Why do non-green plants do just as well as green plants?

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Some plants have no green on them at all, like the Purple Heart Tradescantia ([this is what it looks like](https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/purple-heart-tradescantia-pallida/)) and plenty more.

Since plants photosynthesize with chlorophyll (this is a very basic understanding), which is the green pigment, why would any plant not want to be as green as possible? It seems counter-intuitive to have a dominant pigment that is not green. So how do they survive just as well as “greener” plants?

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you’re reflecting green light, that green light isn’t going towards photosynthesis, There are also other variants of photosynthesis using pigments of different color, especially in the ocean, where fewer colors of light make it through the water.

As for what’s optimal, it depends on the conditions the plant grows in. If it’s difficult getting CO2 or water, your photosynthesis is not limited by sunlight, so additional chlorophyll is just wasted resources.

If light is scarce, a plant might benefit from having a variant of chlorophyll that absorbs green light, in addition to the chlorophyll that absorbs red and blue light. That would let the plant get energy from more of the sunlight that hits it. If you’re turning all the sunlight into chemical energy, the leaves would be black.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The leaves are green sort of, they contain Chlorophyll like other plants, but they also contain anthocyanin pigments making them darker than normal.