Trees with heart-shaped leaves and sweet-scented yellow blossom, sometimes referred to as 'lime trees' (but note that 'lime trees' in this context are unrelated to the fruit trees of the same name). The leaves of this tree are light, and shiver when wind passes through the tree's boughs. From these light linden leaves comes a poetic comparison: the Elf-maidens Lúthien and Nimrodel are both described as being '...light / As leaf of Linden-tree.'4
There were evidently linden trees to be found within the Forest of Fangorn. While none are directly described growing there, the Entmoot during the War of the Ring was attended by Ents resembling many different kinds of tree, and among these Ents were those sharing the qualities of lindens. Taken together, the various references to linden trees, connecting them to Elves and Ents, cover a wide span of geography, from ancient Beleriand to Lórien and Fangorn, showing that linden trees were widely known across the lands of Middle-earth.
Notes
1 |
No linden tree is directly described anywhere in Tolkien's tales, but we have enough indirect references to show that they were widely known. Two of these references come from poems associating them metaphorically with Lúthien of Doriath and with Nimrodel of Lórien (though strictly speaking this shows only that the trees were known to the authors of those poems, not that they necessarily grew in those places). We also have a description of an Ent in Fangorn Forest who had the appearance of a linden tree, which is rather stronger evidence that lindens could be found in Fangorn, but still not quite conclusive.
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2 |
There are two main species of linden found in western Europe (and hence the northwest of Middle-earth): the little-leaved linden Tilia cordata and the large-leaved linden Tilia platyphyllus. As Tolkien describes linden leaves as being proverbially light, it seems that it must have been the more common little-leaved variety that he had in mind.
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3 |
Specifically, the name linden derives from Old English lind, and ultimately from a hypothesised Proto-Indo-European root *lent, meaning 'flexible'. This is also the source of the English word lithe, and of the tree's rarer alternative name of lime (which is somewhat confusing, as lindens have no connection with the fruit of the same name).
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4 |
This particular reference is from Legolas' song of Nimrodel in The Fellowship of the Ring II 6, Lothlórien. Elsewhere (ibid I 11, A Knife in the Dark) Lúthien's dancing feet are also described as 'light as linden-leaves'. This literary expression is an old one, considerably predating Tolkien. Even as early as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the phrase appears in Middle English as light as leef on lynde (The Clerk's Tale, Prologue, line 1211, where lynde is an old form of 'linden').
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- Updated 27 March 2026
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