Lab Girl

Jahren and Bill conduct a study on 80 radish plants, monitoring their growth in controlled settings under video surveillance. One plant, C-6 “acted differently from the others while it grew”(260), moving in different patterns than the other plants.C-6 eventually dies, but its behavior represents an intellectual breakthrough for Jahren: “[…] [T]hat small plant growing in a Dixie Cup changed my thinking more than anything I had read within my dog-eared textbooks” (261).

Jahren walks the reader through a day in which C-6’s activity is significant. She arrives at her lab in the morning, and Bill is excited. They watch footage of C-6 moving. They go to Whole Foods for lunch, where Bill buys many expensive foods. After eating together in the lab, Jahren picks up her son from school and they spend time at the beach. They return home and eat dinner with Clint. When her son is asleep, Jahren drinks a cup of coffee and goes back to the lab.

Jahren reflects on trees and says of them: “[…] [I]t is difficult to tell the end from the beginning” (268). If you rip a tree in two, its roots can still live on. They are modular in their construction, thus broken up into many parts. Because of this, a tree can lose and rebuild parts of itself through its centuries’ long life. As the tree continues to grow, it requires more and more nutrients to maintain its parts. When it can no longer do so, it dies.

Jahren and Bill perform an agricultural experiment in the greenhouse. They observe the growth and nutritional values of sweet potatoes. After the experiment is over and all the graduate students leave, Jahren and Bill remain. To her, “[t]here is something so profoundly sad about the end of a plant growth experiment” (271).Jahren and Bill sit in chairs, put their feet in mud, and stare at all of their equipment. They reflect on their hopes, past, and “before long [they] were telling each other the stories of this book” (276).

Bill advises Jahren to write it all down. Jahren reflects on the writing tendencies she has always possessed, and Bill’s words acted as permission for her to begin this book.

In the final section, Jahren reflects on the current state of ecology. According to her, “[o]ur world is falling apart quietly” (279). Humans have reduced plants to the roles of food, medicine, and wood. Because of this, humans have“devastated plant ecology to the extent millions of years of natural disaster could not” (279). She addresses the reader and asserts that one tree per year is cut down for each person reading the book. In order to counter these effects, she launches a request for each person to plant a tree. She moves through the process of tree selection, planting, and tending. She closes by reiterating:“At the end of this exercise, you’ll have a tree and it will have you” (282).