Entmaidens

The name used by Treebeard to describe the Entwives as they were in their younger days. The old Ent did not give precise dates in his recollections, but we know that the Entmaidens had grown into Entwives before the War of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age. Given the long lives of the Ents, this would place the Entmaidens in a time long before even that event, and they presumably dated back to the distant First Age when the Ents and Entmaidens came into being.

We are told little of those early times among those of Ent-kind, but it seems that the Ents sought to woo the Entmaidens by planting rowan trees for them (and that the Entmaidens, concerned as they were with lesser trees and plants, were not greatly impressed by this gesture). Treebeard recalled his time with an Entmaiden named Fimbrethil (or 'Wandlimb'), but after the Entmaidens went to tend their gardens eastward beyond Anduin, the Ents and Entmaidens were separated for a great span of time.

When Treebeard saw Fimbrethil again long afterwards, the Entmaidens had become bent by their labours in the lands beyond the Great River. At this time - near the end of the Second Age - they had become true Entwives. This would prove to be the last time the Ents would see the Entwives; the next time the Ents crossed Anduin, they found the Entwives' gardens blackened and burned, and the Entwives themselves long gone. Through the Third Age the Ents searched for the lost Entwives, hoping they would one day be reunited with the Entmaidens they had known so long ago.