Uprooted, with guest writer and plant pathologist, Dr. Matt Bakker

Corn seedling

Being uprooted from a loved community is heart wrenching, but also provides some important information.  My husband has studied plant roots for the past several years and I find there are some interesting parallels between plant roots and our own roots – the people, homes, and events that establish us where we are and shape us as we grow.  Here are Matt’s words on roots:

“Although often out of sight and out of mind, roots are crucial to plant health. First consider just how many roots there are! It can be difficult to imagine, from the surface, what lies beneath the ground and surprising just how much root material there really is underneath some plants.  Regardless of depth or width, roots do the important work of anchoring plants in place.

Also, the pull of evaporation at leaf surfaces draws water up from soil, through roots. With that water comes essential nutrients dissolved in the soil solution. Roots secrete chemicals to liberate nutrients from soil, actively pump chemicals from the soil to the plant interior, and host a myriad of microscopic organisms that play a role in plant health.

Potato roots and tubers

Roots have such a profound influence on soil that scientists have created the term ‘rhizosphere’ to distinguish from all other soil that part of the soil that is under the influence of a living plant root. Roots of most plants host intimate fungal partners that serve as vast extensions of root surface area. Legumes and a few other plants have the ability to converse with microbial partners in soil, exchanging signals that invite infection and build custom housing for bacteria whose unique enzymes can transform nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into chemical forms that the plant can use. In payment for this service, the plant offers sugars – built from carbon dioxide and sunlight up in the leaves, but transported down to feed life in the soil. Roots defend against pathogens and disease.

Roots provide a retreat, and power for re-growth when disaster strikes (think prairie fire or bison teeth).” – Matt Bakker

I love to think back on where I’ve been and delight in the way God has shaped me to be more dependent on Him since the beginning of my marriage to Matt and our first move together, the day after our wedding, in 2004.  Our four homes have been a place of retreat and power for regrowth.

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