I mean, I know plants are green because chlorophyll is green. But why is that? Is that particular hue any better or more efficient for plants, light absobtion or energy transfer? Was it just random that these molecules happen to be green? Or is green really better than other colors for this job?
In: Biology
So the colour of something is what light doesn’t get absorbed by the plant and is reflected back to our eyes. So green plants absorb more of the reds and blues and less of the green so they appear green. But now this seems illogical because green is in the middle of the spectrum of visible light (ROYGBV) so shouldn’t it try to absorb more green? There’s a simple explanation, plants evolved from planktons way back when that filled the ocean. The plankton that was closer to the surface absorbed most of the green light and so the plankton deeper down adapted to focus more on absorbing red and blue light as green was more scarce. That deeper plankton was what eventually evolved and took over to be the main plant matter on land. There is some purple plants.
So the green colour is actually not the most efficient for light absorbtion, quite the opposite. But the green plankton in the ocean had more pressure to evolve and come to land to try to get more light than the purple plankton who was content staying in the ocean.
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