Why Is Grass Green?

Roll in the grass — it tickles your knees! Climb up the trunk of a leafy green tree! Why is it GREEN, the world out there? Same sun shining everywhere!

Sunlight tricks the eye -- looks WHITE -- It's RED and ORANGE and YELLOW and BRIGHT! GREEN and BLUE and INDIGO too — Every color is mixed in the goo!

Chlorophyll lives inside the leaf — Tiny green workers, beyond belief! They REACH OUT and they GRAB the rays — But they're picky in the funniest ways!

Chlorophyll eats RED! Yum yum! Chlorophyll eats BLUE! Mm mm mm! The green light? "No thank you — pass!" It bounces right off the blades of grass!

Bounce, bounce, the green comes back! Right to your eyeball — track track track! The color you SEE is the color it SPAT! Green is what's LEFT — imagine that!

What does chlorophyll do with the rest? It eats the red and blue for breakfast! It builds the plant a sugary snack — Photosynthesis! That's the knack!

So green isn't IN the grass at all — Green is what the grass throws BACK at the wall! The plant kept red, the plant kept blue — The green flew straight from the leaf to YOU!

Bounce, bounce, the green comes back! Right to your eyeball — track track track! The color you SEE is the color it SPAT! Green is what's LEFT — imagine that!

How do we know? How do we know? Hold a leaf to the window, watch the show — Sunlight pushes from the OTHER side — What color slips through? Open eyes wide!

GREEN! Just green! The reds and blues Got eaten by the leaf — they paid their dues! Shine the sun through a prism — see — Sunlight splits to a rainbow spree!

Each plant, each pigment, picks its share — Eats some colors, lets some air! Chlorophyll picked red and blue to chew — And kicked the green right out to you!

So next time you flop on a grassy hill, And the world is green from window to sill, The plants are EATING the red and the blue — And tossing the green to me and you!