Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Author at Macska Moksha Press

Lothlórien: “The air of timeless Elvish enchantment”

June 17, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The Celebrant River through Lothlórien, by Anarlosse.

Among all the forests in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium—Mirkwood, the Old Forest, Fangorn, and all the other woods named and unnamed—Lothlórien is singular for being more Elvish manifestation than natural ecosystem. The prevailing tree is the mallorn, which is not only an invention of Tolkien, but is an introduced species (proponents of today’s “invasive plant” narrative would orcishly call for its elimination) and further, the “Golden Wood” as a protected haven and a place of enchantment was brought into being and sustained by the Lady Galadriel through the power she wielded.

Lothlórien, aka Lórien, is located between the confluence of two rivers: the Anduin to the east and the Celebrant, aka the Silverlode, along the southwest, in an angle of land called the Naith, which is Elvish for “spear point.” I’m not including a Middle-earth map here for copyright reasons, but you can look at one here; Lothlórien is in almost the exact center. Elves have dwelt there for many millennia, since before the Sun and Moon. Dwarves also lived in the vicinity for about as long in the nearby Mines of Moria, originally known as Khazad-dûm, in the Misty Mountains, a day’s journey to the northwest. But it wasn’t always the special place the Fellowship visits on their way south.

We Need to Talk about Animal Ag

June 7, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Young cattle in Little Stonham, Suffolk, UK. [Credit: Keith Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Meat is a contentious subject in the United States. Questions like whether or not it’s a) healthy for humans to eat meat, b) ethical to kill animals for meat, or c) ethical to confine animals to raise them for meat, etc., can be discussed by well-informed people in good faith, but often (usually?) they’re not. For the time being, the discussion revolves around contradictory beliefs that cannot be reconciled.

I won’t be wading into any of that today.

My subject here is the environmental impact of animal agriculture. This impact is factual and quantifiable regardless of what one believes about what one should or shouldn’t do or eat. I will be addressing four categories of impact: land use, water use, pollution and climate.

Ents!

May 17, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“The Ents destroying Isengard” by Melya-Anna

The Ents are a fan favorite in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LotR), and no wonder: Narratively, they’re the tree defenders vs. the tree killers, and they win. Metaphorically, they are Nature fighting Industry, the wild resisting exploitation, freedom asserting itself against oppression. What’s not to love?

The Murder of Prometheus

May 7, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Stump of Prometheus. [Credit: Jrbouldin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

On August 6^th, 1964, one of the world’s oldest living trees was tragically cut down.

The event is instructive for what it demonstrates about how Western culture and science view more-than-human life. The scandal that erupted eventually contributed to the establishment of Great Basin National Park, which, though that gives the area some protections, doesn’t make up for the irreplaceable loss. People would probably like to think that something like this couldn’t happen again—I would like to think that it couldn’t—but I’m honestly not sure that’s the case. Let’s get into it.

The Old Forest: Ambiguity in Storytelling

April 17, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice.
—The Fellowship of the Ring, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”

Old Man Willow, by lord-phillock

The tone of The Lord of the Rings [LotR] famously contrasts with The Hobbit. Whereas The Hobbit is essentially a light and amusing children’s book, LotR is darker and more serious. J.R.R. Tolkien was aware of this and in the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring he gradually bridges the gap, leading the reader through stylistic and thematic transitions, with Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin’s first adventure outside the Shire—their trek through the Old Forest—falling somewhere between the whimsy of The Hobbit and the weightiness of The Return of the King. (If you have only seen Peter Jackson’s LotR movies and never read the books, the Old Forest will be new to you, as Jackson left it out.)

What’s Not “Clean” about Solar Panels

April 7, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Solar panel array in Manchester, Vermont. [Credit: MarkBuckawicki, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

I recently saw someone online wax poetic about how solar panels are so benign because they don’t leak oil or emit air pollution or make noise like machinery running on fossil fuels. “They just sit there,” he said, doing their thing. While I agree that we must reduce fossil fuel use for the good of the planet, I must point out that solar panels are not benign.

Like any technological product manufactured by industrial processes from raw materials extracted from the earth, solar panels have an ecological footprint that negatively impacts the more-than-human world.

Currently, the subject of these impacts is most often ignored or when it’s not, is usually hand-waved away. After all, the carbon-centric narrative goes, with the climate crisis being such an existential threat, we must do anything we can to “decarbonize” and that means scaling up solar, wind, etc., as fast as possible. As regular readers will know, I have long advocated for cutting overall energy use and consumption rather than trying to sustain current levels with alternate means. To emphasize: my critique of “green” or “clean” energy is from an environmental perspective, and be assured I’m far from a climate denier.

Spring Wildflowers in New Mexico: Photos and botanical fun facts

March 31, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I had hoped to travel to southern California this year for the spectacular wildflower bloom, but I was delayed by illness and then discouraged by the high gas prices that followed. Fortunately for me, autumn and winter rains were plentiful here in the upper Gila River valley of southwestern New Mexico, so there is an enjoyable variety of flowering plants here, including ones I haven’t met before. The format here is borrowed from my website, Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country, an online botanical guide to some of the flora of the Mojave Desert, and I have raided the text when it fit here too. I also have to shout out two very useful websites: 1) California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations—An Annotated Dictionary of Botanical and Biographical Etymology compiled by Michael L. Charters, which is an impressive labor of love. 2) Daniel Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany Database, which is also available in book form, and is even more impressive.

I took multiple photos of most of these plants. If you’d like to see more, check out my observations on iNaturalist.

I believe nature literacy is more important than ever in our screen-centric society, so I hope this on-screen presentation encourages you to get out and look at what’s blooming in your own corner of the world, wherever you are. Not just to “touch grass” but to ID it, demystify its scientific name, find out how humans and more-than-humans alike interact with it, and discover your own feelings for it.

Arizona Phacelia (Phacelia arizonica)

Life cycle: Annual herb

Family: Borage (Boraginaceae)

Also known as: Arizona Scorpionweed, Caterpillar Weed. “Scorpionweed” refers to the curled up inflorescence, shaped somewhat like a Scorpion’s stinger.

Translation: “Phacelia” is Greek for “a cluster,” which describes the crowded flowers in many species of this genus; “arizonica” is just Arizona, where it is prevalent.

Ethnobotany: Native Americans used various species of Phacelia medicinally, but I couldn’t find information about this species.

Ecological associations: Pollinated primarily by bees, including Bumblebees, Sweat Bees, and Mason Bees. Butterflies also feed on its nectar.

Notes: Some species can cause contact dermatitis when handled. I saw this one most thickly on an overgrazed cow pasture where cows haven’t been for a couple years, and also by the river within the historically flooded zone.

My feelings: I love this whole genus, who I first met in the Mojave Desert, where there are many species. Though this one was new to me here in the Gila, I immediately recognized its genus.

Read More…

Mirkwood: Fairy Tale Forest Recast

March 17, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

[See also part I of this series, “Trees Royal and Divine”]

The Hobbit, published in 1937, was the world’s introduction to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium and is still typically recommended as the best book to start with. Only one forest is featured in the book but it plays a major role: Mirkwood. Gandalf calls it “the greatest of the forests of the Northern World.”

Mirkwood, by aaaaaa123

Places that are bombed are real places

March 2, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

You’ve probably heard about the horrific Israeli/US strike on an all‑girls elementary school in Minab, Iran, which killed well over a hundred people, mostly students. I had never heard of Minab, so I looked it up.

Thursday Market in Minab. [Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.]

Trees in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Part I

February 17, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

[This essay assumes the reader’s familiarity with, at the very least, The Lord of the Rings books or movies. The more you’ve read, the more you’ll get out of it.]

Two Trees of Valinor by SarkaSkorpikova.

Introduction

Trees are prominent figures in the geographic and narrative landscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Particular species are accurately described in the settings where characters live and travel. A special lineage of trees is older and more venerable than that of any royal house of men. Time itself is measured from the initial flowering of a pair of hallowed, light-bearing trees. On the maps included at the fronts of the books, forests are as prominent as mountains and rivers; they are primary features, not mere background. If you’re a lover of trees and forests, Tolkien’s books offer immense enjoyment besides the well-crafted storytelling. If you’re not one yet, they might make you one.

Tolkien himself was an adamant tree lover. In a 1955 letter to his publisher, he wrote:

I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals.

In a 1968 BBC interview, he said:

I have always for some reason, I don’t know why, been enormously attracted by trees. All my works are full of trees. I suppose I have actually in some simple-minded form of longing; I should have liked to make contact with a tree and find out what it feels about things.

In an Oct. 1944 letter to his son, Christopher, Tolkien made it plain that trees are more important to him than anything manufactured by humans:

It is not the not-man (e.g. weather) nor man (even at a bad level), but the man-made that is ultimately daunting and insupportable. If a ragnarök would burn all the slums and gas-works, and shabby garages, and long arc-lit suburbs, it [could] for me burn all the works of art—and I’d go back to trees.

He waxed poetic to Christopher in December of that same year about the trees in his neighborhood after a fresh snowfall:

When a gleam of sun (about 11) got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue.

Most of the trees that Tolkien names are real ones found in the world today, often commonly. After all, Tolkien presents Middle-earth as our own earth in an earlier time. According to Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium by Walter Judd and Graham A. Judd (a father and son), the real trees Tolkien mentions throughout his books are: Alders, Ashes, Bay, Beeches, Cedar, Elms, Firs, Hawthorns, Hazels/Filberts, Holly, Larches, Lindens, Oaks, Pines, Poplars, Rowan, Willows, and Yews. If you live in the temperate north, you’ve seen many if not all of these trees yourself. Further, the ecologies in which Tolkien trees are realistic and appropriate for the species, as botanists who have studied his works have observed. This verisimilitude grounds Middle-earth’s fictive locales in familiarity, providing a connection between here and there, or if you prefer, between now and then.

Tolkien’s mythological trees have traits that no real trees do, but they are not merely fanciful. They convey meaning as incarnations of the natural laws of Middle-earth itself and inhabit a through-line that runs from The Silmarillion to The Return of the King. They are not characters the way an Elf or Dwarf or Human might be, but some are named like individuals and play significant narrative roles, their fates reflecting that of the society they’re embedded in.

The topic of trees in Middle-earth is too big for one essay, so I am envisioning at least three. This first one is about mythological trees that are central to the entire legendarium in terms of plot and resonance. Future posts will cover important trees and forests and (of course) the Ents.

Read More…

Navigation

Arizona Phacelia (Phacelia arizonica)

Introduction