A tree : the lebethron
I have long wondered what kind of tree could be the _lebethron_ mentioned
twice in LotR:
"but take these staves. ... The men of the White Mountains use them; though
these have been cut down to your height and newly shod. They are made of the
fair tree lebethron, beloved of the woodwrights of Gondor"
"Then forth from the Gate went Faramir with Húrin of the Keys, and no others,
save that behind them walked four men in the high helms and armour of the
Citadel, and they bore a great casket of black lebethron bound with silver"
From that description, the tree is solid and robust, grows in mountainous
areas, and is probably used both for constructions ('woodwright' is generic
but often applies to carpenters, etc.) and art (the casket of the kings).
As for the precious casket, "black lebethron" might imply that the tree has
a dark bark or wood, though it could also result from the treatment of the
wood by the ebenist (it would then be a black casket of lebethron, with
The name was invented at the time of writing, cf. VIII:176 and VIII:180 note 3:
"... the tree of which they were made was first name melinon (the two last
letters are not perfectly clear), then lebendron, and finally lebethras..."
It was then changed to lebethron on the first fair copy of the manuscript
Searching on the internet and in past discussions, I failed to find any
good interpretation of this name, which apparently implies the stem LEPET
also found in _lefnui_ "5th", _leben_ "five", _lebed_ "finger".
I first assumed that the name could refer to the appearance of the folliage.
Tolkien often named trees or plants after their appearance:
In Gnomish (PE/11),
mavlantos "sycamore" (PE/11:55)
mabinos "plane tree" (PE/11:55)
mabinos fathwed "tasseled plane tree" (cf. PE/11:34)
mabinos gwilbriniol "plane tree like a butterfly" (cf. PE/11:45)
These words all derive from _mab_ "hands" and _mavlant_ "palm (of hand)",
very conceivably referring to the palmed shape of the leaves.
In the Qenyaqetsa we had, on the same model, various subspecies of the
_mapalin_ tree. With latin names as provided by David Salo in his
mapalin : plane tree or sycamore (Platanus or Acer pseudoplatanus)
mapalin fatsevoite = mabinos fathwed
mapalin wilwarinda = mabinos gwilbriniol
And finally we also have the "chesnut tree", _mavoisi / alda mavoite_
(Castanea). This one is named differently: of course the leaves are not
palmed (they are long and thin, with small dents). But they are often
growing at the end of the branches in group of five, and thus the whole
branch looks like a hand where each leaf is a finger, cf. picture:
So _mavoite_, which I assume to mean, as in later texts, "having hands",
is quite a good description (I don't have the QQ to check the contemporary
[QL s.v. MAHA 'grasp' gives _mavoite (-si)_ 'having hands' -- PHW.]
All the names in QQ and GL prove, if need be, that Tolkien had a good
knowledge of these trees and devised a lot of precise names for them.
Back to our Lebethron tree... It could be some kind of Acer, Platanus or
even some kind of Castanea.
But if we look closely to the draft versions, _lebendron_ might be... just
an attempt at a mere compound _leben_ + _doron_, where _doron_, as given
in the Etymologies (Ety/355), means "oak" (Q. _norno_). So we would have
here some sort of "fingered oak".
And there happen to be a good canditate for such a tree, with leaves like
fingers, forming by group of five the shape of a hand, with a hard wood used
by carpenters, with a dark-grey bark, nearly black : the "mountain chestnut
oak" or "chestnut oak", Quercus Prinus a.k.a. Quercus Montana. Cf. picture:
The only weak point in this demonstration is that it grows mainly in America,
and was introduced late in Europe (Great Britain first), around 1688 according
to resources I found on the internet. The standard oak in England is the Quercus
Robur or "English oak".
But then... there is also a Quercus digitata, "Finger oak / Spanish oak",
in French Chêne de doigt, German Finger-Eiche. This one might even better
fit the probable etymology of Lebethron, but I wasn't able to find any
good picture, nor an explanation of its name.
I just arrived at these conclusions, and I do hope the Lambengolmor on this
list will provide their lights and interpretations on this difficult world.
- At 07:47 PM 2/8/03 +0100, Didier Willis wrote:
>And there happen to be a good canditate for such a tree, with leaves likeI'm no aldangolmo, but of Q. prinus the _Audubon Society Field Guide to
>fingers, forming by group of five the shape of a hand, with a hard wood used
>by carpenters, with a dark-grey bark, nearly black : the "mountain chestnut
>oak" or "chestnut oak", Quercus Prinus a.k.a. Quercus Montana. Cf. picture:
>The only weak point in this demonstration is that it grows mainly in America,
>and was introduced late in Europe (Great Britain first), around 1688 according
>to resources I found on the internet. The standard oak in England is the
>Robur or "English oak".
North American Trees, Eastern Region_ (Knopf, 1980), p. 406, says, "The
wood is marketed as White Oak."
>"Spanish oak" is indeed a very dark color, esp. compared to a few other oaks:A veritable casket of "Spanish oak" is shown at
Red oak (Q. rubra, Northern red oak, and Q. falcata, Southern red oak)
doesn't seem so dark on
Yet for the Northern red oak, "high tannin content allows the wood to be
treated with ammonia to yield a nearly black or 'Jacobean' finish" and "Red
oaks grown in the north [Q. rubra --JC] are less coarse textured than the
faster-grown red oak from the southern states [Q. falcata --JC]"
+ Airesseo Kolvorno +
+ Jerome Colburn +
+ jcolburn@... +
[I'm allowing this post, even though it's beginning to wander off-topic.
Although I personally find discussions of the botany of Middle-earth
highly interesting, given that this is a _linguistic_ discussion group
I request that future posts on the topic of _lebethron_ and other plants
of Middle-earth focus on analysis of their Elvish names. Discussion of
the specific species referred to by Tolkien (when these can be plausibly
determined) is still welcome, but only when this is _directly pertinent_
to making a _linguistic point_. -- Patrick Wynne.]