Tree of Protection

The Tree of Protection was a beautiful magical tree with silvery apple fruit, planted in what would become the Lantern Waste by Digory Kirke during the creation of Narnia; it was the direct offspring of the Tree of Youth. It guarded Narnia from evil for approximately nine hundred years, specifically from Jadis the White Witch after she fled to the north. It is possible that the death of this tree is the event which allowed the White Witch to return to conquer Narnia and impose the Hundred-Year Winter (during which, the climate prevented any further magical trees from being grown).

The Tree
The Tree itself did not have the power to repel Jadis, but rather, she despised its fruit to such an extent (after having eaten the same fruit from the Tree of Youth) that she could not be within miles of that Tree or any other related one or else she would be plighted with a dreadful sensation of misery.

Though the Tree of Protection refers singularly to the tree planted on the banks of the Great River in Lantern Waste, there were at least three other trees that were directly related to that tree. The first was the Tree of Protection’s parent, the Tree of Youth, found in the centre of the hilltop garden in the Western Wild at the Dawn of Time. This is the tree that Aslan sent Digory to pluck an apple from, and bring it back to Narnia to plant the Tree of Protection.

The second Tree was the tree planted in London, England, which was a direct offspring of the actual Tree of Protection, having grown from the planted core of a magic apple from that Tree. This tree, being in our world and far from the air of Narnia, was not entirely magic. It looked the same as a regular apple tree, only far more beautiful, and its apples were bigger, more beautiful, and very good for you. Deep within that tree, in its very sap, it was still connected with its parent in Narnia; in fact, it would even tremble and move when there were large winds blowing on the Tree of Protection. Eventually, that tree in London fell during a storm, and Digory (now a middle-aged professor) had its wood made into a Wardrobe, which would later be found by Lucy Pevensie to be a portal into Narnia.

The third Tree was an exact replica of the original Tree in the garden. It was in the center of a sacred garden of Aslan's Country, and there too it was guarded by the Phoenix. King Frank I and Queen Helen sat beneath it at the Great Reunion.