plume

The roots insulate and protect them from things like mantle plumes that could melt or break them apart from below.

Now, as groundwater naturally moves in the subsurface, it carries a plume of contamination along as well.

Through some combination of plates colliding, subducting, and maybe even a massive plume of hot material coming up from the mantle, cratons built deep roots of rock.

The heat together with raining debris also may have ignited material on forest floors and sparked wildfires as the earth rotated under the searing hot plume.