Flora

Golden bell-flower of Lebennin

Alfirin is a plant of Lebennin whose blossoms hang like golden bells. Legolas names it in song together with mallos, while he recalls silver streams between Celos and Erui, high grass, and white lilies moving when the sea breeze comes inland. In the lore of his folk those meadows stay green; during the ride south they looked dark and colourless, the grass and blossoms trampled as foes were pursued across the open land.

Book V, ch. 9, The Last Debate

Healing herb called kingsfoil

Athelas is a healing herb, also called kingsfoil, that the Men of the West carried into Middle-earth. It is scarce on bare high ground and more readily met in thickets south of the Road, often traced by the smell of its foliage. Crushed, a leaf yields a sweet yet sharp scent. Today it appears only thinly and near sites of their former dwellings or camps. In the North few know it, save certain wanderers in the Wild. Its virtues are great, though they may do little against a grave wound.

Book I, ch. 12, Flight to the Ford

Small golden star-flower

Elanor is a small golden star-shaped bloom of Lothlórien. On Cerin Amroth, centre of the former realm where Amroth’s mound stands, it grows beside niphredil in grass that never fades, flowering even in winter. Frodo senses a changeless land and imagines still walking there among those plants. At the hill’s foot Aragorn holds a tiny golden elanor, his eyes lit by memory of what this place once was.

LothlórienBook II, ch. 6, Lothlórien

White Tree of Tirion, Yavanna’s counterpart of Telperion for Vanyar and Noldor

Galathilion stands in Tirion and is called the White Tree. Yavanna shaped it after Telperion for the Vanyar and the Noldor. It is not Telperion itself but a likeness made for those two kindreds, so that they might have among them a tree formed on that original.

Quenta Silmarillion, ch. 5, Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië

three-trunked beech of Doriath, Lúthien’s place of confinement

Hírilorn grows in Doriath as a great beech with three trunks. Lúthien was held captive in that tree. The name is rendered “Tree of the Lady”. The beech stands there as one growth of three stems and was the place where she was confined; it is a tree of great size in Doriath.

Quenta Silmarillion, ch. 19, Of Beren and Lúthien

Silver-barked tree of golden autumn

In Lothlórien the mallorn rises with silver bark and yellow or pale-gold leaves. Branches leave the trunk almost horizontal, then bend skyward; higher, the stem splits into many limbs, where Elves built wooden platforms (flet, talan) reached by grey rope ladders. Sunlight through the canopy can resemble a cool summer dawn. On a green mound tall specimens still wore pale gold about a white deck. No report places them beyond the Great Sea.

LothlórienBook II, ch. 6, Lothlórien

Pale winter flower of Doriath

Niphredil is a pale winter flower. In Lothlórien it grows with yellow elanor on Cerin Amroth’s slopes, site of Amroth’s former high house and long the realm’s living core. Haldir names both among the winter blooms in grass that never withers. Frodo finds the place outside ordinary time; even after departure he would still walk among both flowers in fair Lothlórien.

LothlórienBook II, ch. 6, Lothlórien

Hobbits’ cultivated smoking plant

Pipe-weed, also called leaf, is a herb Hobbits smoked in clay or wooden pipes, probably a Nicotiana form. Meriadoc Brandybuck set down the old notices in his Herblore of the Shire. Hobbits held the custom as their own invention. Tobold Hornblower first raised the true plant at Longbottom in the Southfarthing under Isengrim the Second, about 1070 by Shire-reckoning. Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star come from there. Bree-hobbits smoked earliest; from Bree the habit reached Dwarves, Rangers, and Wizards.

Prologue, 2: Concerning Pipe-weed

Blood-red stonecrop of Amon Rûdh

Seregon is a red plant that covers the bare grey crown of Amon Rûdh. The hill rises at the edge of the moors lying between the valleys of Sirion and Narog. When Túrin’s company came near and sunlight struck the summit, the seregon stood in bloom, and a man among them spoke of blood upon the hill-top.

Quenta Silmarillion, ch. 21, Of Túrin Turambar

White flower of Rohan’s barrows

Simbelmynë, known among Men as Evermind, is a white flower of Rohan. It opens in every season and grows on ground that holds the dead. Beside the large barrows of Théoden’s forefathers, Gandalf points to these blossoms in the turf. Aragorn marks seven mounds on one hand and nine on the other, close to the golden hall.

Book III, ch. 6, The King of the Golden Hall