A large tree of unknown kind2 that grew in the field below Bag End to the south. For Bilbo's Birthday Party on 22 September III 3001, a pavilion was raised in the field so large that it actually included the tree, which stood at one end of the great tent and had lanterns hung from its branches. It was within that tent, and beneath the branches of the tree, that Bilbo gave his famous Farewell Speech and vanished from the Shire. After the extraordinary Birthday Party the tree became known as the Party Tree, and it stood in the field for at least another seventeen years.
The Party Tree did not survive Sharkey's takeover of the Shire during the War of the Ring. When the Travellers returned to Hobbiton, they found that Sharkey's Men had cut down the tree and apparently simply left it to rot beside its own stump in the Party Field. After Sharkey was killed, and his Men ousted from the Shire, Sam Gamgee planted a silver nut (a gift to him from Galadriel) in place of the Party Tree, and it grew over the years into a magnificent golden-leafed mallorn.
Notes
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Since we don't know exactly which kind of tree the Party Tree was, estimating its age is difficult, but given its size it was clearly very old. If it was a chestnut (which are elsewhere associated with Hobbiton) it may even have predated the Shire itself. We can be more precise in dating its felling, which must have happened after Lotho Sackville-Baggins took over as 'Chief'; this would place it possibly in late III 3018, but more likely in III 3019.
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2 |
We do know that chestnuts were common around Hobbiton, so there's a reasonable chance that the Party Tree was one of these, but the tree itself is never definitively identified.
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- Updated 3 November 2015
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