The plants in Middle-earth, the fictional world devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, are a mixture of real plant species with fictional ones. Middle-earth was intended to represent the real world in an imagined past, and in many respects its natural history is realistic. The botany and ecology of Middle-earth are described in sufficient detail for botanists to have identified its plant communities, ranging from Arctic tundra to hot deserts, with many named plant species, both wild and cultivated.