Plants in Middle-earth

The plants in Middle-earth, the fictional world devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, are a mixture of real plant species with fictional ones. Middle-earth was intended to represent the real world in an imagined past, and in many respects its natural history is realistic.

The botany and ecology of Middle-earth are described in sufficient detail for botanists to have identified its plant communities, ranging from Arctic tundra to hot deserts, with many named plant species, both wild and cultivated.

Scholars such as Walter S. Judd, Dinah Hazell, Tom Shippey, Matthew T. Dickerson, and Christopher Vaccaro have noted that Tolkien described fictional plants for reasons including his own interest in plants and scenery, to enrich his descriptions of an area with beauty and emotion, to fulfil specific plot needs, to characterise the peoples of Middle-earth, and to carry symbolic meaning.