Tolkien's Sonic Trees and Perfumed Herbs: Plant Intelligence in Middle-earth

Abstract

Plant life is an integral part of J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional writings. Percipient trees, exemplified by Old Man Willow, possess the capacity to vocalise and approximate human speech, whereas herbaceous plants tend to be silent and aromatic. While Tolkien attributes qualities of consciousness and memory to sonic trees, he denies similar intelligent qualities to herbs, such as athelas or kingsfoil. This paper will compare the representation of the sonic trees and perfumed herbs of Middle-earth through the framework of emerging science in plant bioacoustics and behaviour. The distinction between the extrinsic and intrinsic capacities of plants underlies a more nuanced approach to plant intelligence in both Middle-earth and the living botanical world of everyday human experience. Tolkien's arborescent ethics privileges trees, endowing them with vocalisation, while constructing healing plants in terms of their use value and associating the sense of smell with a non-sentient flora. A more inclusive conceptualisation of intelligence and sentience involves close attention to the diverse sensory expressions of vegetal beings and non-human nature.