• Question: Why is the grass green ?

    Asked by hsarah to Colin, John, Kevin, Shikha, Triona on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: John Wenger

      John Wenger answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Like many plants, grass produces a chemical called chlorophyll which absorbs the blue and red parts of the light that we get from the sun (remember that sunlight can be split into many colours – rainbow).
      But chlorophyll mostly reflects green light and that is why grass and many other plants are green.

      The chlorophyll is in fact really important because the red and blue light it absorbs is used by the plants for photosynthesis, i.e. production of sugars to fuel the growth of plants.

    • Photo: Shikha Sharma

      Shikha Sharma answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Hi hsarah,

      Grass and other plants are green because of a pigment known as chlorophyll. As you all know the chlorophyll is used in the process of photosynthesis where a plant produces sugar in the presence of sunlight. There are some plants which do not contain chlorophyll, and these generally get their food by other means. Some examples are the fungi which decompose dead, and sometimes living, tissue, for their food.

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