In the fall, a middle-aged man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of leaves. Raking them, mainly, but also wondering why his neighbor’s oak tree is shedding such freaking gigantic leaves.
My neighbor Marjo is finding her grass littered with leaves as big as place mats. I’m talking four times the size of a “normal” oak leaf. Is something weird going on?
No, said the U.S. National Arboretum’s Fred Gouker. An oak tree can produce leaves of different sizes from year to year, depending on what that specific tree has experienced in the preceding seasons.
“It’s called phenotypic plasticity,” said Gouker, a research geneticist and woody ornamental plant breeder.
A tree can’t get up and walk somewhere else in search of better growing conditions. It has to alter itself, an ability that helps it withstand changes in its environment, including variations in weather or climate.
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“Another big thing that can influence leaf size is the shading effect,” when new branches or other trees cast shade onto existing branches, Gouker said.
“It will tend to cause those shaded leaves or branches to become bigger,” he said. “It increases surface area and an increase in surface area, in theory, allows it to capture more sunlight.”
You will recall that a tree’s leaves capture sunlight. Chlorophyll in the leaves transforms sunlight into energy for growth. As summer ends, compounds in the leaf break down, changing the color and giving us our brilliant fall display.
The person at the Agricultural Research Service who put me in touch with Gouker just happens to be named … Autumn. Autumn Canaday. What a perfect name for this time of year! How’d she get it?
“My mom said I was very quiet in the womb,” Canaday told me. She was so quiet in utero that her mother was worried.
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“The obstetrician ran tests and told her I was just a very still, quiet baby,” she said.
Autumn’s behavior reminded her parents of a quiet autumn morning, thus the name.
“I used to love the long hot days of summer,” Autumn said. “But now autumn is my favorite season. … There’s a forest across the street from my house. When the sun rises in the morning, the sunlight bounces off the yellow and red leaves and sends a golden glow into the rooms on the front of my house.”
Every Autumn has a story.
When the District’s Autumn Rain Towne was 35, she came out as transgender. Her life had been pretty difficult as a closeted trans girl and she wanted a new name.
“Choosing my own name was a thrill, but was difficult because the name had to find me,” she said. “At first I wanted the name of a martyr or a warrior, but none of those sounded like me when spoken out loud. So I looked to names that referenced nature, rather than religion or struggle.”
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Autumn, she decided, was perfect, embodying as it does the fact that there is beauty in change.
Now, said Autumn, “when anyone talks about the best season, I whip my head around because I think they’re calling me!”
My colleague Autumn Brewington was born on the first day of summer. Her mother didn’t have a girl’s name picked out.
“My name came from her remembering a dream she had while pregnant, and in the dream she had a baby and it was a girl named Autumn,” Autumn said.
Dream baby!
Autumn Joy Parks of Pasadena, Md., was actually born in her namesake season, on Oct. 25th. Her mother didn’t have a name picked out, either.
“She said my face didn’t match any ordinary names,” Autumn said.
As her mother rested in her hospital bed, “Jeopardy!” came on the TV. One of the contestants was named Autumn.
“She thought, ‘How fitting!’ ” said Autumn.
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I consulted the Social Security Administration’s nifty online baby name database. In 2021, Autumn was the 66th most popular girl’s name, a couple of notches down from its high of 64th in 2013. It’s a lot more popular than it was in 1969, when it was the 831st most popular name for American girls born that year.
Autumn is more popular than another seasonal name: According to the Social Security Administration, Summer was the 141st most popular baby girl name last year.
And because I know you’re curious, here are last year’s rankings for that 90-day stretch of month-inspired girl’s names: April (520th), May (964th) and June (175th).
I’m curious: Is there an interesting story behind how you got your first name? Send the details — with “My first name” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com.
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