Getting spacy

Stories like this are delightful in that they expand the possibilities of our imaginations.

Local Color: Plants under Alien Suns Could Come in a Variety of Hues

Assessing how photosynthesis works on Earth helps scientists predict black plants and other exotic flora on alien worlds

Plants do not have to be green. To be sure, the vast majority of vascular plants on Earth are green because during photosynthesis (the conversion of photons of light into stored chemical energy) they absorb more of the red and blue wavelength light emitted by the sun. But in the murky depths of Earth's waters lurk photosynthetic bacteria that appear purple to the human eye, employing light in the infrared spectrum to store energy; more archaic plants—such as lichens and moss—utilize more of the blue spectrum in visible light. There are even red, shade-dwelling vascular plants. "We did a broad survey of organisms that perform photosynthesis in order to understand how light selects for photosynthesis pigments given different types of environments," says biometeorologist Nancy Kiang of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University. "The photon flux spectrum peaks in the red, which is where chlorophyll has peak absorption."
Link