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How is the filesystem bootstrapped, given that we start on a different partition?

Typically, one has `/boot` or `/boot/efi` on a separate partition, using some simple filesystem like FAT32 that the bootloader can handle. At startup, Linux needs to be able to set up the entire `/` filesystem, across multiple partitions.

Of course, booting can use a temporary in-memory filesystem (the "initramfs") and doesn't need to care about the fact that the partition it's running from is not where the eventual filesystem root will be. But the rules for mounting partitions are in `/etc/fstab`, which generally will be on a different partition.

During the boot sequence, how does Linux *find* `/etc/fstab` in order to be able to set up the filesystem?