home · Networks · What pigment colors the leaves yellow? Why do some leaves turn yellow in autumn and others turn red? What pigment colors leaves green and red?

What pigment colors the leaves yellow? Why do some leaves turn yellow in autumn and others turn red? What pigment colors leaves green and red?

When autumn comes into its own, the hand reaches out to a warm blanket and a collection of poems. I want to curl up in a ball and sit comfortably by the fireplace on soft sofa. Flipping through the crisp pages of a volume of great Russian poets, it is difficult to linger for a long time on any one work. What is your favorite poem about autumn? Write in the comments, let's discuss.

Today, my mood is closer to the lines of the great Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. And I decided to give the beauty of this poem to my child. I read the lines loudly, with warmth, expression and soul. Well, do you remember them?

It's a sad time! Ouch charm!

Your farewell beauty is pleasant to me -

I love the lush decay of nature,

Forests dressed in scarlet and gold,

In their canopy there is noise and fresh breath,

And the skies are covered with wavy darkness,

And a rare ray of sunshine, and the first frosts,

And distant gray winter threats.

And these lines interested my child. And then... Thousands of questions rained down. What is the crimson, who is the darkness? Where are they, the canopy of the wind and why the forests are dressed in gold. Well, let’s answer one of the bright children’s questions, with the easy approach of the great poet: “Why in the fall are some leaves multi-colored, and some green?”

Do you love the bright colors of autumn? Then read on. Fun Science Gives a Simple and Accurate Answer to Thousands of Children's “WhyMooks”

The leaves are different: purple, yellow, green and red.

Has everyone fastened their seat belts? We begin our journey into the depths of the leaves. It is in them that special cells are located both in summer and autumn. And we can only see them under a microscope. So, these are the cells that are colored different colors: green, red, and yellow. The most important color in this parade of colors is green; it is the strongest and most dominant. And in the leaves it appears due to a special substance - chlorophyll.

Green Factory: How does it work?

Chlorophyll is very important for trees - it is a kind of factory that produces water, carbon dioxide and sunlight recycles into nutrients, which are necessary for all trees. I give you a certificate! Chlorophyll is also important for people and animals.

Well, the green factory works, and in the leaves, carbon dioxide is processed into nutrients for the tree. And the tree produces oxygen into the air and we, all living things on this Earth, breathe it.

Modern scientific humor on the topic of the day: If trees provided the Internet, they would be everywhere.

WITH green figured it out. Let's move on and get closer to the answer to the main question. In addition to chlorophyll, the leaves also contain other cells - coloring substances - that are responsible for other colors (red, orange, yellow). And each leaf has its own coloring substances. After the leaves bloom, sunlight retains chlorophyll in them. And as soon as autumn comes, there is less sunlight and the length of daylight hours decreases. Autumn is a time of magical transformations. From a lack of sun, chlorophyll begins to break down in the leaves and other coloring substances come into play. Now you know the global, top-secret purpose of green leaves: they remove excess carbon dioxide from the air and fill the air with oxygen.

What is autumn in bright colors?

Evergreens, who are they?

Looking through a photo album with last year's photographs, the child noticed that not all trees change their color in autumn. These are such wonderful children today. But this is true. Not all trees have coloring substances other than chlorophyll in their leaves. So, all autumn, until the leaves are completely shed, the following trees remain green: for example, oak, lilac and alder.

Autumn is different and the leaves can enjoy the sun.

And one more autumn note: sometimes the leaves are dull and this happens when for a long time The weather is cold and dry. And if it gives us a lot of sunny days, then the trees will delight us with rich and bright colors. The trees are sad and sad in the rainy season, cloudy weather and then on the trees we see pale yellow or brown leaves.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to talk briefly about the beauty of autumn landscapes. But the colors of autumn delight us and give us many warm and pleasant days, preparing us for a snow-white winter. It’s too early for us to start talking with snow, so we’ll see you in a couple of months on the pages of Gay Science.

Send your questions to the “PocheMuk” section and we will definitely answer you in the next issue.

Which will clearly show children why the leaves on the reed trees change color: in the summer they are green, and in the fall they turn yellow.

To do this, you do not need special materials - everything is available both at home and at school. This experiment, which explains why the leaves on davy trees change color in the fall, is great for preschoolers and students in grades 1-6.

Many people consider it the most beautiful time of the year, because when the leaves turn yellow, nature turns into such incredible shades, which simultaneously preserve the memory of the warm summer, but evoke the cold of the approaching winter.

But children often have a number of traditional questions in the fall:

  • Why do leaves on trees change color and turn yellow in autumn?
  • Is this the tricks of fairies?
  • What about the sun?
  • Oh, I know, a garden gnome did it

This one, which explains why leaves turn yellow or red in the fall, is sure to satisfy even the most curious of children.

Why does a tree need leaves?

In order to understand why leaves change color in the fall, you need to understand why trees, and leaves in particular, are needed in the first place.

Plants are responsible for creating the oxygen we breathe. They produce it by absorbing water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air. Using sunlight (through photosynthesis), they convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose. Oxygen is what allows us to breathe, and glucose is what the plant uses to grow. The term photosynthesis means “to combine with light.” Chemical substance in a plant, what is used for photosynthesis is called chlorophyll. The same chlorophyll that gives plants their green color.

What will you need for the experiment?:

  • Glass jars
  • Coffee filters
  • Leaves
  • Alcohol
  • Notepad and pen for making observations

Why do leaves change color in autumn? Experiment for children

In order to find the answer to the question of why the leaves on trees change color and turn yellow in the fall, children will need to collect some leaves.

After which you must sort them together by color into prepared containers.

After this, the leaves are filled with alcohol and ground. Once crushed and stirred, the alcohol will help the color come out even better.


Tip: The time it takes for the color to fully absorb will depend on how much leaf and alcohol were used.


After 12 hours, the liquid may not yet be completely absorbed, but the effect is already obvious. As the liquid is absorbed into the filter, the colors from the leaves disperse.

Explanation of the experiment why leaves change color

During winter, the days become shorter, reducing the amount of sunlight available to the leaves. Due to lack of sun, plants go into a dormant stage and feed on the glucose they accumulated over the summer. As soon as the “winter mode” is turned on, the green color of chlorophyll leaves the leaves. And as the bright green tint fades, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these pigments were present in the leaves all along. For example, maple leaves bright red because they contain excess glucose.

If you liked the one with leaves that change color in the fall, you don't have to wait until school starts to do it with your kids.

The color of tree leaves is given by a special substance - a dye or pigment. It is worth remembering that in a beam of light or sunlight there are all the colors of the rainbow. Moreover, any paint, no matter natural or artificial, absorbs or reflects certain colors. If, for example, a coloring substance absorbs all colors and at the same time reflects red, then our eye sees exactly the reflected red color, and it seems to us that we painted, for example, a sheet of paper red, but in fact we covered it with a substance, paint that absorbed all colors except red.

Try reading the paragraph above several times until you understand the basic principle of coloring everything living and nonliving in the world. In the example of the living, the color of the skin of people of the Negroid race is also given by a substance that absorbs all colors except black.

Why are plant leaves green?

It’s the same with autumn leaves, we see them green as long as they have a lot of chlorophyll, it absorbs all colors except green, or which also reflects the green color.

Light is processed by the pigment chlorophyll into energy that the plant can use. When deciduous trees As they prepare for winter, the molecules that make up their leaves (including chlorophyll molecules) are broken down and recycled. Atoms (the smallest building blocks of any substance) of chlorophyll molecules are used to build new types of molecules. And these new molecules are stored in other parts of the tree.

During their summer wakefulness, leaves on trees accumulate many different substances in their leaf blades. However In autumn the sunny color is not enough to compensate for the tree's needs for its normal growth and development, the chlorophyll in the leaves ends, and carotene (yellow or orange pigment) is now visible in them. It was there from the very beginning, but was masked by a stronger green-reflecting substance - chlorophyll. Carotene molecules are stronger (not as easily destroyed) than chlorophyll molecules, and therefore remain in the leaves even after the chlorophyll in them has been destroyed.

And here the leaves become red and purple due to the formation of Anthocyanin pigment (it gives autumn leaves their red and purple hues). The amount of anthocyanin and carotene varies in the leaves. Autumn color leaves even from the same plant, but growing in different conditions will be different.

It is true that autumn leaves have a great sweet tooth!

Really at low temperatures the amount of sugar in the leaves increases. High content sugar and the abundance of solar energy favors the accumulation of anthocyanin in them. That's why, after clear, sunny days followed by cool autumn nights, Anthocyanin pigment is formed in the leaves, which colors them in bright red and burgundy shades.

Yellow and red, orange and brown - all leaves have their own shade. Let's figure out where this difference in color comes from.

In summer the leaves are green due to large quantity chlorophyll. This pigment is the plant’s breadwinner, since it is with its help that the plant synthesizes from carbon dioxide and water glucose, and from it all other nutrients. In the presence of light, chlorophyll in a living leaf is constantly destroyed and re-formed.

In addition to chlorophyll, the leaves also contain other dyes - yellow xanthophyll and orange carotene (the same one found in carrots). In summer, these pigments are invisible, as they are camouflaged big amount chlorophyll. In autumn, vital activity in the leaf dies out, and chlorophyll is gradually destroyed. This is where the yellow and orange hues come into play.

The destruction of chlorophyll occurs more intensely in sunny weather. This is why in cloudy, rainy autumn the leaves retain their green color longer. But if the precipitation is replaced by Indian summer, then the crowns of the trees turn into the usual autumn colors in a couple of days.

Besides the golden ones, many crimson leaves fall at our feet. They are like this because of a pigment called anthocyanin. Unlike chlorophyll, anthocyanin is not associated with intracellular plastic formations (grains), but is dissolved in cell sap.

When the temperature decreases, as well as in bright light, the concentration of anthocyanin in the cell sap increases. In addition, stopping or delaying the synthesis of nutrients in the foliage also stimulates its synthesis. Thus, the red color of leaf fall simply indicates that the life processes in the leaves are stopping in anticipation of winter.

The brightness of autumn colors depends on what the weather is like. If there is a lot of rain, the foliage will be dull and inexpressive due to excess water and lack of light. If cold nights alternate with clear ones on sunny days, then the colors will match the weather - rich and bright. Leaves on the south side of the tree will also always be richer in color because they receive more sunlight.

This year autumn is bright, beautiful, one might say “the forests are dressed in crimson and gold...”. The poets probably did not think about why the leaves on the trees turn yellow and red. And we will try to explain this for those who are interested. In general, nature is so mysterious that, as you will see, we are still unable to fully explain even such seemingly simple phenomena as the change in color of leaves in autumn. And here mysteries remain.

So, the simplest explanation known from school curriculum, looks something like this: leaves in the fall, when the days become short and the temperature drops, stop producing the green pigment chlorophyll, turn yellow and fall off. Everything seemed clear. But why, if the temperature is lowered to the same 10 °C in the summer, do they not fall? Does temperature play a decisive role in leaf color change? Why are the leaves colored differently? bright colors?

In fact, every small new leaf born on a birch or maple tree in the spring is already preparing for its death. At the base of the leaf there is a separating (or “cutting”) layer of cells that form capillaries through which water enters for chlorophyll photosynthesis and through which the nutritious glucose, which the leaf produces from water and carbon dioxide under the influence of sunlight, enters the branches and trunk. Nature has arranged it in such a way that these channels must certainly close with the onset of autumn. A “plug” is formed, preventing leaf-stem metabolism. This, one might say, is a process “at the genetic level”; it is probably similar to how a person ages - with age, metabolism becomes worse. The channels in the sheet also overlap gradually. Without water, chlorophyll can no longer be produced, and the color of the leaf changes.

Recent studies have shown that only one protein, protease, is responsible for the autumn parade of yellow and gold that follows the disappearance of green chlorophyll. The FtsH6 protein belongs to the FtsH family of proteases, capable of cleaving the chloroplast membrane protein - the light-receiving complex of photosystem II (LHC II), the most common membrane protein and the earth. Once this structural protein is broken down, the previously invisible pigments yellow xanthophyll and orange carotene B become visible.

In some articles explaining leaf color in autumn, this is where the explanation of leaf color actually ends. It is said that as the green pigment chlorophyll is lost, other pigments (red, yellow, etc.) always present in the leaves become noticeable.

This is not entirely true. If yellow and orange pigments, the so-called xanthophylls and carotenes, are present in the leaf all summer, then red pigments, anthocyanins, are formed in some leaves only with the arrival of autumn.

Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants that are found in many well-known vegetables and fruits, such as beets, red apples, and red grapes. By the way, they are allowed as food additives(E163). Great importance in the synthesis of anthocyanin has sunlight. Have you noticed that the clearer the autumn days, the brighter the leaves?
How are anthocyanins formed? Their formation depends on the breakdown of sugars in the presence of bright light when the level of phosphate in the leaves decreases. In summer, there is quite a lot of phosphate in the leaves; it is needed to break down sugars produced by chlorophyll. However, in the fall, phosphate, like other nutrients, moves from the leaves to the trunk of the plant. At the same time, the process of breaking down sugars changes, which leads to the formation of anthocyanin pigments. The brighter the light at this time, the more anthocyanins are produced and the more beautiful the color of the leaves turns out. Therefore, when it is sunny and cool in the fall and the nights are cold but not frosty, the leaf colors are usually at their most colorful.

As you know, everything in nature has meaning. What's the point of a tree spending energy producing red anthocyanin if its leaves are going to fall off soon anyway? I think that we people should not delude ourselves too much that this is only to give us pleasure from contemplating the extravaganza of autumn colors.

The mystery has not been completely solved. There are several hypotheses. The first is that by forming antioxidants, plants try to prolong life at least a little. autumn leaf. Red pigments lower the freezing point of liquids in the leaf and help the plant protect itself from the cold. According to the photoprotection theory, anthocyanins protect the leaf from harmful effects light at low temperatures, in the presence of anthocyanins, the tree manages to absorb nutrients (especially nitrogen) more efficiently. The longer the leaves are preserved, the more food is stored for the winter.

There is also a theory of allelopathy. Allelopathy is the ability of plants to secrete organic compounds, which inhibit the development of other plants. American biologist Frank Frey put forward a hypothesis according to which trees with a high concentration of anthocyanins in their leaves poison the soil underneath for other plant species. He conducted an experiment in which he doused weed sprouts with an extract of yellow, green and red leaves. Seeds that were watered with an extract of red maple leaves developed significantly worse.

Research continues, and new theories are emerging to try to explain this wonderful autumn mystery of the red leaf. And by solving such natural phenomena, a person may be able to help himself become healthier and happier...