M

The Mellyrn are the trees that grow in Laurinand, which in time came to be known as Lothlórien, which means the Dream-flower.  They are amongst the mightiest of all trees that shed their leaves, although they are never fully naked as are most of their kindred.  Their bark is silver, as is true also of the underside of their leaves throughout the spring and summer; but in the fall of the leaf the leaves turn golden and so they remain until spring, at which time as the trees’ golden flowers bloom in profusion they finally fall away, making way for a new year’s growth of silver leaves. So it is that within Lothlórien one makes one’s way through columns of silver floored by gold and roofed by fluttering silver and green brightened by the sweetness of the trees’ golden blooms.  It takes half a millennium for a mallorn to come to maturity, at which time it stands more rods tall than any other tree, and it can support not only a myriad of personal flets but also mighty halls, such as housed Amroth and Nimrodel, Celeborn and Artanis Galadriel, each in their time of mastery over their land.

To many of the Sindar and wood Elves who dwelt in Lothlórien the origin of the mallorn was a mystery.  Haldir, one of the march wardens of that land, told the Hobbits of the Fellowship that he did not know if any mellyrn grew upon Tol Eressëa or within the Blessed Lands of Aman.  In this he was mistaken.  Mellyrn seedlings and the nuts from which they grow were given as gifts by the Elves of Tol Eressëa to the Men to whom was given the island nation of Númenor, and groves of the trees grew on the hillsides overlooking the great harbor of Eldalondë.  In turn Tar-Aldarion of Númenor, who had married the Lady Erendis, brought such seeds and seedlings to Middle Earth and made gifts of them to Ereinion Gil-galad.   Gil-galad made further gift of them to his kinswoman Galadriel Artanis, who brought them to Amroth and Nimrodel and saw them planted in the region where they established their realm, which to this day is known as the Golden Wood.

The last known gift of a mallorn nut was made by the Lady Galadriel to Master Samwise Gamgee, now Samwise Gamgee-Gardner, Mayor of the Shire and current Master of Bag End, who planted it in place of the great oak long known as the Party Tree of Hobbiton, and where its tree now flourishes, the only mallorn known to grow and thrive in a mortal land between the mountains and the Sea.