The ents are the "tree shepherds" from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Once populating every forest in Middle Earth, there are now only a few sleepy old male Ents in the old Fangorn woods, led by Fangorn himself, or Treebeard in the common tongue. What happened to the garden-loving female ents is a mystery. Ents look like large old gnarled trees (through the women are said to have been slimmer), the older the ent (and they get quite old indeed; Fangorn, the eldest has been around nearly as long as Tom Bombadil, which is to say, pretty much forever.) the more gnarled looking. They don't eat, but drink draughts of deeply refreshing spring water with unusual properties - Merry and Pippin grew several inches, which is a lot for an adult hobbit, after a few days on this diet. Ents are a slow folk and abhor haste, but when properly riled they are formidable.