The Encyclopedia of Arda - White Tree of Minas Anor (original) (raw)

The White Tree in the courts of the Kings of Gondor

The White Trees of Minas Anor descended from Nimloth, the White Tree that had grown in the courts of Armenelos in Númenor. That Tree was destroyed by Sauron, but not before Isildur was able to rescue a fruit, and from it grow a seedling of a new White Tree. After Isildur travelled to Middle-earth, he planted that White Tree in his own city of Minas Ithil, but Minas Ithil was captured by the Enemy, and its Tree was also destroyed.

Nonetheless, Isildur was once again able to escape with a seedling and, after the War of the Last Alliance, he planted this seedling. Isildur's tower of Minas Ithil had been recaptured in the War, but he chose not to plant the new seedling there. His brother Anárion had been lost during the War, and in his memory the new White Tree was planted in the Citadel of Anárion's city of Minas Anor.

The White Tree of Minas Anor flourished in the Court of the Fountain beneath the heights of Mindolluin, surviving for more than sixteen hundred years. After Isildur's own time, the Tree lived through the reigns of twenty-three Kings of Gondor, from Isildur's nephew Meneldil to Meneldil's distant descendant Telemnar. In Telemnar's time, the Dark Plague descended on Gondor. The King fell to the illness, as did all his children, and the White Tree died at the same time.1

The original White Tree of Minas Anor had left a seedling, and so Telemnar's successor, his nephew Tarondor, was able to plant a new White Tree. This second White Tree of Minas Anor would survive almost as long as its predecessor, outlasting the line of Kings and living long into the time of the Stewards. In III 2002, when the new Tree was 362 years old, the city of Minas Ithil across the Great River was captured by the Nazgûl. From this time, Minas Anor was given a new name, Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard that stood watch against the new threat beyond Anduin. With the change of name, the Tree was no longer the White Tree of Minas Anor, but it would live on as the White Tree of Minas Tirith for nearly another nine hundred years. Even after it died, it was left in the Court of the Fountain, and the Dead Tree still stood there at the time of the War of the Ring. After that War, another seedling was found growing amid the snows of Mindolluin, and so the line of the old White Trees of Minas Anor continued into the Fourth Age.

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