Lab Girl

Jahren observes that plants grow in different fashions and at different rates. The corn plant displays a “lazy-S curve” (210), by growing slowly, shooting up, then dropping off again. Other growth curves resemble a pulse, a low arc, or a pyramid. These growth curves allow farmers to guess a good harvest date for their plants.

Trees vary even more than smaller plants, with every species possessing its own growth curve and variation. The curves can allow scientists to guess at growth, “but it is important to remember that they don’t show us the future, only the past” (211). Every new tree presents a data point that “changes the overall pattern slightly and thus alters the growth curve” (211).

Jahren describes the experience of pregnancy and giving birth, and how pregnancy is “the hardest thing [she has] ever done” (213). She conceives at 34 and must go off her medication for her manic-depression. She suffers such extreme bouts of nausea that she repeatedly tries to knock herself out by hitting her head against the walls and the bathroom floor.She notes: “This goes on until Clint and the dog are the only beings in the whole world whom I can recognize by name” (214).

Her condition worsens, and she stays at the hospital for weeks at a time where she undergoes electroconvulsive therapy. When she reaches her third trimester, it is safe to go back on her medication. Her health and constitution improve, and she spends some time in her lab. However, after becoming faint in front of a senior professor in the department, she is banned from coming into her lab while on medical leave.

Jahren goes into labor and gives birth to a nine-pound baby boy in a“normal, healthy birth” (228).

Every cell is made up of water, and thus life “is little more than the construction and reconstruction of trillions of bags of water” (230). However, there is not enough water on Earth, and every being on Earth wages “war” (230)over the amount of water. Trees are at the greatest disadvantage because they cannot move to seek water. They receive most of their water through the taproot that extends straight down into the soil. A sapling has a difficult existence, as 95 percent of trees that make it past the first year will not make it through a second. In an act of “parental generosity” (231), water moves from the strong trees to the weak younger trees through the roots.

After her son is born, Jaren gains more support in the field and wins contracts from the NSF, Department of Energy, Nation Institutes of Health, and private donors.She comments: “Once I wasn’t so stressed to distraction over our survival, my patience returned and I rediscovered my love of teaching” (237).

When she receives a Fulbright grant, the family lives in Norway for a year. Bill stays to manage the lab. Clint gets a job in Oslo, and their son starts Norwegian kindergarten. Jahren studies the memory of spruce trees and its implications in different climates. In her experiments, she uses seeds collected by Scandinavian foresters a generation ago. While there, Bill’s father dies, and he stops responding to Jahren for a month. She sends Bill a plane ticket to Ireland, where she goes to meet him. They rent a car and drive through Ireland, during which time Jahren runs into a curb and knocks the mirror off. They stop at a B-and-B in Limerick and go for a hike, during which time Bill and Jahren talk about his feelings and his father’s death. They examine the moss around them and take samples. They move on to seven more sites and continue collecting sample. They leave Ireland with “a thousand hand-labeled vials, each containing a single leaf that had been identified, described, photographed, and catalogued” (249). At the airport, a security agent will not allow them to take the samples and throws them all out.