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  • Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd
  • Lynn Forest-Hill
Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 406 pp. £26.49/$34.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-19-027631-7.

In 1982 Tom Shippey remarked that throughout Tolkien's work "there runs an obsessive interest in plants and scenery" (120). With the single exception of his created languages, there is arguably nothing more fundamental to Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth than his conceptualizing of landscapes and their flora. Together and independently they go beyond merely creating atmosphere to confer mythological and symbolic meaning and to define the familiar or alien nature of characters and cultures through their forms. In addition, as Patrick Curry remarks in the Tolkien Encyclopedia, in Tolkien's fiction: [End Page 215]

the natural environment … is treated in a way that clearly conveys a concern for its integrity independent of human interests. … Furthermore, the instrumental exploitation and destruction of nature is identified as integral to moral evil in this world (163).

Nevertheless, recognition of the multifaceted significance of plants in the legendarium has been slow to develop among Tolkien scholars. Dinah Hazell's charming Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Sub-creation gives some consideration to their symbolism and historical and mythological significance. Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans' Elves, Ents and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien and Susan Jeffers' Arda Inhabited reflect the trend for ecologists and ecocritics to regard him as a pioneer in his treatment of the intimate connection among plants, landscapes, and their inhabitants. Apart from these books, critical analysis of Tolkien's flora remains limited to essays such as those in the collection edited by Martin Simonson, Representations of Nature in Middle-earth. The narrative significance of the natural world in the legendarium is such, however, that a new book on the flora of Middle-earth should be a welcome addition to the small but growing list of publications on the topic.

Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd (father and son) are credited as joint authors of Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, but Walter Judd is clearly the lead author of the text. A professor of biology whose professional work has focused on the systematics and evolution of flowering plants, he has in this book produced an extremely detailed survey of the plants that create the distinctive landscapes of Middle-earth. Each plant is treated with the same botanical precision. The scientific detail with which everything is described, from the delicate flowers of niphredil to the ominous trees of Mirkwood is, so Judd declares, intended to focus the reader's appreciation on the diversity of the primary world as this illuminates, and is illuminated by, Tolkien's created world. To this end, the book is intended to create "a visual reference—and legitimacy—for both the plants growing in our forests, meadows, and marshes, as well as those that we have received as gifts from Tolkien's imagination" (5).

Why legitimation of either group should be necessary is not discussed, but this is an honest declaration of the focus of the book: it really is more interested in primary-world botany than in the wealth of symbolism, meaning, and narrative functions offered by the abundant plant-life of the legendarium. In its rigorously scientific approach Flora of Middle-earth will, no doubt, satisfy all those readers of The Lord of [End Page 216] the Rings of whom Tolkien himself observed: "Botanists want a more accurate description of the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil …" (Letters 248). Flora of Middle-earth goes far beyond Tolkien's own explanations, such as his observation that elanor would be "a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-golden flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant" (Letters 402). Flora of Middle-earth supplies botanical details for all these plants and for others which exist unnamed in the legendarium, through a process of speculation and extrapolation from primary-world species.

Seven chapters...

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