Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-1600847-20140826191744

I was reading through the page on the Sleeping Tree when I saw the annotation "some believe it came from a spore that fell from a floating island in the sky" with a link to the Umbriel page on this Wiki. I took out my copy of Lord of Souls and went to the section describing the Umbriel-Hist in the Fringe Gyre and realised that the Sleeping Tree in Whiterun Hold is a Hist Tree, specifically one of the Umbriel variants that evolved seperately from their Tamrielic counterparts after the two species were divided (it's never explained how this came to be, but it's hinted in the novel that Hist were originally from Oblivion). The description of the Umbriel-Hist in the book matches what we see in-game, plus the sap of the tree produces strange effects on those who drink it, just like regular Hist sap does (though not identical as Umbriel-Hist evolved differently from Tamriel-Hist).

I found this is an interesting tid-bit, and is another example of how the TES novels tie into the games. The Red Year, the Argonian Invasion, the Thalmor, the Mede Dynasty, and now the Umbriel-Hist.

If you haven't read the Greg Keyes TES novels, I'd advise you do, they're short but quite good. And yes, they're canon, if you're wondering. 