Film/Fiction: Trees can be some of the most defining characteristics of a fantasy landscape. When trees or other organic life that exist within the forest become animated, these characters or aspects of the world-building become particularly memorable.
Sleepy Hollow: The mangled Tree of the Dead shown in the 1999 film is the lair of the disgraced mercenary the headless horsemen, and also a gateway into hell. The tree in the Tim Burton film is a contorted and barren tree, it is shown hidden in the woods amid a shroud of fog where its trunk looks as though it has been twisted almost into a knot. Many of its roots are shown like a tangled hearth above the surface of the ground, these dense roots later unfurl and are flung open to show a bloody and dark hole like a bleeding womb that leads into the underworld.
The Lord of the Rings: For many audiences, Treebeard is a distinct and important character from the book The Two Towers. In the film, his character is presented as an otherwise impartial figure who has no stake in the battles of Middle Earth and it takes much convincing from Merry and Pippin to consider influencing him and the rest of his race, the Ents to join the war effort. Treebeard as presented in the film greatly reflects the work of Tolkien, however there is more back-story and detail explored in the book as would be expected. He is known as the Shepherd of the Forest, and has a chance meeting with Merry and Pippin who have escaped from the Orcs of Isengard. In the book however, while in the company of the Hobbits, one of the earliest questions he asks of them, is if they have come across any creatures known as the Ent Wives. Merry and Pippin have not. The Ents are a dwindling race, and there are so few of them left. Treebeard and any other members of his kind have not come across them in many an age, and the Hobbits have not encountered any of the female species in the Shire or elsewhere. This is a particularly poignant and sad moment in the story of the Ents, as their history and origins are told to Merry and Pippin. The female versions are said to have ruddy cheeks and yellowed hair the colour of corn. The Hobbits spend many days with Treebeard while he deliberates what course of action to take as the forests he oversees border with Isendgard. Merry and Pippin meet a host of other ents that are assembled into a gathering, other ent characters such as Quickbeam are present at the council whom the Hobits also speak with.
A Monster Calls: This film is arguably much sadder than it looks for a children's film. A young boy is visited in the dead of night by an enormous tree giant who forces the boy to confront the worst aspects of his life. His mother has terminal cancer, his father has a new partner and family which he lives with in a different city, his grandmother whom he greatly dislikes is going to be given custody of him once his mother passes, and other children are bullying him at school. The tree giant he encounters nightly tells him different stories of various figures that exist in his own world. Whether there is a lesson to be found in each story, Connor struggles to find any moral or meaning in the tales told to him. The purpose of the tree giant's appearance in the boy's life it seems ultimately he has been sent to prepare the young boy for the dreaded and inevitable outcome, the death of his mother.
Cursed: In a recent Netflix series created, the story delves into the Arthurian origins of Merlin and the Sword before it came to Arthur. The main character in the series is Nimue, a member of the Fae who belongs to a race of hunted beings. In her youth she has not yet harnessed complete control over her powers, and many accidents result because of her inability to control them, she nearly kills a number of people. Part of her powers are tied to the immediate natural environment, and when she is under threat, she exercises control over the trees, vines, and other woodland varieties of nature that infect or kill others who attempt to attack her. Much of these powers surface as a reactionary defense, and while she is in this state, green and glowing vines like broken capillaries crawl across the skin of her face and neck. In the show, there is a religious order of righteous holy men that are pillaging and setting fire to the lands of all people they deem to be an unholy scourge. Nimue infects one of the holy men, and a rapidly-growing plant vine eats away at his insides and uses him as a host. Nimue and others later attempt to heal him within the safe haven of a confraternity of nuns, but ultimately he succumbs to his injuries and dies.
Mythology: Provided are passages taken from different sources that examine trees as they were believed to exist as connecting threads or animate beings that belonged to a greater part of the cosmos.
Hindu: Excerpts taken from the work by Alexander Porteous, The Forest in Folklore and Mythology. He writes of the immortal fruits and nectar of a celestial forest;
"Many forests of fabulous fame have been mentioned in classical writings and by the authors of old romances. Hindu mythology tells of a great cosmogonic forest, the principal tree in which is the mighty Jambu, which bears an immortal fruit as large as an elephant, resembling gold, and of which the seeds produce pure gold. In this celestial forest, in the field of flowers and light, the plant of immortality grew, and from this plant Dhavantari, the physician of the gods, extracted the divine ambrosia."
Porteous tells of the belief of a universe connected by an umbrella of branches that hung over the skies;
"The Cosmogonic or World Tree of Hindostan is the symbol of vegetation, of generation, and of universal life, and consequently immortality. It bears various appellations, and is, in itself, considered to be actually the god Brahma, an elementary form of Brahma being known as the Tree of Skambha. All other gods of the Hindu religious system were considered to be branches from the divine tree, which branches overshadowed the universe. In Hymn 81 of the Tenth Book of the Rigveda the question is asked: What was the Forest, what was the Tree from which the sky and earth issued?-the answer being that the Forest, the Cosmic Tree, was the god Brahma himself."
He writes about the survival of the universe as it is tied to the existence of the tree;
"The sacred Vedas describe this Cosmogonic Tree under different names. As the Acvattha or Pippala it is said to be visited by two birds of heavenly beauty known as Kapotas, and similar to doves. These come in turn, one merely hovering over the tree without eating and singing rapturously the while. This one symbolizes Day, or the Sun. The other, symbolizing Night, or the Moon, comes to feed on the fruit. When this tree is in danger all the universe is threatened with extinction."
Porteous tells of the tree as a bode of protection for doves, and a guarder against the serpentine forces of evil;
"This appears to be the same tree which is described in the Ornithologie of Aldrovandi (xv) as follows: 'There is a tree in India called peridexion, whose fruit is sweet and useful, so that doves also delight to tarry in it; and the serpent fears this tree, so that he avoids the shadow of it; for, if the shadow of the tree go towards the east, the serpent flies towards the west, the serpent flies towards the east; and the serpent cannot hurt the doves because of the virtue of the tree; but if any of them straggle from the tree, the serpent, by its breath, attracts and devours it. Yet, when they fly, or go together, neither the serpent nor the spar-hawk can or dares hurt them. Therefore the leaves or bark of the tree, suffumigated avert all evil that is of venomous beasts."
The first of humankind were said to have eaten from the fruits of the ancient tree;
"Under the name of Kalpavriksha this tree produced the fruit which nourished the first men; but according to the Agama Sutra, a tree named Polo was the first tree to be created after the sun and the moon, and it was intended to supply the want of nourishment on the earth as mankind had eaten all the savory and sweet crust."
The tree is written about as a bridge to immortality, where those of the deceased climb through the branches in order to reach the everlasting and imperishable lands;
"Bearing the name of Parigata the Hindu World Tree was recognized as one of the five trees of the Hindu Paradise. As Ilpa it grows in Brahma's own world, and is placed in the center of Lake Ara, beyond the vigara nadi, that ever juvaescent river which produces the waters giving eternal youth. The tree likewise, gives eternal youth, and to it, Brahma gives his own perfume, and from it he took the vital sap. To the branches of this tree the dead cling, and by their aid only are they enabled to climb up to, and to enter into, the regions of immortality."
The location of the tree is surmised;
"Under the name of Kapladruma, this tree fulfills all desires, gives knowledge, wisdom, and inconceivable bliss. It is a Cloud Tree, growing on a high mountain and surrounded by brilliant flowers and musical streams. It was on this mountain that, as the legend tells, Tathagata, while doing penance, sacrificed himself by giving up his body to a starving tiger. Day and night were produced by the shadows of the tree before the sun and the moon were created. Among all the benefits which mankind was able to obtain from it that of knowledge was most sought after by Buddha and his followers."
The gods are written about as they reside under the immortal boughs of the tree;
"Another name under which the tree is known is Soma or Amrita, and from its branches flows the life-giving ambrosia, the essence of immortality. It was believed to grow in the third heaven over which its mighty branches stretched, and under it the gods reclined, quaffing the immortalizing juice. Two lovely birds, as in the case of Pippala, sit on its topmost boughs, while other birds are occupied in pressing out the ambrosia. From this tree, the gods made the heavens and the earth, and it bears all kinds of flowers and fruits now known on earth."
The gods are believed to be interchangeably a part of the trees physical characteristics;
"This great Cosmogonic Tree has also been known as the Tree of Beautiful Leaves, and under it the first father of men is said to have evoked the ancestors, i.e. the gods. The Vedas themselves are said to have been the leaves of this tree. Several other mythical trees of the sky are described in the Hindu cosmogony. We find one called the Kushtha, which is mentioned in the Atharvaveda (v.V.4,3) thus: 'Where the Acvattha stands, in the home of the gods set forth in a golden boat to recover the lost ambrosia, and how the boat was lit up by the tree Kushtha. From this it would appear that by the Kushtha is meant the moon, because it adds that the Kushtha grew the moment that the golden boat descended on the summit of the mountain Himavant."
The various fluids and life-giving properties that flowed from the tree;
"Besides these above names the great Cosmogonic and Generator Tree has borne the appellations of the Tree of the Sky, the Solar Tree, the Lunar Tree, and the Tree of the Clouds. The milk, the water, the dew, and the rain which flowed from them was the ambrosia, that divine fluid or seed from which life was created."
The following story is taken from the work by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists.
The Tree-God
Long ago, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, there came this thought into his mind: "Everywhere in India there are kings whose palaces have many columns; what if I build a palace supported by a single column only? Then shall I be the first and singular king among all other kings." So he summoned his craftsmen, and ordered them to build a magnificent palace supported by a single pillar. "It shall be done," they said; and away they went into the forest.
There they found a tree, tall and straight, worthy to be the single pillar of such a palace. But the road was too rough and the distance too great for them to take the trunk to the city, so they returned to the king and asked him what was to be done. "Somehow or other," he said, "you must bring it, and that without delay." But they answered that neither somehow nor anyhow could it be done. "Then," said the king, "you must select a tree in my own park."
There they found a lordly sal-tree, straight and beautiful, worshipped alike by village and town and royal family. They told the king, and he said to them: "Good, go and fell the tree at once." But they could not do this without making the customary offerings to the tree-god living there, and asking him to depart. So they made offerings of flowers and branches and lighted lamps, and said to the tree: "On the seventh day from this we shall fell the tree, by the king's command. Let any deva that may be dwelling in the tree depart elsewhere, and not unto us be the blame!" The god that dwelt in the tree heard what they said, and considered thus: "These craftsmen are agreed to fell my tree. I myself shall perish when my home is destroyed. All the young sal-trees round me will be destroyed as well, in which many devas of my kith and kin are living. My own death touches me not so nearly as the destruction of my children, so let me, if possible, save their lives at least."
So at the hour of midnight the tree-god, divinely radiant, entered the king's resplendent chamber, his glory lighting up the whole room. The king was startled, and stammered out: "What being art thou, so god-like and so full of grief?" The deva-prince replied: "I am called in thy realm, O king, the Lucky-tree; for sixty thousand years all men have loved and worshipped me. Many a house and many a town, many a palace, too, they made, yet never did me wrong; honour thou me, even as did they, O king!" But the king answered that such a tree was just what he needed for his palace, a trunk so fine and tall and straight; and in that palace, said he, "thou shalt long endure, admired of all who behold thee." The tree-god answered: "If it must be so, then I have one boon to ask: Cut first the top, the middle next, and then the root of me." The king protested that this was a more painful death than to be felled entire. "O forest lord," he said, "what gain is thine thus to be cut limb from limb and piece by piece?" To which the Lucky-tree replied: "There is a good reason for my wish: my kith and kin have grown up around me, beneath my shade, and I should crush them if I fall entire upon them, and they would grieve exceedingly."
At this the king was deeply moved, and wondered at the tree-god's noble thought, and lifting his hands in salutation, he said: "O Lucky-tree, O forest Lord, as thou wouldst save thy kindred, so shall I spare thee; so fear nothing."
Then the tree-god gave the king good counsel and went his way; and the king the next day gave generous alms, and ruled as became king until the time came for his departure to the heavenly world.
Persian: Further excerpts taken from the work The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, by Alexander Porteous. From the imaginations of many early myths, the tall pillars of trees and their branches that reach up to the clouds, do not cease at the heights of mountaintops, but continue to grow into the sky and the space well above the horizon.
"In very remote conceptions of mythology, there appears to have been no distinction drawn between the trees growing on the earth and those which imagination conceived as growing in the sky. As soon, however, as the ambrosia, the divine life-giving fluid fell upon the earth, the trees there took on a different character from the sky trees, and seeded and multiplied, but since that time, unlike the latter, their life, like the life of man, has been limited in duration."
Porteous writes of the belief held that trees possessed immortality due to the longevity of their life spans, many could live well longer than the average human, and already there would have been existing trees that were much older. He writes of the Persian view of trees as living beings or spirits;
"The Ancient Persians considered the tree to be the emblem of human existence owing to the changes which it undergoes during the various seasons, and it was also regarded as a type of immortality owing to its lengthened period of life. A number of venerable and umbrageous trees were believed to be inhabited by Celestial Spirits. These were looked upon as peculiarly sacred trees, and the Great Spirit Ormuzd, speaking to Zoroaster, said: 'Go, O Zoroaster, to the living trees, and let thy mouth speak before them these words: I pray to the pure trees, the creatures of Ormuzd.' The Magians were obliged by the precepts of their religion to cultivate the soil, and they considered it a most mysterious act to plant a tree."
Porteous writes of a race of cloud beings that would have been interconnected with a larger tree;
"Many of the ancient races conceived the clouds as being parts of a mighty universal tree, and as from clouds descended the rain, the ambrosia, or the life-giving fluid, the vegetation became looked upon as symbolical of life and generation. Thus man, in course of time, connected his origins with these cloud trees, which became materialized into actual trees."
Written further is the origins of man connected with trees;
"The Persian or Iranian tradition of the creation of man is that originally the first human pair grew as a double tree with the fingers of each folded over the ears of the other. When this tree had attained maturity it was separated into two by the decree of Ormuzd, who endowed each half with a separate existence and a human soul, as a man and a woman, with the gift of knowledge."
Greek: The Greeks have a reverence for the Oak and the Ash varieties, and various other tales of Dryads are told in their legends. The Oak was said to be the prophetic tree of Zeus, while the Laurel tree was Apollo's. Additional quotations have been taken from the work by Alexander Porteous, The Forest in Folklore and Mythology. Porteous writes of the origin of the Oak and why it was venerated to such an extent;
"The Ancient Greeks called the Oak the "Mother Tree," because their mythology avers that after Jupiter had slain the giants, the oak sprang up from the body of one of them called Rhoecus. This tree the Greeks looked upon as the first tree which grew upon earth and which provided nourishment to men by its acorns. According to Galen, the Arcadians continued to feed on acorns when all the Greeks were using cereals."
Porteous later writes of the Oak tree as having birthed the first humans;
"The Oak and the Ash have been looked upon as progenitors of mankind. The Greeks had a tradition that a mighty cosmogonic or cloud-ash produced the first race of men through Meliai or Nymphs of the Ash, who were regarded as cloud-goddesses. They also looked upon the Oak as having produced the first men, and Oak trees were called the first mothers. The Romans also shared this belief, and Juvenal, in his Sixth Satire, speaks of mankind as born of the opening Oak, which mother-like, fed man with her own acorns; while Ovid says that man's first food was "acorns dropping from the tree of Jove." Even yet in some parts of Germany, the belief is current, especially among children, that babies are brought by the doctor from out some ancient hollow tree or stump."
He writes of the different cycles of trees through the seasons which is thought to have caused the early Greeks to classify them as living beings;
"To the tree would assign a supernatural intelligence, and would regard it as a sentient being. As the summer wore on and the autumn days drew nigh, the kaleidoscopic changes in the leaf colouring would anew rivet his attention, and as the days passed the fall of leaves would fill him with a presentiment of evil, which would be realized by the trees becoming again bare and apparently lifeless, leaving him shelterless against the biting blasts of winter. As year after year passed with the same continual changefulness, trees, or perhaps one outstanding tree on account of its size and age, would come to be regarded with an especial reverence, and primitive imagination would people it with all sorts of beings, such as Gods, Nymphs, and Demons."
With colourful language borrowed from Homer, Porteous writes of death befalling a tree through the changing of the seasons;
"Writers in all ages have used trees by way of illustration, and Homer frequently embellishes his subjects with references to them. In the poem of Ossian the following beautiful passage occurs in Malvina's lamentation for Oscar: 'I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar, with all my branches round me; but thy death came like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low; the spring Again, when old and weary, blind, and almost destitute of friends, Ossian compares himself to a tree that is withered; its branches are blasted and bare; no green leaf covers its bows: from its trunk no young shoot is seen to spring; the breeze whistles in its grewy moss; the blast shakes its head of age; the storm will soon overturn it, and strew all its dry branches with thee, O Dermid, and with all the rest of the mighty dead, in the green winding vale of Cona."
He goes on to write how overtime the connection of the God Zeus with the Oak tree, later became the physical manifestation of an actual God-Tree and was seen as a conduit connected to the other natural elements;
"The most primitive and simple of religious beliefs among both northern and southern races connected the object with the divinity, and when the Ancients declared the Oak sacred to Zeus, they identified the tree with the god-in other words, the tree itself was god, and in very primitive times was worshipped as such. This hypothesis is still further elaborated by the fact that the Oak is the tree most often struck by lightning, and thus Zeus, being also the God of Thunder, or Thunder itself, dwelt in, or rather had his being in, an Oak tree."
What other Sacred Trees or Ancient Forests come to mind?