Talking trees

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Talking trees are a form of sentient vegetable life common to many mythologies and stories, most famously the Ents in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories.

Some of the more well known talking trees:

The Greek Talking Elm: Philostratus spoke about two philosophers arguing beneath an elm tree in Ethiopia which spoke up to add to the conversation.

The Indian Tree of the Sun and the Moon: Told the future. Two parts of the tree trunk spoke depending the time of day the question was asked; in the daytime the tree spoke as a male and at night it spoke as a female. Alexander the Great and Marco Polo are said to have visited this tree.

Oracular Trees are sometimes attributed with the ability to speak to certain individuals, especially those gifted in divination. In particular, Druids were said to be able to consult Oak trees for divinatory purposes, as were the Streghe with Rowan trees. To what extent these trees could "talk" varies from story to story.

In Ireland a tree may help you look for a leprechaun's gold, although it normally doesn't actually know where the gold is.

In Dante's Inferno, the protagonists (Dante and Virgil) speak with committers of suicide who have been turned into trees in Hell.

The Forest of Fighting Trees in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz attack the Scarecrow. In the 1939 film version trees grab Dorothy and the Scarecrow when she picks an apple from one of them.

[edit] In Popular Culture

In the Adult Swim show, Perfect Hair Forever, a talking - and often shouting - tree was one of the main characters. Canadian rock band Rush has a song called "The Trees" which features the politics of oak and maple trees vying for sunlight in the forest.