Skinbark

One of the three eldest

Skinbark, whose Elvish name is Fladrif, is one of the three Ents whom Treebeard named to the Hobbits as survivors from the first walking of the forests, along with himself and Leaflock. He belonged to the birch-loving kindred of Ents, and his home was on the western side of Fangorn, on the mountain slopes that look down toward Isengard.

Wounded by Saruman

Skinbark's position made him the first of the Ents to suffer from Saruman's turn to evil. When the Orcs of Isengard came into the forest with axes, they cut down his trees and killed many of them, and in the fighting Skinbark himself was wounded. Grieved and hurt, he withdrew up the mountainside to the high places where the birches grew thickest, and would not come down again. He is the second of Treebeard's examples of how an Ent may be lost: where Leaflock fades into a tree, Skinbark has been driven into a bitter isolation.

The Entmoot

He is not recorded at the Entmoot of March T.A. 3019 and did not march on Isengard. Treebeard's account of his wounding was, however, part of the grievance the Ents carried against Saruman when they broke the walls of the ring and drowned its pits; the Ents who came to the moot had heard of what had been done on the western slopes.

Legacy

Skinbark has no further part in the histories. With Isengard overthrown and replanted as the Treegarth of Orthanc, the slopes below his birches were made green again, and it is pleasant to suppose that he came down; but nothing is told of it.

Skinbark withdrew among the high birches west of Fangorn after his wounding and is not recorded again.