Why is nature (plant life) mainly green?

Question

Why is nature (plant life) mainly green?

Question #92474. Asked by billythebrit.
Last updated Jul 02 2021.

davegrilla

Answer has 8 votes

Currently Best Answer

davegrilla

16 year member
98 replies avatar

Answer has 8 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.

Grass contains chlorophyll. All colors except green are absorbed into the chlorophyll. Green is reflected and transmitted back, and that is why we see green in grass and other plants.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_grass_green

Sep 10 2010, 5:32 AM

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Answer 1

Leaves, and other vegetation, are green due to the presence of chlorophyll, the substance which basically makes things green in colour.

Chlorophyll absorbs the red and violet parts of sunlight, but reflects the green, thus giving plants their characteristic hue.

Answer 2

Because they contain Chlorophyll (most of the time) which is green.

Chlorophyll reflects this frequency/wavelength of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and absorbs all the others.
That is why anything is the colour that it is!

Answer 3

There are different types of chlorophyll (chlorophyll A, chlorophyll B, and chlorophyll C), which produce different pigments (green, yellow, & red mostly) this is the reason for the changing of the color of leaves in the fall (decreased aount of sunlight causes decreacse in photosynthesis, which means less green pigment is produced, so the other pigments show though). These other types of chlorophyll are probably responsible for the variation in the color of grasses.

Answer 4

Chlorophyll is the green pigment found in chloroplasts, the part of the leaf that absorbs light for photosynthesis.

"Chlorophyll absorbs the red and violet parts of sunlight, but reflects the green, thus giving plants their characteristic hue" does answer the question somewhat, as the leaf only needs to absorb certain wavelengths of light, so what you see is the unnecessary (waste?!) light reflected from the leaf.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I got a bit of info from Wikipedia, though.

Answer 5

By "nature" i assume you mean plant life. Energy from the sun is turned into sugars and other fuels by the process of photosynthesis which plants can do and animals can't. Plants possess chlorophyll and animals don't

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll is a pigment that extracts red from the spectrum of the sun's light with the resultant colour being green. Leaves appear red in the autumn because there ain't no chlorophyll left in the leaves.

Answer 6

Narutowarrior
Answer has 7 votes

Narutowarrior

Answer has 7 votes.

The main reason for grass being green is because of all the chloroplasts in the grass, giving them their green color.

https://www.britannica.com/science/chloroplast

Response last updated by satguru on Jul 02 2021.
Feb 22 2008, 10:47 PM

Answer 7

The same reason the sky is blue and nothingness is black and snow is white. BECAUSE.

Green is also the middle of the visible spectrum and the least occluded light frequency and therefore the least hindered insuring proper delivery no matter the situation.

What does light have to do with color? EVERYTHING!

Answer 8

It isn't always. Sometimes it's brown. Look here -

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/local/communities/blogs/gates/2011/07/17/lawns-brown-enough-for-you/2281487/

It needs water. Or else it dies. But when green and lovely, you can have fun with it. See this fabulous piece of grass -

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/215/512425571_bb5b90a798_o.jpg

Answer 9

DPISHERE
Answer has 3 votes

DPISHERE
16 year member
91 replies

Answer has 3 votes.

It is due to chlorophyll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll

Feb 16 2009, 2:30 PM

Answer 10

An interesting point in this week's New Scientist is that the lack of acceptance of green light is due to the early chlorophyll users getting the light not wanted by the less efficient and more primitive (and at the time, dominant) users of bacteriorhodopsin. This absorbs green light only (and therefore looks purple...). Chlorophyll won (apart from in a few odd cases), but everything worked well enough so there was no need to bother with that now unused bit of the spectrum. (11th Sept 2010, page 41)

Answer 11

It's basically because of the pigment (a chemical substance within organic things) called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll allows grass and plants to capture or absorb the colours from sunlight which contain the right type of energy it needs to drive photosynthesis. These colours are those at the red and blue ends. Because it doesn’t need much in the way of green light, the grass reflects this rather than absorbs it and, hence, we see grass and many plants as being green.

Answer 12

mehaul

Answer has 3 votes

mehaul

15 year member
477 replies avatar

Answer has 3 votes.

Chlorophyll is a pigment that is green. It is part of the photosynthetic process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll

Mar 11 2014, 7:27 AM

Answer 13

Grass appears green because grass absorbs the other colors of the spectrum, but reflect or "scatter" the color green.

"Opaque objects that do not reflect specularly (which tend to have rough surfaces) have their color determined by which wavelengths of light they scatter strongly (with the light that is not scattered being absorbed). If objects scatter all wavelengths with roughly equal strength, they appear white. If they absorb all wavelengths, they appear black."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color

Why is nature (plant life) mainly green?

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