The True Reason Why Grass Is Green
Written by Rachel Downey
My Mission: To educate my customers on how to achieve the perfect lawn and landscaping.
This article is meant to educate others on the scientific reason why grass is green. Kyle Downey, the owner of Downey Lawn Care LLC, has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Truman State University. The author of our newsletters and articles, Kyle’s sister Rachel Downey, is also currently working on her biology degree at Truman State University as well.
This diagram shows the structure of grass. Fibrous roots hold the grass into the soil. The rhizomes, or underground stems, can eventually block nutrients and water from reaching the roots, but rhizomes are only present in certain grasses such as zoysia and bermuda grass. Dethatching your lawn can unblock the rhizomes. The tiller or shoots are stems that grow at the base of the plant after the first original shoot grows. The stems are hollow, but the nodes are solid and thicker than the stem. At some nodes, a grass leaf branches off the stem. The seedhead at the top of the grass is the flower of the plant. The seedhead shows if your grass is very tall.
So why is grass green? The answer is chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a pigment in plants that makes them green. Chlorophylls are in plant cell organelles called chloroplasts. One plant cell contains 40-50 chloroplasts. Photosynthesis, a process for producing energy from sunlight, occurs inside the chloroplasts. Photosynthesis is the reason why sunlight is very important to plants. Plants take in carbon dioxide and absorb water as well. The carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight are used to produce glucose (sugar) and oxygen. Plants use the glucose as energy to function and expel the oxygen into the air for us humans to inhale. Chlorophyll absorbs the sunlight. It absorbs all the colors of visible light (red, orange, blue, etc) except it does not absorb green. Instead, it reflects the green wavelength, which is why grass and other plants are green.
Cell Walls
Chlorophyll
This is a picture from Kyle's personal microscope. It is a 400x magnified picture of a blade of grass. When looking at this in person every single chlorophyll organelle is moving, like a busy ant colony. The amazing thing about it is that this is an area smaller than a pin head of one blade of grass. Every second of every day each blade of grass is growing and moving like this.