Why Are Leaves Green?
This is a question that always fills me with a sense of wonder. Plants take energy from the Sun. They're nature's pretty little solar panels. Yet, unlike our solar panels, they're green, not black. They don't want all the light.
"We'll take the blue and the red, but you can keep the green, we'll reflect that back."
The cheeky little so-and-sos.
It takes on a deeper sense why you try to imagine a world where this isn't the case. A world where every tree and shrub and flower has black leaves. How dark and depressing a world would that be? Every beautiful green forest a gloomy black.
It's almost where science meets existentialism. How lucky we are that nature chose this path 🍀
If you ask this question online you'll be given the answer that "plants optimise for safe, reliable energy flow, not maximum light absorption." That they don't want to "overheat" and get damaged. Which sounds reasonable enough. Still, it doesn't quite chime with the general view of evolution we're given, where everything's constantly competing for survival. You only have to look at the canopies of rainforests, where ever-taller trees compete for the light.
It's an interesting thing to question, and I'm writing here simply to ask that question. Again, to express wonder. Not to provide answers.
It's also interesting to me as it's another area where we have green and purple in tandem.
(You may remember the post about Goethe's Theory of Colour and the Aurora Borealis:
There's another theory called Purple Earth Hypothesis, arguing that early earth was purple in hue, not green, as originally photosynthesis utilised a simpler process that absorbed the green/yellow part of the spectrum, and reflected the red and blue.
Getting existential once more, it almost feels like nature is optimised for aesthetics and beauty. Though you could argue in turn that our notions of beauty are shaped by nature and evolution.
Often, in everyday life, efficiency and beauty are at odds with each other. With beauty being a luxury that efficiency can't always afford. It reminds me of a few weeks ago at work. I was unpacking a pallet of frozen food and a little ladybird fell out. At first I assumed it was dead, but then I spotted a shimmer of life. A twitching leg as it awoke from its frozen slumber. I gently moved it to one side, but someone else nearly squished it with another box.
It looked so beautiful against the ugly backdrop of the warehouse 🐞
"Okay, it needs to escape," I thought. So I picked it up and walked it all the way to the door. Of course, the managers (and other people working with me) would've thought I was mad if they'd found out I'd wasted five minutes of precious company time rescuing a half-dead bug. And they'd be right. If everyone wasted time worrying about creepy-crawlies nothing would get done.
So efficiency doesn't have time for beauty it seems, and we don't have time for the little things. Yet nature somehow does it. Our ugly warehouses and solar panels are primitive in comparison.
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For anyone interested in Goethe's Theory of Colours this video is a great place to start.
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