Parts we read without reading the whole book

[Ardent]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

...willows that still grew along the brooks and ditches ...the vast, old weeping one that grew in our garden...

Willow is very odd. ..and he re-used the wood to make a fence. It sprouted again! It's hard enough to make a cricket bat from but soft enough to make a basket.

I grew up in the Severn Valley and willows don't just line the banks, they preserve them. Their roots get everywhere binding ground that the river would otherwise erode. Many rivers still have willows that were deliberately planted and kept either coppiced or else pollarded (their heads cut off above browsing height) to provide a constant source of basket canes. One of my favourite paintings, The_Lady_Of_Shallot by John William Waterhouse, is set against such a managed riverbank.

Of course, left to himself Old Man Willow will grow taller and taller until he falls over and then send up new shoots. I used to enjoy playing in a marshy area where this had happened and the fallen trunks had become bridges over pools.

Whenever I read LotR I love to arrive at the next woodland. They each have their own character (and we meet characters in them) and we get to pass through every wood on the map east of Hobbiton:

Woody End
The Old Forest
Trollshaws
Lorien
Fangorn
Firion Wood
Druadan Forest
Ithilien

and of course, in The Hobbit, we get to visit Greenwood the Great/Mirkwood.

I wonder what kind of character the woodlands to the north and south of the Gulf of Lhun would have. Given that they lie in the realm of Cirdan the shipwright perhaps they'd be, in part, managed for his purposes like the New Forest in Hampshire?