White Tree of Tol Eressëa

Tree of Tirion (Galathilion)

White Tree of Tol Eressëa (Celeborn)

White Tree of Númenor (Nimloth)

A tree descended from an image of Telperion, one the Two Trees that cast Light over the land of the Valar in ages past. The great Tree Telperion shone with a silver-white Light that was beloved of the Eldar, and so Yavanna (who had created Telperion itself) made a gift for the Elves: a White Tree of their own. This was fashioned as a lesser image of the original Tree, except that it did not shine with its own Light. The Eldar named this White Tree Galathilion, and they planted it with reverence in the courts of their city of Tirion.

The White Tree Galathilion produced many seedlings, and one of these was taken to the island of Tol Eressëa in the Bay of Eldamar. The Elves who dwelt there planted it in the midst of their island home, and it prospered. This offspring of Galathilion was given the name Celeborn, from the Elvish for 'silver tree'. In time, the White Tree of Tol Eressëa produced seedlings of its own.

In the early years of the Second Age, the Elves of Eressëa were friendly with the Men of Númenor, whose island home lay eastward of their own Lonely Isle. The Eldar would often sail to Númenor carrying gifts for the Númenóreans, and among these gifts they took one of Celeborn's seedlings across the Sea. This seedling of the White Tree of Tol Eressëa was named Nimloth, and was planted in the royal courts of the Kings of Númenor. From it came the later White Trees of the Dúnedain in Middle-earth, all of which were therefore descendants of the White Tree of Tol Eressëa.

The existence and role of the White Tree of Tol Eressëa is mentioned early in The Lord of the Rings. When Elrond recounts the ancestry of the White Trees at his Council, he says of the White Tree brought to Middle-earth that '...the seed of that tree before came from Eressëa,...' (The Fellowship of the Ring II 2, The Council of Elrond). It seems slightly odd, then, that much later in the book, when Gandalf gives a similar account, he seems to skip over the White Tree of Tol Eressëa. Finding a sapling on the slopes of Mindolluin, he says, 'Verily this is a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair; and that was a seedling of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion...' (The Return of the King VI 5, The Steward and the King).

The confusion here arises from the fact that, at the time this passage was written, Galathilion was the name of the Tree of Eressëa, not the Tree of Tirion. The revised pattern of naming (with Galathilion being the elder White Tree in Tirion and Celeborn its seedling in Tol Eressëa) only emerged in later narratives, and this passage in The Lord of the Rings was not amended to reflect the change. (It will be noted that this passage omits the Tree of Tirion altogether, and makes Galathilion/Celeborn a literal descendant of Telperion, rather than a created image as in later versions.)