Audiences of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings will recognize Ents from the Two Towers, where they play a large role in helping in the fight against Saruman. While they are incorporated into a small portion of the story, their existence protecting Middle Earth covers a much broader span of time. The Ents are tree-hosts or forest shepherds, meaning they care for the trees but they also served as allies to the beings of Middle Earth that opposed Sauron’s darkness. Their name, Ent, is Old English for “giant” but the elves called them Onodrim.