Yavanna

Nature

Yavanna is the Giver of Fruits, the Vala who loves all things that grow in the earth, and she is counted among the Aratar. Her care extends to every living thing that is not a Child of Ilúvatar or a beast: the tall forests, the grasses, the mosses, the fungi in the dark, the fruit and the grain. She is the spouse of Aulë, and the younger sister of Vána. The Elves call her Kementári, Queen of the Earth. In her chosen form she is tall and robed in green, though she sometimes appears as a tree crowned with the Sun, whose branches drip a golden dew onto the barren ground. Of all the Valar she is the one whose works the Children can see and touch every day.

The first growth

In the Years of the Lamps, on the island of Almaren, Yavanna planted the seeds she had long devised, and in the light of the Lamps the first forests and grasses sprang up. Beasts came to dwell among them. When Melkor cast down the Lamps, the growth of Middle-earth was stunted and fell into the Sleep of Yavanna, a long dormancy in the darkness that lasted until the Sun rose. Yavanna did not forget it; she went into Middle-earth from time to time to tend the sleeping things, and she pleaded with the Valar not to leave the lands beyond the Sea in the Enemy's hands.

The Two Trees

In Valinor, before the green mound of Ezellohar, Yavanna sang while the Valar sat in silence and Nienna watered the earth with her tears. From her song rose the Two Trees, Telperion the silver and Laurelin the golden, whose waxing and waning light was the glory of Valinor and the measure of its years. They were the greatest of all her works. When Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed them, Yavanna could not heal them; but with all her power she drew from Telperion a last silver flower and from Laurelin a last golden fruit, and from these the Valar made the Moon and the Sun. The White Tree of Númenor, and its descendants in Gondor, are seedlings of Telperion's line, so that even the tree in the court of Minas Tirith is hers.

The Dwarves and the Ents

When Aulë confessed that he had made the Dwarves, Yavanna understood at once what they would do to her forests, for Aulë had shaped them in the pattern of his own love of things made rather than things grown. She went to Manwë and asked whether all that she had brought forth would be left defenceless, and spoke for the trees, which of all her works were dearest to her because they grow slowly and are cut down quickly. Manwë sought the thought of Eru, and returned with the answer that spirits would be sent to dwell among the trees, so that when the Children came the trees would have voices and guardians. These are the Ents, the Shepherds of the Trees, and Yavanna went back to Aulë and warned him that his children would need to take care. Aulë answered that they would nevertheless need wood. The whole later history of Dwarves and Ents is contained in that exchange.

The Third Age

Yavanna is the only Vala other than Manwë and Aulë named in connection with the Istari: she chose Aiwendil, Radagast, whose love of birds and beasts reflected her own care for the living things of Middle-earth, and persuaded Curumo to accept him as a companion. In the Shire, the mallorn seed that Galadriel gave to Samwise and the earth of her orchard restored the trees felled by Saruman's ruffians in a single year, an act that would have pleased the Giver of Fruits.

Legacy

Yavanna remains in Valinor. Her legacy is everything green in Middle-earth and every harvest gathered, but above all the Ents, the last guardians of the forests in the age of Men, and the White Tree that stands for the hope of Gondor.

Yavanna remains in Valinor, tending the pastures and orchards of Aman.