[Pervinca Took]

The references to and descriptions of flowers certainly add to my enjoyment of the books, and there is no doubt that they add to the texture, depth and verisimilitude of the stories. I am not very widely read in fantasy writing apart from Tolkien, but I wonder if this seemingly small detail could be one manifestation of why Tolkien's Middle-earth is so utterly convincing? Because he cared about details like flowers and the moon rising and setting in the right place? A 'traditionally' feminine concern (the first of these) which showed the kind of depth and attention to detail that sets him apart from quite a lot of other writers?

And who can forget this very moving example, from Journey to the Cross-roads? Only the last sentence of it is spoken by Frodo in the book, but the narrative before it was also put into Frodo's lines in the BBC version. It went something like this:

'But look, Sam. He wears a crown again. A crown of trailing flowers, like white stars. They cannot conquer forever!'

Another very memorable sentence for me, also from Book IV, is:

'Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate, kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.' That may not refer to a particular flower, but I think it follows references to anemones and other wild blooms.

Pitchwife, I too have often wondered about all the flowers mentioned outside the Shire (and Ithilien) being white or golden (except for seregon, which I don't think is mentioned in LOTR). Funnily enough, even the Shire flower Sam mentions when referring to Galadriel is a 'daffadowndilly.' Ithilien's flora has all the colours of the rainbow, I think, and the Shire's certainly has ... it seems to be mainly the flowers not of our world (or Age of the world) that are white or gold (although niphredil is as near as damn it a snowdrop).

If there is a symbolic level to it, the white and gold of the flowers makes me think of inner purification and sublimation coming with the travails of the quest; a centering of all efforts on that one goal; a sanctification through suffering. Very like the light that began to shine in Frodo and was even stronger in Ithilien. At the time when elanor and niphredil were first mentioned, Gandalf had just sacrificed himself, and that seemed to me to set a clear precedent for Frodo, which is evident from the way he speaks and acts from then on, even if it still takes Boromir's attack to make him finally leave the company. Aragorn is also holding a bloom of elanor at Cerin Amroth when he speaks to Frodo of the dark paths that they still must tread.