Beowulf is uncommonly treeless for an Old English poem. 1 Aside from the Ravenswood episode, and the “leomum and leafum”(limbs and leaves)(l. 97) described in the song of creation, the only trees which have not been transformed into timber buildings, ships, spears, and the like are the “hrinde bearwas”(frost-covered trees)(l. 1363) that adjoin and overhang the waters of Grendel’s mere. 2 These trees have seldom been discussed in any detail and are generally treated as part of the furniture inherited from one or another of the proposed analogues for the mere as a whole; commentators are perhaps naturally more drawn to its fantastical or apparently irreconcilable elements. 3 This tendency to treat trees and other