Two Trees of Valinor

The Two Trees are destroyed by the evil beings Ungoliant and Melkor, but their last flower and fruit are made into the Moon and the Sun.

Descendants of Telperion survive, growing in Númenor and, after its destruction, in Gondor; in both cases the trees are symbolic of those kingdoms.

The first sources of light for all of Tolkien's imaginary world, Arda, are two enormous Lamps on the central continent, Middle-earth: Illuin, the silver one to the north, and Ormal, the golden one to the south.

[T 1] The Valar retreat to Valinor to make their home on the western continent, and there one of them, Yavanna the Vala of living things, sings into existence the Two Trees to provide a new pair of light-sources.

[T 1] His flowers are white like cherry blossom,[T 2] and his silvery dew is collected as a source of water and of light.

Concealed in a cloud of darkness, Melkor strikes each Tree and the insatiable Ungoliant devours whatever life and light remains in it.

These are turned into flying ships crossing the sky, and each is steered by spirits of the same 'genders' as the Trees themselves: male Tilion and female Arien.

On Aragorn's return as King at the end of the Third Age, he finds a seedling in the snow on the mountain behind the city, and brings it back to the citadel, where it flourishes.

[T 9] In the First Age, however, the Elvish King Turgon of the city of Gondolin creates a non-living image of Laurelin, named Glingal, 'Hanging Flame', which stands in his court.

Garth notes that the Wonders of the East, an Old English manuscript in the same Codex as Beowulf, tells that Alexander the Great travelled beyond India to Paradise, where he saw the two magical trees.

Its central symbol is the magical Sampo, a device that brought wealth and good fortune to its owner, but whose mechanism is described only vaguely.

[5] During most of the action of the novel, the tree is dead, and has been for over a century, but all the same it serves as a symbol of Gondor's strength and national identity, and of hope for the Kingdom's renewal.

The Dry Tree had been alive in the time of Christ, and was prophesied to come to life again when a "great lord from the western part of the world" returned to the Holy Land, just as Aragorn brings the line of Kings back to Gondor.

Cohen comments that the dead White Tree's replacement by a living sapling "upholds the metaphor of resurrection and enables Tolkien to draw an implicit connection between Aragorn and Christ".

[8] They have that central place because they are the source of the light for the world of Arda while they live, and they are the ancestors of the various trees that symbolise the Kingdoms of Númenor and later of Gondor.

[12][6] The whole of the history of Tolkien's First Age is strongly affected by the desire of many characters, including the dark lord Morgoth (as Melkor is now known) to possess the Silmarils that contain the only remaining unsullied light of the Trees.

To make this work, Tolkien creates a story in which the Elves awaken in Middle-earth, and are called to undertake the long journey to Valinor.

[8] Martin Simonson describes the destruction of the Two Trees as setting a "mythical precedent" for the transfer of the stewardship of Arda (Earth) from the Valar to Elves and Men.

In his view, this stewardship is central to the moral battle, as the Two Trees, like Men and Elves, are composed of both matter and spirit.