[ksen]

I don't think the author was positting that as a credible theory. I believe he only mentioned it as a far off possibility.

Didn't someone in the Shire report seeing trees walking? I think Sandyman or someone like that told the story in the Green Dragon Inn. It's too bad that Merry or Pippen didn't remember that story and let Treebeard know.

That was one thing that disappointed my wife about the LoTR, that the Ents and Entwives didn't find each other again.

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

In one of the earlier Hobbit Hole articles, Tolkien is quoted as saying that he believes that the Ent-wives are extinct by the time of LOTR, having been killed off by Sauron's forces during the War of the Last Alliance. The author of that particular article goes on to speculate that the "walking tree" that was spotted in the Shire was just an ordinary Huorn-type "semi-awake" tree, from the Old Forest, and not an Ent or an Ent-wife.