XPost: alt.fan.tolkien, rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: no.spam@no.spam   
      
   Öjevind Lång wrote:   
   > OK - here's mine. The category is the vegetable kingdom.   
   >   
   > Öjevind   
      
   Ok. Here's what we know so far, as of 12:10 Pacific Daylight Time,   
   September 2, 2009:   
      
   1. It is a live tree.   
      
   2. It is not a mallorn.   
      
   3. It is one of the trees on my list.   
      
   4. It is neither friendly nor hostile, but neutral.   
      
   5. Its species can be found both in a forest and not in a forest.   
   Meaning that an individual of this species (but not necessarily   
   Öjevind's tree, which at our present level of understanding might   
   be in a forest or might not be in a forest) might be found in   
   a forest or isolated out on a plain, prairie, savanna, steppe,   
   veldt, grassland, pampas, wold, meadow, plateau, Barrow Down,   
   regular down, moor, desert, chaparral, outback, badland, sahel,   
   tundra, barren, avalanche zone, lava field, meteor debris field,   
   Desolation of Smaug, troll shaw, Elven picnic circle, sincere   
   pumpkin patch, delta, reef, intertidal zone, swamp, marsh, fen,   
   wetland, everglade, floodplain, alpine area, forest-fire site,   
   brown land, buffalo paddock, armadillo reserve, Shannon airport,   
   Norfolk Broads, Serengeti Ecosystem, pasturage, vale, dell,   
   clearing, field, polder, foreshore land, manor, demesne, paddy,   
   irrigated millet terrace, park, howe, boulevard, golf course,   
   Quidditch arena, playing field of Eton, Waterloo battlesite,   
   Dagorlag battlesite, Demilitarized Zone, Piccadilly Circus,   
   Madison Square Garden, Red Square, Champs-Élysées, Rath Dinen,   
   Pelennor Field, courtyard of the Houses of Healing or Sam   
   Gamgee's veggie garden.   
      
   6. Therefore can safely eliminate some of the items on my list such as   
   known mallorns, Old Man Willow and The Angry Tree In the Old Forest   
   Which Tried To Drop a Dead Branch On the Hobbits.   
      
   We can also eliminate #31 because it isn't a tree at all,   
   it's apparently Treebeard himself, and even if it were a tree Öjevind   
   has ruled it out.   
      
   Now here is the real interesting part. Consider this passage:   
      
      A little way beyond the battle-field they made their camp under   
      a spreading tree: it looked like a chestnut, and yet it still bore   
      many broad brown leaves of a former year, like dry hands with long   
      splayed fingers; they rattled mournfully in the night-breeze.   
      
   This is a tree of unknown species. It *looked* like a chestnut, but   
   might not have been. Whatever it was, it grew not in a forest, but on   
   the Plains of Rohan; *near* -- but not *in* -- Fangorn Forest.   
      
   This could not be Öjevind's tree. That's because there is not another   
   tree of the exact species mentioned in the Trilogy, and Öjevind,   
   even were he a professional sylvan botanist or an arboriculturalist,   
   would have no way of knowing if this particular unknown tree type does   
   grow in a forest, either in our world's or Tolkien's.   
      
   By the same reasoning we can eliminate any other tree of unknown type,   
   unless it explicitly appears at least twice in the story, of which once   
   is in a forest and once isn't.   
      
   This is not a question, guess, query or long shot.   
      
   SQ   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)