if plants need to absorb sunlight in order to do photosynthesis, why aren’t they black?

Question

if plants need to absorb sunlight in order to do photosynthesis, why aren’t they black?

In: 5

Answer 1

While plants harvest energy from sunlight to perform photosynthesis, they don’t absorb *all* sunlight. In an ideal world, they would, and it would allow more efficiency, but we do not exist in an ideal world and they are stuck with the best they can do.

It happens that the chemicals plants use to harvest light work best for red and blue light, leaving the green to escape and giving them that distinct color.