an Oxford story someone told me yesterday

That the botanical garden where we were (and it’s mostly outdoors, as I should have guessed, with a few greenhouses) is pretty close to the launching point for Alice in Wonderland.

The tour guide did show us a beautiful black pine in the garden, a very old one that seems alive in the way its branches are twisted.

Our guide said it was Tolkien’s favorite tree. You really can see what looks like a face on the trunk of the tree, and for this reason he was speculating that it was the inspiration for the ents.

Tim Morton also tells me that the lamppost at Magdalen College was the inspiration for the one of Tumnus the faun in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I suppose Oxford must be as dense with literary myth as almost any place on earth. Makes sense, given the quality of people who have come through here over the centuries.

All right, I found a photo of the same black pine we saw yesterday. The face is more on the left side, if memory serves, and you can’t see it here.