are reverting to becoming treelike.[T 14][T 15][13] The trees in the Old Forest are not so clearly sentient, but they too convey emotion, even vindictiveness, seeking to impede the intruding Hobbits.[14]

Eco-criticism

Further information: Environmentalism in The Lord of the Rings

Dickerson comments that trees provide "a potent vehicle for [Tolkien's] eco-criticism."

Paul Kocher notes that Treebeard says that ents have a far closer sympathy for trees than shepherds do for their sheep, because "ents are 'good at getting inside other things'". He also cites Treebeard's statement that he is "not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side ... nobody cares for the woods as I care for them", but notes that all the same, he is driven by the knowledge that Saruman has taken sides in the War of the Ring to take action against him. He destroys Saruman's industrial Isengard, whose factories Saruman was fuelling by cutting down Treebeard's trees. After the destruction of the One Ring, Aragorn gives wide lands for new forest; but, Kocher writes, Tolkien gives "ominous hints that the wild wood will not prosper in the expanding Age of Man" that will follow.[15]

See also

References

Primary

  1. Letters, #165 to Houghton Mifflin
    , June 1955
  2. Priscilla Tolkien
    , 26 November 1963
  3. ^ a b Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 8 "The Scouring of the Shire"
  4. ^ Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 9 "The Grey Havens"
  5. ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 2, ch. 6 "Lothlorien"
  6. ^ Tolkien 1937, ch. 19 "The Last Stage"
  7. ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion", ch. 1 "Of the Beginning of Days"
  8. ^ a b Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion", ch. 3 "Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor"
  9. ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion", ch. 8 "Of the Darkening of Valinor"
  10. ^ The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion", ch. 8 "Of the Darkening of Valinor"
  11. ^ a b Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 5 "The Steward and the King"
  12. ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 6 "The Old Forest"
  13. ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil"
  14. ^ Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 4 "Treebeard"
  15. ^ Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 9 "Flotsam and Jetsam"
  16. ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 1 "A Long-Expected Party"
  17. ^ Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 6 "Many Partings"

Secondary

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-26399-5
    .
  2. ^ a b Townshend, Emma (6 August 2014). "Tolkien's black pine: Why do we love old trees?". The Independent.
  3. ^ O'Byrne 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Dickerson 2013.
  5. ^ Garth 2020, pp. 112–131.
  6. ^ Hazell 2015, Introduction.
  7. Kipling Society
    . Retrieved 15 May 2020.
  8. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 397.
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1
    .
  10. ^ Loubechine, Stéphanie "Le Saule et le Bouleau — Symbolique de l'arbre chez Tolkien" [The Birch and the Willow – Tolkien's Tree Symbolism] in Willis 2011, Chapter 1
  11. ^ Curry 2000, p. 283.
  12. OCLC 54767347
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0-00-720907-1
    .
  14. ^ Cohen 2009, pp. 91–125.
  15. ^ Kocher 1974, pp. 102–103.

Sources

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