The Tolkien scholars Shelley Saguaro and Deborah Cogan Thacker write that while it might seem that Tolkien is using trees and forests mainly to represent the natural world, as against the industrial modern world, they are rather 'a multi-layered portrayal, with subtle links to fairy tale and folklore, and complex psychological symbolism.' They note that forests recur in fairy stories, as places where the protagonist becomes lost, where witches and woodcutters and wolves live. For Tolkien critic Tom Shippey, the mention of Mirkwood is an echo of the Norse mythology of the Elder Edda, with the pathless forests of the North over the Misty Mountains mentioned in one of the poems in the Edda, the Skirnismal.

Indeed, while Middle-earth was still 'in a twilight under the stars', the 'oldest living things had arisen. Tolkien makes use of forests across Middle-earth, from the Trollshaws and Mirkwood in The Hobbit, reappearing in The Lord of the Rings, to the Old Forest, Lothlórien, and Fangorn which feature in chapters of The Lord of the Rings, and the great forests of Beleriand and Valinor mentioned in The Silmarillion. Early in the creation, the Two Trees of Valinor, one silver, one gold, gave light to the paradisiacal realm of Valinor.Ĭommentators have written that trees gave Tolkien a way of expressing his eco-criticism, opposed to damaging industrialisation. In Tom Bombadil's Old Forest, Old Man Willow is a malign and fallen tree-spirit of great age, controlling much of the forest. Some specific kinds of tree are important in Tolkien's stories, such as the tall Mallorn trees at the heart of Lothlórien. Fangorn Forest is the realm of Treebeard, a tree-giant or Ent, who herds trees including the Huorns which are halfway between Ents and trees, either becoming animated or reverting to becoming treelike. In The Lord of the Rings, forests are more complex some trees are woken up by the Elves, while others are going bad. In The Hobbit, Mirkwood is the dark forbidding forest of fairy tale. Tolkien stated that primeval human understanding was communion with other living things critics note that Middle-earth was set in the distant past, when primeval forests still existed. Indeed, the Tolkien scholar Matthew Dickerson wrote 'It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of trees in the writings of J. Both for Tolkien personally, and in his Middle-earth writings, caring about trees really mattered.

Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth, some such as Old Man Willow indeed serving as characters in the plot. Trees and forests play multiple roles in J. Tolkien loved trees, here the black pine in the Oxford Botanic Garden, and was often photographed with them.

The Annotated Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien