About the grass roots roots

Have you ever thought about grass roots groups? Or perhaps their etymlogy? For the former I advice you to read a topic-of-the-day article at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18510 . And for those who wnat to know the latter I am here to help you!

If you will look through Oxford Dictionaries, you will probably find nothing but

"grass roots

• plural noun the most basic level of an activity or organization."

Indeed, this isn't much. What about the roots of grass roots? We can easily understand the underlying metaphor - people, a folk are viewed as grass, and grass roots is it very beginning - the most basic level.

But what about the etymology?

The word grass comes from Old English græs, gærs which meant "herb, plant, grass,", whic actually derived from ProtoGermanic grasan (compare Old Norsk, German, Gothic gras), from Proto-Indoeuropean root *ghros- "young shoot, sprout," from base *gro-/*gre- "that which grows" (compare Latin gramen "grass"); it is akin to "grow" and "green". The term "Grass widow" (1528) was originally "discarded mistress" (compare Germanic Strohwitwe, literal "straw-widow"), probably in allusion to casual bedding. Sense of "married woman whose husband is absent" is from 1846.
look at this: "[G]rasse wydowes ... be yet as seuerall as a barbours chayre and neuer take but one at onys." [More, 1528] (adopted from etymonline.com)