The Theme of Trees

[Nurvingiel]

I just returned from an Art Exhibit of the great Canadian painter Tom Thomson (who inspired the Group of Seven), and like many things in life, I took my new found knowledge and applied it to Lord of the Rings.

Throughout his career, Tom Thomson has the theme of trees in his beautiful oil paintings. The theme evolves and changes, but it is always constant. He also started the Lone Tree type of theme that has become a symbol of Canadian culture, for example, his paintings The West Wind, and my favourite, Jack Pine.

In LOTR, we can also find this changing theme to represent certain elements of the book. I said in another thread that you can find anyting in LOTR, and the tree theme is one of them.

For example, I noticed that forestry comes up a lot. Ents are the Shepherds of the Trees, in other words they are Stewards of the Forest - you could say they are Foresters. After the Scouring of the Shire, Sam is also a forester - planting trees for the sustainability of the Shire's forests.

Men, Elves, Hobbits, and Ents all have an important tree or trees in their cultures. Men have the White Tree of Gondor (a lone tree theme). Obviously Elves value trees highly since they live in the forests. Lothlorien has rare mallorn trees, and the Elves of Mirkwood stay there despite the fact that Sauron had a fortress in the southern part.

I feel like there's loads of other themes and symbolism but I just can't put my finger on them.

What are your views?