Jericho's Robin Hood Tree and how the Lord Of The Rings was right about Ancient Forests
- Ryan Regier
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
It's 1916 and Second Lieutenant Tolkien is travelling through a dense forest in disputed territory between France and German during World War 1. It's night time and Tolkien and his fellow soldiers are lost in this ancient old growth forest. It is almost pitch black. Eyes are wide and tensions are high. Not only are they awestruck by the biggest trees they have ever seen, they can hear lots of movement surrounding them. Distant shapes moving in the dark. It could be German Soldiers! Or it could be a Bear looking for a meal. Or it could even be some of last remaining Pagans or Cagots who would kill to keep their hidden forest-home location a secret.
And then suddenly a branch from a tree reaches out and grabs Tolkien.
He screams, and tries to run away, but runs right into multiple extending branches as they surround and try to crush him. Luckily his fellow soldiers hear his screams and they break the branches and help him escape. They run as fast as they can to escape the woods and, luckily, the sun comes up, and they make it out to dirt road clearing. They all promise to themselves they will never enter that forest again.
Did the above actually happen? No. But did something very similar to it happen? Most definitely! Second Lieutenant Tolkien is, of course, J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of Rings. Creator of the Ents and the 'Old Forest', where an 'Malevolent Willow' grabs and tries to crush the hobbits, Merry and Pippin.
Like all the best writers do, Tolkien drew from his own real experience and powerful emotions when he wrote Lord of the Rings. As a friend once mentioned to me: Lord of Rings is exactly what happens when you take a well-educated classical linguist, who was raised on his family's ancient Germanic Pagan Lore, and make him fight in WW1.
Here is what Tolkien has Merry say to his fellow hobbits when Pippin asks if the stories about the 'Old Forest' are true:
...the forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire. And the trees do not like strangers. They are usually content merely to watch you, as long as daylight last, and don't do much. Occasionally the most unfriendly ones may drop a branch, or stick a root out, or grasp at you with a long trailer. But at night things can be most alarming, or so I am told. I have only once or twice been in here after dark, and then only near the hedge. I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind. They do say that the trees do actually move, and can surround strangers and hem them in.
Am I saying that Forests come alive at night? That Merry is right? You're damn right I am! We know now that trees do most of their growing during night-time, while the day is devoted to photosynthesizing. They make the carbohydrates/sugars when the sun is out and then turn it into wood, bark, leaves, and roots at night.
We also know that the Northern FrancoGerman forests (which is where Tolkien was fighting) make up some of the oldest surviving forests in Europe. Old-Growth is very different from the much younger Second-Growth Forests where we spend weekends and vacations. An Old-Growth Tree is like it's own city. It has a ton of insects, animals, and other plants that rely on it for food, water, and habitat. They are filled with trunk hollows where birds and animals nest.
Also, Old-Growth Trees are constantly shedding and dropping moss, leaves, barks, and branches. And they usually do so at night. Casting off unneeded material that stops them from getting bigger.
When I was younger in a forest in Northern Ontario, I had a branch once reach out and touch me. Just like the story I made up of a branch grabbing Tolkien or like the story Tolkien made up of the 'Malevolent Willow' grabbing the hobbits.
What actually happened was that the branch that touched me had a dead branch fall on it, which suddenly pushed that branch down and into me. But at the time it really felt like the tree itself was trying to grab me. There was a muffled scream. I muffled the scream because I didn't want to give away my location to other trees! Haha.
We also know that trees can suddenly drop healthy branches out of nowhere. A unexplained phenomenon called 'Sudden Limb Drop'. Cottonwoods actually drop branches for reproduction purposes and those branches will grow into new trees
However it's not just trees dropping branches that can explain how branches suddenly move. A Squirrel climbing on a Vine Maple to eat its seeds will cause that thin tree to suddenly bend over very quickly. Then spring back when the squirrel jumps to a new tree.
Night-time in the forest is when all sorts of things burrow into the trees and predators hunt. There is lots of sudden branch movement by trees as animals push off or pull on them to catch, escape, or hide.
Unfortunately forests don't come to life at night like they used to. This is because of our old-growth logging and wildlife populations collapsing. Most of our old-growth forests have been gone for over a hundred years now. Barely a memory of them remain.
This is why Tolkien's Lord of Rings, with the Ents and the 'Old Forest', is such a gift. It's him trying to remind us what these forests were once like. Someone once told me that good Science Fiction is looking the future but using it to make commentary on the present and good fantasy is looking to the past and trying to make it exist in the present. Tolkien's tree stories pull from ancient pagan stories and legends. When Trees were seen as gods. Before Christianity came in and claimed only one god and that other gods were blasphemous and had to be destroyed.
Thor's Oak is a great example of just how much destruction and fear early European Christianity had about Giant Trees. "Saint" Boniface cut down an ancient Oak worshipped as a god in Germany while an army of his soldiers help back the - rightfully - distressed pagans. He then went on to build a Church out of the wood. Imagine! To see your god killed and then a monument to a new god made out of our god's bones!
Luckily for us, trees aren't gone yet and we still have lots of old trees and stories to remind us of what once was and what will be again.
To continue this tradition, let me tell another tree story!
I was in Pacific Spirit Park the other day showing a friend how to identify BC's native Bigleaf Maple, and he asked me "Wait is this the same species as the Robin Hood Tree in Jericho?" I knew immediately what tree he was talking about despite never having heard that name for the tree before. I knew at that moment that it was a perfect name for that tree and I had to write something about it.
The Robin Hood Tree is a thick, moss-and-fern covered, Bigleaf Maple Tree with an incredible amount of branches. It is likely the oldest tree in the Jericho Beach Forest. If you walk around the forest, it's hard to miss.
The name ' Robin Hood Tree' fits so well because it looks just like what Old Growth Maples look like in Europe. Their branch's ability to capture water means they are covered with moss and ferns. Their strong wood and re-sprouting ability means they can have parts of tree rot away and still survive. This makes them a tree full of holes and an incredibly important wildlife habitat. The Robin Hood Tree has a few hollows where squirrels and birds live. It also even has a small cherry tree growing on top of one it's branches because its branches hold so much moisture and soil.
You can read more about how amazing Maple Trees are in my other article, The Magic of Maples. I wanted to talk about the Robin Hood Tree in particular here because Robin Hood legends, much like Lord of the Rings, help keep the memory and stories of old growth forests alive.
Maples in particular are a tree that would very much 'come alive' at night because of the amount of wildlife, branches, and rot it has. The Bigleaf Maple especially, the amount of 'aerial canopy' it supports is unmatched.
Stanley Park has some of the biggest Maples in the world and I highly recommend Colin Spratt's Ancient Trees of Vancouver walk where he will show you and teach you about these maples.
A foundational movie to my childhood is the 1991 Robin Hood Film, Prince of Thieves, with a star studded cast of Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Alan Rickman, and Sean Connery. There is a favourite scene of mine were Robin Hood (Kevin Costner) and his right-hand man that returned with him from the crusades, Azeem (Morgan Freeman), are first entering Sherwood Forest which is widely thought to be haunted.
It's silent with just the sounds of leaves blowing in the wind, and then suddenly there is a strange noise that sounds like an ancient monster walking toward them. Azeem draws his sword and looks around frantically. Robin looks up and points out the sound has come from some sticks that someone has hung high up in a maple tree so that they rub against each other in the wind. "There are your ghosts! Windchimes! A child's toy put to good use" Robin says, "you scare easily my friend". Azeem, still not trusting the trees in the forest, responds back "This forest has eyes, I swear it".
You can watch this scene on Youtube below:
Robin and Azeem then go on to meet the forest folk who made those windchimes to scare away invaders. The forest folk who soon become Robin Hood's Merry Men. They continue to use the fear of Sherwood Forest as a way to scare the Sheriff of Nottingham's (Alan Rickman) men.
Kevin Costner's Robin Hood exploited the same myths and fears about forests that Tolkien did. Myths and Fears that exist for legitimate reasons. The forest does come alive at night.
These same myths and fears that come from ancient European forests also existed within the Indigenous People the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver. Let me finish here with a quote from Bill Reid from Out of the Silence a long-form poem and photographic book where Reid marvels at the beauty and storytelling in surviving ancient cedar totem poles and panels:
A story of a little people,
Few in scattered numbers
in a huge world
of enormous dark forests
of absurdly large trees,
and stormy coasts
and wild waters beyond,
where brief cool summers
gave way forever
to long black winters
and families around their fires,
no matter how long their lineages
needed assurance
of their greatness.
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To learn to identify Big Leaf Maples and the Jericho Robin Hood Tree join one of my free tree walks.
