The Andersson book Unseen Beings stressed J. R. R. Tolkien's love for plants. Apparently, he describes more than 140 plants in his works, the vast majority "real" ones. I tracked down these quotes about trees, which I wanted to share.
To the Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955
I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals.
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph, 1972
In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlórien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things but was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story.
It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because as you observe it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. The savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing.
To W. H. Auden, 1955
…Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called ‘Treebeard’, from Treebeard’s first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else’s work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been going on in the ‘unconscious’ for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till ‘what really happened’ came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon, and their connection with stone. Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war…
Of course, I embrace heartily all the sentiments expressed by Tolkien here, but I am especially moved by what he says about the Ents. Of course. It seems to express my experience when I sit with trees. I just wish I could turn my conversations into... no, of course... there is no way I could ever create anything like the Ents let alone like Tolkien's output... and, on a greater scale, the mythical alter-world he conjured. And so, what?
Well, a few times I have done my yoga at the foot of the Caucasian elm on Kew Green and when I finished I sat and tried to tune it... Here's what I sensed, that I have to let go of the idea of a "purpose" a "telos". My path is one of seeking the next stage on the journey, step-by-step, and following where that takes me. Each step is a gift in a chain of creation, but I can't dictate where it will go. I am indeed walking through a dark place. "Think of yourself as a reverse Ariadne", said the Zelkova, "following a beaded thread into the depths."
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