What does GKC mean when he says "trees that seemed to take hold upon the stars like a brood of Ygdrasils"?

Question

What does G.K. Chesterton mean when in the beginning of "A Defence of Skeletons" in The Defendant he says:

trees that seemed to take hold upon the stars like a brood of Ygdrasils

I know what Ygdrasil is, but does this "take hold upon" mean that the tree is rooted in/upon those stars (which is kind of illogical since its treetop is in the heavens, and the roots are in the underworld)? Or does it simply mean that the upper part of the tree (i.e. the treetop) contains, holds, grasps the stars?

Answer 1

My read on it is more than he is alluding to the idea that Yggdrasil was present in all of the Nine Worlds. Similarly, among the trees, seeing them reach up into the heavens, he was entertaining the conceit that they, too, stretched into another world, that of the stars, such that one could traverse the tree and arrive there.