Two miles from my home is an area of woodland called Hollywood. It has the appearence of an ancient wood, but it is not.
For eight hundred years it was an area of coal and iron ore mining and iron smelting. The land was abandoned and the buildings torn down early in the twentieth century and without any human intervention it has grown into a mature wood. The only things that hint at its poluted industrial past are the uneven shape of the ground and several very deep pools formed from flooded mine shafts.
Hollywood was once a land of mine spoil tips and foundry slag heaps. The polution of Gorgoroth would have been worse but it had the advantage of volcanic ash to form fertile soil.
Plants grow quickly in my rather damp homeland, England. Mordor was much drier but not entirely without water and plant life, as Frodo and Sam found after they escaped from Cirith Ungol.
I suspect that, once Sauron's evil influence had been removed, drought-resistant plants would begin to colonise Gorgoroth very quickly. With very little help from Men or Elves, the high plateau around the volcano could become upland pasture where the people of Nurn could graze their goats in a few hundred years.
[ June 05, 2003: Message edited by: Selmo ]
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