These days, you are likely to walk through your city, town or municipality and enjoy the treetops, which provide shade with their generous size and large green leaves.
It is a time of great growth for plants, which take advantage of the energy of the sun and develop very quickly. But this scene begins to change as autumn approaches as many trees and deciduous plants begin to lose color, its leaves turn brown or yellow leaving behind its immaculate green.
What is happening?
What's behind the green
El green color of plants does not occur by a whim of nature but is due to the chlorophyll build-up, a pigment that is found inside the chloroplasts, that is, the organelles that are present in plant cells and is responsible for photosynthesis.
In order for the plant to produce chlorophyll it needs sunlight and warm temperatures and that is why during spring and summer the production is abundant and the green of the leaves is very intense.
As the days get shorter and sunlight decreases pigment production decreases and leaves begin to lose their color. This coincides with the arrival of autumn.
Although plants have many pigments, chlorophyll opaque to the rest but at the same time it is the one that washes faster when the plant receives fewer hours of sunlight. That is why the leaves begin to lose their green color in autumn and the other pigments that were covered by green appear, the typical yellow and orange tones of autumn leaves.
Variety of pigments
As we said, plants not only accumulate the green pigment but also a variety of them and this amalgam can be seen in the different colors that a tree or a plant can have. This occurs because plants accumulate pigments in their leaves to absorb light while producing them to protect themselves from solar radiation.
