Talk:Trees in Middle-earth

Merge with Plants in Middle-earth?

I know those are both Good Articles, but I am having trouble seeing why those two topics are separate? That seems pretty arbitrary (just like lumping trees with forests and not with plants in the article title here). @Chiswick Chap _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

The two articles have radically different subject-matter, and the GA reviewers certainly felt that they both formed workable subjects. It may help to point out that Tolkien specifically loved trees, and made much of them in his fiction, to the extent indeed of making them sentient: he did not treat flowers (herbs) in the same way, and the points made by the scholars cited in the two articles are indeed quite different. For instance, the trees and forests article looks at the pathless Mirkwood, Norse mythology, the psychoanalytic space of fairy tale, malign tree-spirits, and tree symbolism. In contrast, the "literary functions" of plants are to convey a sense of place, to provide realism, and to assist with the narrative more generally. As for why trees should go with forests (I need hardly point out that forests are made of trees...), consider that Tolkien made his tree-giants, the Ents, herd the trees of Fangorn forest, and indeed that the forest was their home, the last remnant of the trackless wildwood that once spanned much of Middle-earth.

It may be helpful to point out that this is not a matter of botany. Tolkien viewed "trees" as quite a different category from "plants", and he would have been politely scornful of any suggestion that his beloved trees were "just plants". He had indeed quite a low opinion of people who tried to interfere with his choice of terms, which was always extremely careful and informed by the needs of story as well as of language and philology. For instance, Tolkien said "hemlocks" where we'd say "cow parsley": we may note that the sound of these two things is radically different -- "dancing among the cow parsley" is far too close to dancing among the cow-pats, to name just one problem. Tolkien knew that the name "hemlock" had been applied for centuries to wayside and woodland umbellifers other than Conium maculatum, and he viewed the attempt to restrict the common name to one species (or genus) as little more than ill-informed taxonomic tyrrany: the species precision belonged in his view to botanical Latin binomials, not to English country names for flowers.

To sum up, Tolkien's writing is complex, and rich in themes. Any attempt at simplifying these will result in loss and conflation. I don't see that any good purpose would be served by trying to mash these articles together, and much damage would be done in the process. Of course, if you're arguing that "Trees" and "Forests" are both so rich thematically that they deserve separate articles and further work, then perhaps I'd say "now you're talking". All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:44, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap Thank you for the detailed explanation. I'd suggest that both articles would benefit from a summary of the ponts you say above, perhaps in the lead. The Trees and forests in Middle-earth article right now does not seem to mention the plants article openly at all (perhaps it does so through some piple?). My concern is that to many casual readers it may appear that we have two articles on the same topic that should be merged; so it would be got to prevent such an impression by explicitly telling the raeders, as early as possibly, we we have those separata articles. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

OK, I'll do that. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Right, I've added the requested cross-ref, adjusted both articles to minimise overlap, added new material to emphasize their themes, and split off Forests in Middle-earth as a separate subject, still in work. I think all of this is now more robust. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:47, 19 June 2023 (UTC)