Have you ever wondered why the vast majority of plants and trees have green
leaves and not some other color?
It’s always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light, but
reflect green, allow us to see the leaves as green. It seems inefficient of
nature when the sun emits the peak energy of its visible spectrum in the
yellow-green areas. A new theory offers one possible answer: that the first
chlorophyll-utilizing microbes evolved to
exploit the red-and-blue light that older green-absorbing microbes didn’t use,
eventually out-competing them through
greater efficiency and the rise of oxygen.
If that were the case, plant life long ago may have had purple leaves to
catch both the red and blue portions of the spectrum. For those whom don’t know
this, RED + BLUE =
MAGENTA (purple)
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