Bocketti Funeral Home

RootsAnyone who has ever planted a garden, chopped down a tree or walked in the woods knows a lot about roots. I believed I did, until I began to consider the prompt our writing group had agreed to write on, and thought about one among other uses of the word roots. It was the meaning which spoke to me the loudest. Then, as one does these days, I turned to Wikipedia and discovered how little I actually knew.At the back of my mind hovered another use of the word, particularly apt for anyone who aspires to write memoir; what are our roots, the source of our physical appearance, intelligence, personality traits, psychological make-up?  In recent years, particularly since the popularity of DNA testing, another element has become eminently discoverable; what country or countries did our forbears inhabit, contributing unsuspected ethnic strains to our 21st century beings?I wondered if the tangled masses I dig out of a garden bed, the sculpture-like framework of the roots of an upended tree or the ankle-bruising, half-hidden root which trips the unwary on a forest path had anything in common with the roots explored by the genealogist, amateur or professional.The first kind of root has four main functions: absorption of water and inorganic nutrients from the soil, anchoring a plant to the ground, storing food and nutrients, and reproduction as well as competition with other plants. A plant's root system is the source of a lifeline which transports nutrients upwards into its leaves, where they interact with sunlight to produce sugars, flavors and energy. Different hormones serve different functions. Roots may protect plants from disease. They sense obstacles in their path and may choose to go round them or barrel ahead, displacing earth or cracking pavement. The direction in which they proceed is dictated by their perception of the most favorable or the most hostile environment. In sum, roots do everything they can to ensure that a plant will survive and flourish. Current research even suggests... (Roots - WAMC)