Herblore of Ithilien

Plants of Ithilien in Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

“ . . . all about them lay a tumbled heathland, grown with ling and broom and cornel, and other shrubs that they did not know. Here and there they saw knots of tall pine-trees.”

“All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs . . . fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf,...Ithilien...kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.”

“ . . . groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools . . .”

"The swift growth of the wild with briar and eglantine and trailing clematis was already drawing a veil…” (pp. 257-259)