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Elthir
Grey Havens
Jul 18 2013, 12:13pm
Views: 1405
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The Tree of Gondor hails ultimately back to [1] Telperion whose 'blossoms were of shining white' -- according to the Annals of Aman Yavanna gave the Noldor the White Tree [2] Galathilion, image of the Tree Telperion and planted beneath the tower of Tirion -- from this tree came the tree of Eressea, ultimately called [3] Celeborn, and from this [4] Nimloth 'White-flower' of Numenor, and from this the White Tree of Gondor [5] with its more detailed history.
But in The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Gandalf says:
'Verily this is a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair; and that was a seedling of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion of many names, Eldest of Trees.'
Here Galathilion is the tree of Eressea rather, and it is a fruit of Telperion not an image of it. And there is no mention of a Tree in Tirion upon Tuna. Elrond had said [The Council of Elrond]:
'There in the courts of the King [in Minas Anor] grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eressea, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young.'
So [4] Tree of Gondor <> from seed of Numenorean [3] Nimloth <> from seed of Eressean [2] Galathilion <> implied seed of [1] Telperion.
So according to the Silmarillion we have 5 trees [well, so to speak, if you take my meaning], but in The Lord of the Rings, 4. And that is why in Robert Foster's early Guide to Middle-Earth [before The Silmarillion wa published], Galathilion is the Tree of Eressea.
Christopher Tolkien comments that his father may have forgotten to revise The Lord of the Rings when ideas changed later, but in any case he never did.
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