In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the tree-like beings are called Ents.
Ents are ancient, tree-like shepherds who protect forests and care for the trees. Tolkien presents them most prominently in The Lord of the Rings, where the Ent Treebeard becomes one of the story’s major non-human characters. The Ents gather at an Entmoot and eventually march against Isengard after seeing the destruction caused by Saruman’s industrial expansion.
The name draws on the Old English word ent, meaning a giant or being. Tolkien’s Ents are not literally ordinary trees, but they resemble trees in appearance, age, and slow deliberation. They are also distinct from Huorns, another related group of sentient or semi-sentient forest beings. Readers sometimes confuse Ents with the Great Eagles because both can aid the protagonists, but their roles and nature are entirely different. Ents are especially tied to the themes of environmental damage, memory, and resistance to mechanized destruction.