Is it plant or leaf other than green color doing photosynthesis? How?

Question

Is it plant or leaf other than green color doing photosynthesis? How?

Answer 1

very very confusing

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Answer 2

Plants have classes of pigments that act as adjuncts to chlorophyll in several ways. Some are accessory pigments that broaden the range of absorbed light. They also alter the color of the leaf depending on what specific pigments the plant uses to gather light energy and what it reflects (green is the reflected light but is might be yellowish or bluish green). The major accessory class of pigments, the carotenoids, collect light in the red to yellow wavelengths chlorophyll a can’t, then the carotenoids transfer the energy to chlorophyll a to process.

Another way a plant uses pigments is in chromoplasts (similar to chloroplasts, where chlorophyll is found, but not photosynthetic). These will be found in plants with red or copper leaf colors. A Copper Beech tree has anthocyanin, a pigment that reflects red. Thus the leaves of the copper beech, where the chromoplast's red content overwhelms the chloroplast’s green, appear deep red in sunlight. However when you look at a copper beech in the shade that copper coloration thins out, and you can see the green photosynthetic chlorophyll showing through because the tree is still actively photosynthesizing. Plants with more chromoplasts can survive habitats with marginal resources where they are better protected from both oxidative and UV stress. Anthocyanins are antioxidants whether in fruit or the leaf.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bs...

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLink...

Leaves colored silvery or grey often have thick reflective cuticles or many fine hairs to protect the plant from excessive sunlight and they end up masking the plant's color. They reflect green still but it is shifted in value by the protective layers to sage green or silvery green. Plants have to protect themselves from sunburn (UV injury) just as any living organism so they use sunscreens like wax or hairs in the equatorial latitudes or regions with little shade.

Plants adapt to situations and some just have fewer chloroplasts so have less chlorophyll and absorb less of the light.  In low light situations they need fewer. This reduced chlorophyll level allows small amounts of other pigments  like the yellow pigment xanthophyll to show up. Hostas have areas like this and zones with no pigments that are white. They absorb enough light in the green areas for the plant to transform light energy to chemical energy.

http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanyt...



A good way to see the relations of pigments to the organisms color is in the algae. Though not exactly plants they have very closely related photosynthetic systems. Brown algae has fucoxanthin with chlorophyll in the photoreaction so appears golden or brown because the green color is concealed. Red algae does the same by using the red phycoerythrin pigment plus chlorophyll.