Treebeard

The eldest of the Ents

Treebeard is the oldest of the Ents, the shepherds of the trees, and Gandalf named him the oldest living thing that still walks under the Sun. The Ents were made in answer to the plea of Yavanna, who feared for the trees when Aulë made the Dwarves, and Eru granted that spirits should dwell in the growing things and defend them; they awoke in the darkness before the Sun, and the Elves taught them speech. Treebeard remembers the time before the Elves had names for things, and he remembers walking the whole of the great forest that once stretched from the Old Forest in the west to the eaves of Fangorn in the east, when all of it was one wood. His name in the Elvish tongue, Fangorn, became the name of the forest that remained.

He stood some fourteen feet high, with a trunk-like body, limbs like branches, a beard of moss and twig, and deep eyes that seemed to hold ages of slow thought. He spoke Entish, a language so slow that a single name might take a day, and he had learned Quenya and Sindarin from the Elves; he was fond of listing things and of the long names that hold the whole history of a thing. He lived at Wellinghall, a bay in the hills at the roots of Methedras where a spring fell into stone basins, and he drank the water of the forest, the Ent-draughts, which gave him and everything he offered them to a tinge of green light and a sudden growth.

The Entwives

In the Elder Days the Ents had wives, the Entwives, who loved gardens and ordered growth where the Ents loved the wild woods. Treebeard's own beloved was Fimbrethil. The Entwives crossed the Anduin to the lands that afterward became the Brown Lands, and when war came with Sauron at the end of the Second Age their gardens were burned and they vanished. Treebeard searched for them and asked news of them from every traveller, and never found them. The absence of the Entwives, and the fact that there had been no Entings for an age, is the sorrow beneath his patience.

Merry and Pippin

On 29 February T.A. 3019 Merry and Pippin, escaped from the Uruk-hai after the Rohirrim destroyed their captors, climbed a rock at the eaves of Fangorn and were found by Treebeard. He had never heard of Hobbits and added them to the ancient list of living creatures. From them he learned of the doings of Saruman, whom he had once trusted as a lore-master and neighbour and who had lately been felling and burning his trees to feed the furnaces of Isengard. Treebeard had suspected Saruman's turning but had not acted; the Hobbits' news decided him. He summoned the Entmoot at Derndingle, and for three days the Ents debated in their slow speech while Quickbeam looked after the Hobbits. On the afternoon of 2 March they resolved on war.

The wrath of the Ents

The Ents came to Isengard by night, and Treebeard led them. Saruman's army had already marched for Helm's Deep, and the Ents broke the gates, tore down the walls of the stone ring, and hunted the remaining Orcs while Quickbeam nearly caught Saruman at the door of Orthanc. Treebeard himself was scorched by fire from the vents and the Ent Beechbone was burned; Treebeard's rage was terrible, but he restrained his people from throwing themselves uselessly at the tower. He turned the waters of the Isen through Saruman's caverns and drowned them. Meanwhile the Huorns, at his sending, went to the Hornburg and swallowed the fleeing Orc-army of Saruman on the morning of 4 March. When Gandalf and Théoden came to Isengard on 5 March, Treebeard met them as master of the ruin.

Keeper of Orthanc

Treebeard undertook to keep Saruman in his tower, and did so through the spring and summer. But he hated caging any living thing, and on 15 August, when Saruman gave his word and seemed harmless, Treebeard let him go, together with Gríma. Gandalf did not blame him. When the company of the King passed on its way north, Treebeard bade farewell to Merry and Pippin, and to Legolas and Gimli, and greeted Celeborn and Galadriel, whom he had known in the Elder Days. Aragorn gave the Ents the valley of Isengard, and Treebeard planted it anew as the Treegarth of Orthanc, keeping the Watchwood about the tower.

Legacy

Treebeard remains in Fangorn in the Fourth Age, and the forest, once more spreading, is his monument. He and Galadriel parted with the acknowledgement that they would not meet again in Middle-earth, and the doom of the Ents, to dwindle as the Entwives remained lost, hangs over him. Yet without him and the Ents Saruman would have had Rohan, and the West would have faced two enemies instead of one.

Treebeard remains in Fangorn and the Treegarth of Orthanc in the Fourth Age, still without news of the Entwives.