with a spinach leaf in comparison to a red leaf which leaf can carry on photosynthesis?photosynthesis requires the green pigment chlorophyll.I have a Japanese maple tree, it has only red leaves, how can it carry on photosynthsis?Why is it that during one peticular season the leaves turn green? Many trees have leaves that are green in summer and red,yellow,or orange in autumn. Where were these colors during the summer?How can they suddenly appear in autumn? In addition to separating plant pigments what are other possible applications for paper chromatography? :m:
yeah. different color pigments receive different wavelengths of light. so in autumn, it still receives light, just not as much. :m:
There are three main types of clorophyll, A, B and C. ONe is yellow, one is red, and one is green. usually, there is more green than yellow or red, so the leaf looks green. The other types of chlorophyl are still there though, and as hotsexy said, each uses it's own wavelegth og light. In the fall, the tree pulls most of the chlorophyl back into the plant, the yellow and red types remain. Thus, the leaves "change" color to red/yellow/orange as the other types of chlorophyl are no longer drowned out by the green.
Also, some plants - such as those growing at high altitudes where the UV flux is stronger, as QuantumMech's Japanese maple might - have pigments designed specifically to exploit the short end of the visible spectrum. Apart from chlorophyll, there are other photosynthetic pigments known as xanthophylls - which absorb in the blue, but not so much in the red, and therefore look more red to the eye than chlorophylls. http://www.biology.clc.uc.edu/scripts/SpecResl.pl
Other colour pigments that emerge in the autumn are yellow carotenoids and purplish anthocyanins; anthocyanins apparently might play a part in protecting the leaf as it recycles any available nutrients back into the main body of the tree before leaffall.
