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One of the dangers in analyzing Middle Earth is the desire to fit everything into the categories we've already been explicitly told about (like Men, Elves, Ainur, Ents, Maier, etc). But this ignors what was said of Eru that "to none but himself has he revealed all that he has in store, and in every age new things arise that have no fortelling, for they do not proceed from the past." (rough quote - I forget if it was in Ainulindale or the Quenta, but it's in the published Silmarillion).
Someone has said of our natural world that it is not only stranger than we know, but stranger than we can know. Tolkien wrote is stories as a "feigned" history of our real world (tho set in a mythical past). So it would be no unusual thing if strange "things" crop up from time to time which don't fit the (limited) set of categories that we have been told explicitly about. Bombadil was one such enigma. It's left unclear, but still possible, that OMW (old man willow) was another. Of course, in a world where foxes talk to themselves and rocks speak in ways Elves can comprehend (and where thoughts can pass to and fro as in the final conference with Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn, etc "Many Partings") it may not be so strange that a tree can survive for 6000 or more years and, itself, send its thought throughout nearby trees. And if Trees can grow entish and become Huorns, maybe they can grow entish in other ways too.
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