The plants of middle earth

[Child of the 7th Age]

Welcome! I do not possess your knowledge of plants and gardening, and I am not sure if this will help you (indeed, you may already have seen it), but there is a wonderful letter (#312) where Tolkien discusses some of the flowers in LotR. He is looking through the Cape Flower Book and says this:

I have not seen anything that immediately recalls niphedril or elannor or alfirin: but that I think is because those imagined flowers are lit by a light that would not be seen ever in a growing plant and cannot be recaptured by paint. Lit by that light, niphedril would be simply a delicate kin of a snowdrop' and elanor a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-gold flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant, and sometimes the two combined. Alfirin ("immortal") would be an immortelle, but not dry and papery: simply a bell-like flower, running through many colors, but soft and gentle....

I am always amazed at how much practical knowledge Tolkien had about flowers and how he obviously loved them. At the same time, when he writes about flowers, even those that have equivalents in the "real world" he describes them in such a way to become "more" than they were before......we see shadows and nuances that are only hinted at when we look at a real blossom on earth.

Have you seen the book "The Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Subcreation" by Dinah Hazell? Lalwende has mentioned this before, but it is a lovely, lovely book. What makes it unusual and a joy to read are all the plates: replications of pen and ink sketches and watercolors. I have just dipped in and out of it, but will be going on a plane trip and am taking it along for a "serious" read.

Haskell makes an interesting point. She talks about how, in the middle of a world filled with strange and fantastic beings, Tolkien used "familiar" grasses and forests and flowers to create a landscape we feel comfortable in. Although there are fantastic, magical plants that have no earthly equivalent, most of the flora actually came from Tolkien's England. There's a fascinating chapter where JRRT surveys female hobbit names and, looking closely at each flower, tries to identify the characteristics that the parents were emphasizing when they gave their child that particular name.

So much Tolkien criticism nowadays is just "same old, same old". But this book shows a different way of looking at things. It also reminds us just how unusual a man Tolkien was.....that we can't just pigeonhole him as "Christian" or "medievalist" or "philologist". The minute we do that another piece of Tolkien---in this case, botanist, gardener, and lover of plant lore--surfaces and gives us a big surprise.