[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Ardent

It was the Ents who loved the great trees, the Entwives loved lesser trees and watermeadows and herbs etc. If shepherd becomes like sheep then I'd expect Entwives to become more like the plants they love, in Goldberry's case waterlillies or Irises perhaps. But then if, as treebeard says, "the elves started it [talking to the trees to waken them]" then why should Ent not become more Elvish?

I think, based on the above, that Entwives would start looking more like herbs and plants rather than trees, but Ent looking more Elvish is a different step. That would require the Entwife in question turning away both from the Ent lifestyle (among trees) and the mainstream Entwife lifestyle (working in their gardens) to spending a lot of time with the Elves.

But I don't have anything against it. There were Elves passing around, such as Gildor's group. The only thing is that it would make Goldberry a really "wild teenager", or how to call it, a "total rebel" from both the Ent and Entwife lifestyle: roaming so incredibly far and spending time with Elves or whomever for a long time. And in the end, living in some pool where Tom found her (even if we discount the poem of Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where it is basically explicitely stated that she was the daughter of the River-woman, of course it depends on everyone how much "canonical" s/he deems it and whether we don't say that it's only what the folklore of Hobbits made out of the little they knew about Tom and Goldberry; there is still however Tom's explicit confession to Frodo and co. how he had found Goldberry in the river).

It's a pity we don't know much about Radagast because herblore was part of his expertise, and he was the Maiar sent to Middle Earth by the female Valar who sang the Ents and herbs into being. Perhaps he dwelled in Rhosgobel, in the eaves of Mirkwood, because that was where the rest of the Entwives were?

It was certainly not far from their original gardens, which were in the Brown Lands, as Treebeard said. But it does not really make much sense. If the Entwives really left their gardens (out of fear from the rising power of Mordor, perhaps, and so on), it would not really help or make sense to move only a couple of dozens of miles to the north. Besides, concerning the later ages, we must consider Radagast a bit of a rarity. Once the Mirkwood started darkening, nobody would really be happy about living too close to its south end - Eorl the Young, when riding south to help Gondor, was really freaked out from the idea of merely passing in the sight of the wood on the east bank. Most of all, I am not sure whether the area around Rhosgobel would be the best for the Entwives. If they loved gardens, and one presumes lots of open space (for example equal to the size of Fangorn) needed for that, the Anduin Vales are nice, true, but there would certainly be more suitable areas more to the East - just like Treebeard presumed that the Entwives might have gone that way (they originally left Fangorn exactly for that - going to the originally lush wide plains north of future Dagorlad).

Certainly the fields of the Beornings were as garden-like as the Barrow Downs. Bilbo and Thorin's company, coming into that land:

"...noticed that great patches of flowers had begun to spring up, all the same kinds growing together as if they had been planted." TH, Queer Lodgings.

Nothing against that description, but of course you must acknowledge that it is merely a description of cultivated gardens surrounding one house (later, in the times of a strong Beorning "nation" by the time of LotR, something bigger, of course). I mean, there were thousands and thousands of places like that in Middle-Earth, starting with the Shire (which however was all like that and was big, and that was one of the reasons Treebeard assumed the Entwives would have liked it), but you could speak in the same way about the meadows of Lebennin or whatever else - I am sure Ioreth's sisters had wonderful gardens somewhere in Imloth Melui or whatnot. I think if Entwives had lived near the Beornings, somebody would have noticed (the Beornings or Woodmen, namely).