Why are Plants Green?

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The question that knocked everyone off their shoes. There is green everywhere. Artificial and natural, our earth is covered in it. Earth is literally bathed in it. Green leaves, green beans, green algae. My book is green and my school’s paint is green. But they don’t have chlorophyll. What is chlorophyll, really? And are plants green naturally because they contain this chlorophyll? And are the plants that have green leaves, the only ones allowed to photosynthesis?

Light is confusing. It can behave as a stream of particles. We’ll talk about chlorophyll in a moment. I just wanted to clear something up about light. And light, just like chlorophyll, is all around us. We’re bathing in it at the moment. The sun sends up billions of particles of light to us. Particles called photons bounce off your skin everyday and goes flying into something else. But photons can also behave as waves. And photons are tiny light bringers if I didn’t mention that yet. They’re the atoms that hold light. Light is different colors because they are different wavelengths. And here, look. I made a little chart for you!

Color

Wavelength (nm)

Red

780 - 622

Orange

622 - 597

Yellow

597 - 577

Green

577 - 492

Blue

492 - 455

Violet

455 - 390

This is quite cool. Leaves are green because they absorb all the other lights and reflect green light. Remember when I said that light reflects off of objects? In this case, the leaves absorb red, blue, turquoise and yellow light, but it doesn’t use green light. So why does it reflect green light? This means that trees and leaves are green because they reflect green light, and not use it.

But then why don’t plants use green light? Why does it just reject green light and send it somewhere else? And let’s just say plants did absorb green light. Then it wouldn’t be green at all! If something absorbed all the light, it would turn black. And if something were to reflect all light, then it would be white. That’s why it’s sweaty to wear a black shirt on a sunny day.

Let’s get back to questions. Why don’t plants absorb all waves of light? To answer this question, we must look at evolution. What has evolution done to other plants and animals? It’s a slow process, but it makes a difference for years in the millions. Evolution is something natural. You lose, you die. You can’t adapt, you die. The weak die and the strong give birth to the stronger. This makes plants more effective in receiving light and animals that munch on meat, to evolve in having sharper teeth. Little things do a lot in a world of luck, chance and probability. But like I said, it takes long to evolve. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to sprout something like sharper teeth.

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But evolution isn’t there to make everything perfect. It’s there to make animals and plants sufficient enough to survive and thrive. Something perfect will eliminate the competition for other survivors, making the ecosystem containing only one plant. Now what fun is that? And besides, we need each other to survive. Plants, bison’s, wolves are all there to protect the ecosystem. If the grass grows a little too much, the bison’s eat it. If the bison population increases and it eats up most of the grass, the wolves eat them.

So maybe plants didn’t need to absorb green light. Maybe they were happy using red, blue, turquoise, orange and yellow light. Maybe it had something to do with probability. Maybe green isn’t effective. And let’s enjoy not being perfect because we weren’t meant to be perfect. And we have a tough job too, sustaining a good ecosystem. Do that, will you?