🌳Ents reproducing

[Ingwë]

Personally; I’m not letting my mind drift too far down that road . That’s right up there with the thought of female Orcs.

I have never thought about that, too Female Orcs? Why don't you start a thread

 

[HLGStrider]

http://thetolkien.forum/showthread.php?t=6926&highlight=orc

already been thought of.

 

[Illuin]

Ingwë
I have never thought about that, too Female Orcs? Why don't you start a thread

Nah, there wouldn’t be much to discuss:

"But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. For who among the living has descended into the pits of Utumno, or has explored the darkness of the counsels of Melkor? Yet it is held true by the wise of Eressea, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there into prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblence of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindale before the Beginning: so say the wise." -The Silmarillion, Of the Coming of the Elves

Pretty scary thought; huh?

 

[Illuin]

I guess The Ranger beat me to it

 

[Firawyn]

Personally; I’m not letting my mind drift too far down that road . That’s right up there with the thought of female Orcs.

Haha! You know everytime I think about people's sensitivity to talking about "that", I think about my favorite TV show of all time, Firefly, and of something Inara (who is a Registered Companion, aka well mannered whore) said in the Heart of Gold episode:

"One of the virtues of not being puritanical about sex is not being embarrassed afterwards. You should look into it."


*all smiles*
Fir-

 

[Eledhwen]

Treebeard has a love of falling water washing through him as well as vessels for drinking. This leads me to speculate that Ent reproduction is similar to that of ancient ferns and mosses, namely Gametophyte reproduction, where the plants have sperm and egg gametes, which wash off in rain and then bond together to form a zygote (plant 'embryo'). This then grows into the new, individual plant. It would account for the existence of Entwives, without the need to imagine a human-style physical relationship.

 

[Prince of Cats]

It would account for the existence of Entwives, without the need to imagine a human-style physical relationship.

But that takes away all the fun!!

 

[HLGStrider]

I guess telling Treebeard to take a cold shower wouldn't do much good then . . .

 

[Illuin]

by HLGStrider
I guess telling Treebeard to take a cold shower wouldn't do much good then . . .

Nah, that would just make him huorny.

(I know, that was bad )

 

[Firawyn]

Elgee! Illuin! Guys! That's just wrong!

However, Eledhwen makes a good case...I think she's after your job, oh DA Strider.

 

[Tar-Surion]

In the end it gets down to the simple matter of if Ents are animals or plants. If animals they will have sex as animals do, if plants they'll do it like plants.

Since they move around and don't appear to photosynthesize for a living and were apparently created to defend the forests from the other children of Illuvatar, my take is that they are animals and that they therefore have babies like animals.

That gives them considerable leeway: they could lay eggs/seeds like reptiles or have young that go through a complicated life cycle like insects; perhaps spending their first twenty years or so as trees and then coming to life and being Ents, for example.

Whatever the case they are unique even among the free peoples, among whom enthusiasm for reproduction is conspicuous by its absence, in being so uninterested in the perpetuation of their species that the sexes separated permanently.

Such a species is surely doomed. Not only did they fail in their appointed task of defending the forests, but they failed even to defend themselves from the slow decay of time by keeping their numbers up.