In order to answer these questions, let’s first take a closer look at the nature of leaves and how they function. Simply put, leaves are nature’s food factories. During spring and summer the leaves serve as factories where most of the food necessary for tree growth is manufactured. The process of transforming water and carbon dioxide into sugar is called photosynthesis, which means literally “putting together with light” (Figure 1). This food-making process is performed by the chlorophyll molecules that are present in the leaf cells. Chlorophyll absorbs energy from sunlight. While the water is sucked in from the soil by the roots and carbon dioxide is inhaled through the pores of the leaves, chlorophyll synthesizes carbohydrates, such as sugars and starch. During winter, when this process cannot continue due to lack of light or water, the trees rest and live off the food they stored during the summer.

What is most astonishing is that it is again chlorophyll that gives the leaves their green color. Along with the chlorophylls (green pigment), spectrums of pigments, such as carotenoid, anthocyanin, and xanthophyll, give different colors to the leaves (Figure 2). When chlorophyll is abundant in the leaf cells, as it is during the growing season, the green color of chlorophyll dominates and masks the colors of any other coloring pigments that may be present in the leaf. Thus, the leaves of summer are characteristically green. When for some reason the number of chlorophylls decreases significantly, the color of other pigments paint the leaves, such as in the fall. For example, maple and acer leaves turn to bright red because of the carotenoid and anthocyanin pigments while sugar maple leaves turn yellow due to xanthophyll pigments.

Time to change colors

At the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, the length of days and the average temperature begin to decrease. Then the trees “know” that it is time to get ready for winter, their sleep-time, and the leaves stop making food. Since there is no longer a need for them, the chlorophyll molecules break down, and so the green color begins to fade. As we, the grieving viewers of this process, say farewell to the color of life, we are surprised by the splendor demonstrated by vibrant colors ranging from yellow to orange.

All these colors are due to the mixing of varying amounts of the chlorophyll residue and other pigments in the leaf becoming visible during the fall season. For the realization of this beauty, mixtures of pigments give rise to the reddish and purplish fall colors of trees such as dogwoods and sumacs, while others offer the sugar maple its brilliant orange or yellow. In some trees, like the maple, a red pigment will be formed in the fall if the days are warm and the nights cold. These trees produce sugar in the leaves during the day, but this sugar cannot move out when the nights are cold, and the leaf’s connections to the tree begin to break down. After that the high sugar concentration favors the formation of a class of pigments called anthocyanin, which is red. Thus, the leaves left out in the sunlight turn red through this process. The brown color of trees (like oaks) that appears after chlorophyll breaks down comes from plant wastes left in the leaves. The autumn foliage of some trees is only yellow, so it is the combination of all these things that makes the beautiful colors we enjoy in the fall.

Thanks to scientific research, today we know the details of leaf color change. The approximate size of these pigments is so small that hundreds of millions of them, put edge to edge, could measure only 1 meter. Isn’t it amazing how the beauty of autumn is exhibited through the hands of such small and blind painters?

Abdullah Akpinar is a graduate student in Planning and Landscape Architecture at Clemson University, Southern Carolina.

The human eye can identify colors within a 360-760 mm distance. The limits of a curved sight cover the yellow-green field. Every leaf and blade of grass reflects light in this field (540-560 mm), and the human eye can detect thus detect green more clearly than any other color. In other words, God, the All-Knowing, made our eyes see the peaceful and lively color green more easily than other colors, and He granted us the ability to distinct over fifty hues of green – more hues than any other color.

In addition to green, the human eye also perceives the color red, the color of of begonia and barberries, which are colored with antocyan. But there is a chlorophyll layer with its distinctive green under the red layer on top of the leaves. Only a human can see a begonia like this – for example, a bee sees it in black.

Biologists found out that greenblue seaweed, which is really spread all over the world, used to provide our planet with oxygen billions of years ago, contains not only “A”- type chlorophyll, but also other pigments. The human eye, however, is “determined” to see only the green seaweed component created in order to saturate the environment with vital oxygen.

Claiming that “mother nature” has executed such a complicated selection, for the sake of Charles Darwin’s principles, is impossible – it would be more realistic to expect a typewriter to write the encyclopedia Britannica by chance.

We must, however, concede a very important detail. Energy absorption of phototrophic organisms, which is dependant the Sun, is adaptively connected with continuously changing levels of solar radiation. As it is known, the latter comes into soil, which then nourishes plants by facilitating the absorption of energy in a selectively narrow diapason (400-900 to 400- 700 nm). It is impossible to modulate an optimal situation for a plant to be nourished through evolution. A blind evolution would not achieve that in a time span much more time than the multibillion age of our Universe. This leads to the conclusion that the Creator made the specific system of energy absorption in plants via rays projected to the Earth by the Sun.

Aside from the fact that green is created and chosen by God, one more detail deserves listing. Objectively a plant’s leaf and its pigment are connected with selective spectral energy absorption. Emanation with different quanta outside of this precise and narrow “adjustment” could have any influence – negative or positive. Pigment of another kind would not function to fulfill its purpose to be vivifying. Is not turning the ruthless solar radiation into a life-giving flow a manifestation of His wisdom and of the love He has for His creations?

In our everyday life, we engage in amateur garden work or we just admire trees and bushes in bloom. This wonderful event, this miracle, appears to us as something routine. Pigments are highly organized; they are “adjusted” to radiation, which means that their spectrums permit them to absorb radiation in the diapasons at their limit intensity. Moreover, a plant’s organism is always able to increase/decrease this intensity.

For sure, there is one more obvious thing – the issue of the maximum solar radiation is relative. The problem is that according to every scale of wave length, maximum radiation is registered at 578 nm., and at 1015 nm. It would be even more, 1804 nm, if read according to the quantum quantity scale.

From the point of view of basic quantum physics, the most prominent authority on understanding of the role of God in the act of creation, the green color of a leaf is understood to be connected with the features of the pigment itself, the most suitable for the function of absorption and transformation of ray energy.

Another issue is also very important – what determines the diapason of a ray’s energy is its FAR and its photosynthesis diapason accordingly. If we do not accept God as Creator, it is hard to imagine how nature, through all its stages of development led the only source of inner energy, the ATF molecule – through anaerobic, then aerobic breathing and ultimately to all the forms of photosynthesis. This molecule with the energy of its chemical compound in the living system of some 10 Kcal/mole remained in the green plant, but it was not only the breath that was the source of its creation.

I would like to share my observations of over fifty years. As the solar ray energy has become the most important source of energy for plants, simplifying a number of arguments, I can say that the plants are granted a mechanism able to form universal inner quanta divisible to ATF in energy as well as to a photosynthetically important compound named NADP.H (50 kcal/mole each). This is based on the features and spectrum of chlorophyll. The quanta are one of the strongest donors of “his majesty the electron!” Please tell me who will speak of blind evolution after considering these “coincidences”…

I would like to share my observations of over fifty years. As the solar ray energy has become the most important source of energy for plants, simplifying a number of arguments, I can say that the plants are granted a mechanism able to form universal inner quanta divisible to ATF in energy as well as to a photosynthetically important compound named NADP.H (50 kcal/mole each). This is based on the features and spectrum of chlorophyll. The quanta are one of the strongest donors of “his majesty the electron!” Please tell me who will speak of blind evolution after considering these “coincidences”…

“Let all the breathing praise the Lord!”

There is a simple conclusion that could be made from all the above. If such “portions,” or quanta, are formed from solar energy absorbed by plants, then means the primary products of the same type can be also formed. “The quality of light” is of no metabolic importance for the process of synthesis in the limits of ray energy. The Word of God, once spoken out, is realized in a determined way, far distant from Darwinian theory.

Long years of experiments, research, and consultations with colleagues from around the world persuaded this author to change his opinion from vulgar materialism to a deeper understanding. Properties in plants are not the result of “calculabilitive” photosynthesis “touched” by science; like all things, these properties are of a manifestation of His, just as are the lives of humans.

This is the irrational choice of my soul. Nonetheless, as it was admitted in the works on the general problems of science and historic knowledge by the Chief of Department of Civilization Problems at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences by Prof. V.I. Sheremet -the real breakthrough can be reached with faith in God and exploring the undiscovered. So I offer a second conclusion devoid of materialist explanation. The pigment apparatus of a plant is a complicated chlorophyll-protein complex that functions jointly with its intended object. Who determined this program of compatibility? The plant – the main hero of this article – is given the ability to form a physiological quantum of 50 kcal by itself. Moreover, a high intensity green quantum from outside cannot be used by a separate chlorophyll- protein compound.

The conclusion is obvious and simple: a plant’s life cycle is realized only according to His will and in the regime determined by Him. “Monochromatic” sources of ray energy are not suitable, nor welcomed, by God for the full-fledged artificial raising of plants, but it can be of use for the photosynthesis regulation. So, hotbeds are useful and necessary. The generalized summary is as follows. The green color of leaves and, the blue of the cloudless sky, are not random, they are the work of intelligent design.

So let the green color – the color of plants, of nephrite, malachite, and beryl – beloved and honored both in the East and in the West. Let the mysterious “green ray” of a seaside sunset, let the green stripe of the rainbow, the bridge to Heaven for the righteous, remain the symbol of His Will, His Life, His Awakening of spring in the peace of the heart.

May peace be with all of you, dear readers!