Ent

The Ents were sentient, humanoid beings created at the request of Yavanna to protect the trees from other creatures, particularly Dwarves, and thus were called "Shepherds of the Trees".

Characteristics

Ents were 14-foot tall creatures like humanoid trees with very thick skin resembling tree bark. They resembled the trees that they shepherded. An individual Ent more or less resembled the specific species of tree that they typically guarded or honoured, to the point of the personality one might expect from that tree. Thus they varied in height and size, colouring, and in number of fingers and toes. For example, Quickbeam guarded rowan trees and thus looked very much like a rowan.

There were trees that were awake or half-awake, and some were entish and Ents could awake or talk with some of them. Treebeard aroused some Huorns to destroy Isengard.

Ents were dwelling in Ent-houses and were nourished by Ent-draughts. They were immortal (although they could be damaged or killed with sufficient force) and along with it, they were deliberate and slow in thought, decision and action. Their slow, long-winded language reflected this; of other languages they preferred Quenya, which they also spoke in an agglutinating, long-winded way like Entish.

However, once aroused, they possessed great strength, which resembled the age-long action of trees accelerated, crushing rocks and moving earth in seconds. Though susceptible to pain, their thick skin made them very difficult to harm with metal weapons (they are much more vulnerable to fire). Treebeard boasted that they were much more powerful than Trolls, which Morgoth supposedly made as imitations of the Ents (he compares this with how Orcs were an imitation of Elves).

The length of an ent-stride was about 4 feet. With about 2.2 strides per second, an Ent could cover a speed of about 6 miles per hour