Lab Girl

In this chapter, Jahren makes the discovery that allows her to feel like a true scientist. Her Ph.D. dissertation relates to the hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis). She wishes to analyze the seeds to determine the average summer temperatures during the glaciations of the Midwest. She first needs to determine how the hackberry seed is formed and the material which composes it. In the fall of 1994, Jahren discovers the seed is composed of opal, and notes: “I was the only person in an infinite exploding universe who knew that this powder was made of opal” (71).

After her opal discovery, Jahren travels to the Midwest in the Spring of 1995. There, she hopes to study hackberry trees and their chemical compositions so that she can further study the temperatures in question. The trees, however, will not bloom, and this frustrates her: “Unaccustomed to people—let alone things—that wouldn’t eventually do what Iwanted them to do, I took it hard” (74).

After returning to California, she decides to take a new approach to studying plants. Instead of studying them from the outside in, she seeks to study them from the inside out. She wants to know “what it’s like to be a plant” (76).