Sentence:  Every morning early , in the summer , we searched the trunks of the trees as high as we could reach for the locust shells , carefully detached their hooked claws from the bark where they hung , and stabled them , a weird faery herd , in an angle between the high <WSD>roots</WSD> of the tulip tree , where no grass grew in the dense shade . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (botany) the usually underground organ that lacks buds or leaves or nodes; absorbs water and mineral salts; usually it anchors the plant to the ground