In his 1947 essay “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that a creator should “hope that he is drawing on reality,” to shape the qualities of his world.

The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools, where falling streams halted in cool hollows on their journey down to Anduin.