Sunbeams on a Leaf
May. 6th, 2008 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helen99There is a particular color that occurs only in early spring when the oblique rays of the sun strike the first, delicately translucent, spring-green leaves. I find this color to be very beautiful. Here is a picture of it, and a poem I wrote in January 2005 that was inspired by the picture:
Silver starlight sings and dreams
The Song of Many and of One
And webs of Singing and of Dreaming
Dance and Weave
the Tapestry of Worlds...
Sparks of Green on rock and earth
Coalesced from Light and Wind,
Ever reaching toward the sun,
Embrace the deep...
and so a Leaf unfurls
It is the color of baby leaves, just beginning photosynthesis, in which they take starlight (the sun is a star, after all), water, and C02, and make sugar and oxygen, without either of which there would be no life as we know it. That color green is reminiscent of life itself. Yet, it is also the color that plants reject.
That's right, photosynthesis does not use the light wavelengths that correspond to this beautiful green color. Instead, chlorophyll reflects green light back (which is why we see it at all). How fortunate that chlorophyll reflects green light and not ... puce.
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The Song of Many and of One
And webs of Singing and of Dreaming
Dance and Weave
the Tapestry of Worlds...
Sparks of Green on rock and earth
Coalesced from Light and Wind,
Ever reaching toward the sun,
Embrace the deep...
and so a Leaf unfurls
It is the color of baby leaves, just beginning photosynthesis, in which they take starlight (the sun is a star, after all), water, and C02, and make sugar and oxygen, without either of which there would be no life as we know it. That color green is reminiscent of life itself. Yet, it is also the color that plants reject.
That's right, photosynthesis does not use the light wavelengths that correspond to this beautiful green color. Instead, chlorophyll reflects green light back (which is why we see it at all). How fortunate that chlorophyll reflects green light and not ... puce.