The Entwives

[the guy who be short]

I took the question to mean why M&P didn't tell Treebeard when they first met him and he asked about the sight of Entwives. Who's to say that afterwards, they didn't go back, and the Ents didn't have a last bloom before their fall?

This is quite interesting actually. Why did Tolkien put the line about Hal in? Did he forget about it afterwards? Does it imply that the Ents and Entwives were reunited afterwards?

[Folwren]

He may have forgotten about it later...but he might have added that line in at the very beginning just becaue he thought walking trees would be cool and he wanted to develope Sam's and Ted Sandyman's character right there in your first introduction of the two of them. He might have been thinking more Old Forest than Ent when he had Sam bring the topic up.

[Kuruharan]

Why did Tolkien put the line about Hal in?

I think it was all part of making the world around the hobbits less stable and explainable.

I don't recall that Merry and Pippin went back and talked to Treebeard again, but I may be forgetting something.

Does it imply that the Ents and Entwives were reunited afterwards?

Hopeful souls have thought so, but I really doubt it.

[turgon]

thats a good question cookie. (side thought here)
I always assumed the'entwives' were in valinor when eru reshaped the world at the fall of numenor

[Kuruharan]

I always assumed the'entwives' were in valinor when eru reshaped the world at the fall of numenor

I doubt that. The Entwives' gardens in what became the Brown Lands were still in one piece. They were not destroyed until Sauron burned them to hamper the advance of the Last Alliance.

[Guinevere]

When I first read the part where Treebeard asks the hobbits to look for Entwives in the Shire, I , too, remembered the mention of the "walking Elm-tree", and I rather hoped they would find some Entwives (after all, Sam found his pony Bill again, though that had seemed improbable too)

Tolkien wrote about the Entwives in letter # 144

What had happened to them is not resolved in this book.

And in letter #338 (1972)

But I think in Volume II (the song of the Ent and Entwife) it is plain that there would be for Ents no re-union in "history", but Ents and their wives being rational creatures would find some "earthly paradise" until the end of this world: beyond which the wisdom neither of Elves or Ents could see. Though maybe they shared the hope of Aragorn that they were "not bound for ever to the circles of the world and beyond them is more than memory."

What exactly " earthly paradise" means, is a mystery to me. But it reminds me of Galadriel's last words to Treebeard when he says that he thinks they will never meet again:

"Not in Middle-earth, nor until the lands that lie under the wave are lifted up again. Then in the willow-meads of Tasarinan we may meet in the Spring. Farewell!"

that is equally mysterious to me! Is that to be after the "worlds end" ? (I haven't got the book of Lost Tales) but perhaps someone here has an explanation?

[Kuruharan]

that is equally mysterious to me! Is that to be after the "worlds end"

Yes.