Jahren talks about trees as if they're people and vice versa. She especially delights in drawing extended metaphors between her life and those of various plants. Her book contains a number of poignant moments of discovery (of both the self- and scientific type), and like any good writer, she draws those moments out into common themes that thread through her life and give her story a sense of purpose.
Though she's a tenured botanist, Jahren gives much of the credit (and the story) to a fellow scientist, Bill, whose selfless devotion and sense of humor provided the energy she needed to keep moving forward no matter how bleak the future looked.
The author's passion for science helps her find her closest friends and provides metaphors to help her understand her relationship with her husband and son. This book might seem to be about love more than it is about science, but for Jahren, they're one and the same.
Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Vintage, 2017.
SAT Vocabulary Words in Lab Girl
Burnished: polish (something, especially metal) by rubbing.Rapier: a thin, light, sharp-pointed sword used for thrusting.
"There is nothing in the world more perfect than a slide rule. Its burnished aluminum feels cool against your lips, and if you hold it level to the light you can see God's most perfect right angle in each of its corners. When you tip it sideways, it gracefully transforms into an extravagant rapier that is also retractable with great stealth." (p. 7)
Wainscoting: wooden paneling that lines the lower part of the walls of a room.
"I remember deciding that the black rubber wainscoting must have been attached with adhesive." (p. 7)
Duchy: the territory of a duke or duchess; a dukedom.
"In my memory of those dark winter nights, my father and I own the whole science building, and we walk about like a duke and his sovereign prince, too preoccupied in our castle to bother about our frozen duchy." (p. 8)
Damask: a figured woven fabric with a pattern visible on both sides, typically used for table linen and upholstery.
"The wool carpet was dusky-blue and the walls had been papered in complementary damask." (p. 12)
Snipe: make a sly or petty verbal attack.
"I listened to the lazy buzzing of bees as they staggered drunkenly from flower to flower, the petty, sniping chirps of the cardinals remarking upon our bird feeder..." (p. 14)
Asylum: shelter or protection from danger.
"My lab is a refuge and an asylum." (p. 20)
Sneer: a contemptuous or mocking smile, remark, or tone.
"My papers do not display the footnotes they have earned, the table of data that required painstaking work to redo when a graduate student quit, sneering on her way out that she didn't want a life like mine." (p. 20)
Nefarious: (typically of an action or activity) wicked or criminal.
"...the printer ink cartridges we secured late at night through nefarious means" (p. 20)
Singular: exceptionally good or great; remarkable.
"Science is an institution so singularly convinced of its own value that it cannot bear to throw anything away." (p. 21)
Recalcitrant: having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority or discipline.
"The chemical reaction that we were tweaking was difficult and recalcitrant: it was easy enough to get the nitrogen out of the explosives residue, but converting the oxygen attached to it proved much trickier than we had assumed." (p. 22)
Seething: (of a person) be filled with intense but unexpressed anger.
"Any mistake would surely have led to death, and to being swallowed up by a seething, unforgiving world capable of rotting even the strongest leaf in a matter of days." (p. 27)
Brazen: bold and without shame.
"[My tree] strove to keep up with its peers and occasionally dared to outdo them by brazenly claiming the odd pocket of full sun." (p. 28)
Stultify: cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine.
"From a teenager's perspective, the grown-up trees presented a future that was as stultifying as it was interminable. Nothing but fifty, eighty, maybe a hundred years of just trying not to fall down, unpunctuated by the piecemeal toil of replacing fallen needles every morning and shutting down enzymes every night." (p. 28)
Replete: filled or well-supplied with something.
"Every replete tree was first a seed that waited." (p. 31)
Antiarrhythmic: a drug used to treat abnormal heart rhythms resulting from irregular electrical activity of the heart.
" 'Mostly antiarrhythmatic, heart-attack stuff,' she explained." (p. 34)
Gable: the part of a wall that encloses the end of a pitched roof.
"The early sun was striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold." (p. 35)
Umpteenth: used to emphasize that something has happened on many other occasions.
"We commenced our umpteenth break for that very shift." (p. 46)
Hypocotyl: the part of the stem of an embryo plant beneath the stalks of the seed leaves, or cotyledons, and directly above the root.
"Everything is risked in that one moment when the first cells (the 'hypocotyl') advance from the seed coat." (p. 52)
Agronomy: the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fiber, and land reclamation.
Enjoin: prescribe (an action or attitude) to be performed or adopted.
"A committee of government agronomists has been perpetually enjoined to transcribe and reinterpret the Keys [to Soil Taxonomy] down through the ages as if it were an Aramaic text." (p. 55)
Posh: elegant or stylishly luxurious.
"A septic tank seems far too posh an ornament for whatever hole your head is in." (p. 55)
Plowshare: the main cutting blade of a plow, behind the coulter.
"He was digging with something that looked like an old harpoon flattened at one end - a sword beaten into a real plowshare." (p. 56)
Titter: give a short, half-suppressed laugh; giggle.
"The little group of students leaned in toward one another and said something private, and then began to titter in our direction. Bill and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes." (p. 59)
Macabre: disturbing and horrifying because of involvement with or depiction of death and injury.
Ligneous: made, consisting of, or resembling wood; woody.
"Bill lived pursued by the ghosts of his macabre ancestors." (p. 60)
"...a group of fungi that makes its macabre living by rotting the ligneous limbs and stumps of a forest" (p. 104)
Gamely: in a brave, spirited way.
" 'I've got nowhere else to go,' he said gamely." (p. 61)
Nary: informal or dialect form of not.
"Not much can kill a hackberry tree, which has been observed to endure both early frost and late drought with nary a loss of leaf." (p. 67)
Opal: a gemstone consisting of hydrated silica, typically semitransparent and showing varying colors against a pale or dark ground.
"I was the only person in an infinite exploding universe who knew that this powder was made of opal." (p. 71)
Exquisite: extremely beautiful and, typically, delicate.
"I wondered who else in the world was having such an exquisite dawn." (p. 72)
Maudlin: self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness.
"By the time the sunrise had burned through the Bay Area fog, I felt lifted out of my maudlin mood as well." (p. 72)
Ostentatious: characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to impress or attract notice.
"Bill was awarded his bachelor's degree at the same ostentatious ceremony where I was awarded my doctorate." (p. 80)
Incongruous: not in harmony or keeping with the surroundings or other aspects of something.
Disaffected: dissatisfied with the people in authority and no longer willing to support them.
Comportment: behavior; bearing.
"He didn't do drugs, skip class, or litter on the street - incongruously enough, given his disaffected comportment." (p. 82)
Besotted: strongly infatuated.
"It is easy to become besotted with a willow." (p. 90)
Montage: the technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of pictures, text, or music.
"We watched a montage of a man being changed and powdered by his sweetheart-slash-caregiver." (p. 99)
Morphology: the branch of biology that deals with the form of living organisms, and with relationships between their structures.
"There is no anatomy, no morphology, and nothing to take a picture of or display." (p. 101)
Haute: fashionably elegant or high-class.
"Instead of just doling out the potatoes with a fork, which would have been haute cusine by our standards, he instead began to mash them." (p. 107)
Poach: cook by simmering in a small amount of liquid.
"Dumpling was on a roll that trip and actually managed to poach pears using a Coke can that had been torn in half and ingeniously skewered on a stick." (p. 115)
Panache: flamboyant confidence of style or manner.
"The room we were in was actually a very large courtyard within the building complex, which had all the architectural panache of your average DMV." (p. 116)
Lithe: (especially of a person's body) thin, supple, and graceful.
Affected: artificial, pretentious, and designed to impress.
Limpid: (of a person's eyes) unclouded; clear.
"I then happened to notice Bill across the courtyard standing face-to-face with a spider monkey, separated only by a rusty screen. Both of them sported the same hairdo, a three-inch-long dark-brown shiny mop that stuck up in all directions, having been groomed with little more than a few vigorous scratches during the last two weeks. This same shag covered both of their faces, and their lithe limbs hung with an athletic readiness that was only weakly camouflaged by their affected slouches. The spider monkey's dark, limpid eyes were very wide open and his facial expression suggested that he was in a permanent state of shock." (p. 117)
Abject: (of something bad) experienced or present to the maximum degree.
Impound: shut up (domestic animals) in a pound or enclosure.
"We read a plaque that described the heavy crosses that lowland gorillas must bear within their native Africa, which ranged from poaching to disease, yet it was difficult to imagine any corner of the Congo more dismal than the abject constriction within which King had been impounded in Florida." (p. 118)
Quip: make a witty remark.
Saccharine: excessively sweet or sentimental.
" 'We went to the Monkey Jungle to learn about monkeys, and along the way we learned a little bit about ourselves,' I quipped in my most saccharine teacher's voice." (p. 119)
Grit: courage and resolve; strength of character.
Gall: bold, impudent behavior.
"A vine finds its way to the sun using not wood, but pure grit and undiluted gall." (p. 126)
Girdle: a woman's elasticized corset extending from waist to thigh.
Corset: a woman's tightly fitting undergarment extending from below the chest to the hips, worn to shape the figure.
"I learned that although I was in desperate need of a girdle, I was better off than one of the other female professors, who would never lose all that baby weight by working all of the time." (p. 129)
Poignant: evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret.
Tableau: a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.
"As the book closes, its action is resolved into a poignant tableau of sacrifice." (p. 135)
Inure: accustom (someone) to something, especially something unpleasant.
"A desert botanist is a rare scientist indeed and eventually becomes inured to the misery of her subjects." (p. 142)
Mania: mental illness marked by periods of great excitement, euphoria, delusions, and overactivity.
Visceral: relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.
Flaccid: (of part of the body) soft and hanging loosely or limply, especially so as to look or feel unpleasant.
"Full-blown mania lets you see the other side of death. Its onset is profoundly visceral and unexpected, no matter how many times you've been through it.... You have received a grand, systemic injection of Novocain and your entire body tingles briefly before it becomes flaccidly foreign and unreal." (p. 144)
Funk: a state of depression.
" 'I've been in a funk.' " (p, 148)
Gauntlet: go through an intimidating or dangerous crowd, place, or experience in order to reach a goal.
Edema: a condition characterized by an excess of watery fluid collecting in the cavities or tissues of the body.
"...trying to sample our way through an unbelievably lush gauntlet of poison ivy.... A rash had raged up my neck and onto my face, giving rise to a massive edema at my right temple that not only made me look like the Elephant Man but also pressed against my right ocular nerve until I lost partial vision in that eye." (p. 148)
Sans: without.
"We drove back to Atlanta, this time via first I-10 and then I-20, which included Arizona, New Mexico, and two hundred miles of Texas sans map." (p. 164)
Annex: add (territory) to one's own territory by appropriation.
"Those in favor [of the Alaska Purchase] argued that British Columbia could be strategically annexed as a next step; those opposed despaired that the acquisition merely burdened America with more unpopulated territory to fill." (p. 165)
Bohemian: having informal and unconventional social habits.
"At first, Bill regarded his destitution as a novel adventure - a temporary bohemian phase - but it lost its meager charms as the months dragged on." (p. 170)
Melodrama: a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions.
"During the anxious melodrama of those sleepless nights..." (p. 171)
Catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
Erudite: having or showing great knowledge or learning.
"Anticipating the singular catharsis that comes of conspiring in something dispicable, Bill and I provoked each other with feigned erudition." (p. 173)
Reify: make (something abstract) more concrete or real.
"For decades, Ed had worked on his little piece of the theory, which progress from being an unlikely fancy to a reified fact and is now found within every introductory geology textbook." (p. 181)
Gimp: a physically handicapped or lame person.
" 'He was a gimp? If there is one thing I cannot tolerate, it is the idea of a freak in the lab! Disgusting!' " (p. 183)
Nondescript: lacking distinctive or interesting features or characteristics.
"...a nondescript bird passing overhead..." (p. 195)
Mangy: in poor condition; shabby.
"You consider letting [the stray dog] eat on the porch after you confirm that it is not mangy." (p. 205)
Baroque: highly ornate and extravagant in style.
"...the baroque equations that he writes so fluently..." (p. 207)
Hoosegow: a prison.
"...avoiding us the same way a reformed felon avoids driving by the hoosegow." (p. 208)
Florid: (of a disease or its manifestations) occurring in a fully developed form.
"...slowly my more florid symptoms began to come under control." (p. 214)
Keen: wail in grief for a dead person; sing a keen.
" 'I don't want this anymore,' I choke out while practically keening." (p. 216)
Wizened: shriveled or wrinkled with age.
"....having grown up under too much shade and wizened without flowering properly." (p. 217)
Postpartum: following childbirth or the birth of young.
Psychosis: a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
" 'She has severe risk for postpartum psychosis and will be observed accordingly.' " (p. 222)
Cluck: express fussy concern about.
" 'C'mon, baby, you have a beautiful head, but we want to see your face,' clucks an older nurse as she pats my knee." (p. 226)
Chum: chopped fish, fish fluids, and other material thrown overboard as angling bait.
"Once my team has stopped my bleeding, they massage a bucketful of now-useless placental chum out of my abdomen while the other team brings my washed and wrapped baby to me for a kiss." (p. 227)
Dour: relentlessly severe, stern, or gloomy in manner or appearance.
"I picture dour men in muck boots and wonder if they would be proud of me." (p. 233)
Mausoleum: a building, especially a large and stately one, housing a tomb or tombs.
"The incubator is like a humid mausoleum, and I wonder if the fainty moldy smell is real or just my own paranoia." (p. 235)
Insipid: lacking vigor or interest.
"I take photos, guiltily indulging in forty-five minutes of insipid pop radio (music causes labeling mistakes)." (p. 236)
Fraternal: (of twins) developed from separate ova and therefore genetically distinct and not necessarily of the same sex or more similar than other siblings.
"Convention and circumstances dictated that we should act more like coworkers and less like twelve-year-old fraternal twins." (p. 238)
Sinewy: (of a person or animal) lean and muscular.
"I wanted to tell Bill that he was his father's heart and prize, a strong sinewy boy whom the world couldn't main, smart and lithe even underground." (p. 239)
Blanch: (of a person) grow pale from shock, fear, or a similar emotion.
"I saw Bill's face blanch and he looked to be stifling the urge to vomit." (p. 240)
Listless: (of a person or their manner) lacking energy or enthusiasm.
" 'Who knows? Who cares?' Bill answered listlessly." (p. 245)
Duffel: a coarse woolen cloth with a thick nap.
"the gray duffel bag" (p. 246)
Behemoth: a huge or monstrous creature.
Salient: most noticeable or important.
Bryophyte: a small flowerless green plant of the division Bryophyta, which comprises the mosses and liverworts.
"an eight-hundred-page behemoth that categorizes and describes the salient characteristics of approximately eight hundred species of British and Irish bryophytes" (p. 247)
Brood: think deeply about something that makes one unhappy.
"I tend toward nervousness and brooding." (p. 255)
Birfucate: divide into two branches or forks.
"There's more than a small chance I'll die before she's born, particularly if our line continues to skip [a generation] or bifurcate." (p. 257)
Rambutan: a red, plum-sized tropical fruit with soft spines and a slightly acidic taste.
"...preparong to unwrap a second chocolate bar, this one flavored with rambutan" (p. 263)
Stochastic: randomly determined; having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.
"I remember fondly the long weekends of years past when I could work steadily for forty-eight hours, when each new data point reinvigorated me and recharged my mind in stochastic bursts that culminated periodically in new ideas." (p. 270)
Sheer: a very fine or diaphanous fabric or article.
Diaphanous: (especially of fabric) light, delicate, and translucent.
"Each greenhouse is as big as a gymnasium and is composed of little more than a huge stainless-steel scaffolding covered over with a sheer shade cloth." (p. 272)
Novitiates: the period or state of being a novice, especially in a religious order.
"People still puzzle over the two of us, Bill and me. Are we siblings? Soul mates? Comrades? Novitiates? Accomplices?" (p. 274)
Manic: showing wild and apparently deranged excitement and energy.
"Roads have grown like a manic fungus, and the endless miles of ditches that bracket these roads serve as hasty graves for perhaps millions of plant species extinguished in the name of progress." (p. 279)
Baffle: restrain or regulate (a fluid, sound, etc.).
"Baffle some chicken wire at [your tree's] base and string a cheesy birdhouse around its tiny trunk to make it look permanent." (p. 280)
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