Why are leaves green?

Look around a garden and so much of it is green: the grass, the bushes, the leaves on the trees. Why is green the favourite colour of plants?

A green helper called chlorophyll

Inside every leaf are millions of tiny specks filled with a green stuff called chlorophyll. It is the chlorophyll that paints leaves green. But it is not just for show — it has a very important job.

Catching the sunlight

Chlorophyll is a tiny sunlight-catcher. It grabs the light from the sun and uses that energy to help the plant make its own food. This food-making is called photosynthesis. So those green specks are really tiny kitchens, cooking with sunshine!

Why we see green

Here is the cool part. Sunlight is secretly made of many colours mixed together. Chlorophyll soaks up most of those colours — especially red and blue — to use as energy. But green light it does not want, so it bounces it back to your eyes. The colour you see is the leftover colour the leaf threw away — and that is green!

Wonder fact: In autumn, leaves stop making chlorophyll, and the green fades away. The reds, oranges and yellows hiding underneath all along finally get their turn to shine.