The Colour Of The Grass

I have seen animals at the zoo at their feeding time. It is supposed to be the second best time for visitors to see the animals in their most jovial moments, next to mating, of course. Today after completing a two-hour run in the neighbourhood, I knelt on the pavement, having my warm down, catching my breath and seeing the feeding time for the grass. It was a bright morning. The grass was absorbing the morning sunlight. It was also the time of the day, the water sprinkler was activated to send droplets of water to wet the grass leaf down to its root.




There is nothing jovial about the whole process. Other than the hissing sound of the sprayed water, it is the silent work of nature. As I stabilized my heartbeat after the run, the grass was executing the work of nature as explained in this article, which is condensed as follow.

"To our human eye the grass seems to be all green, but is that true, or is it an illusion. Looking through a microscope the individual plant cells that can be seen are not that green after all. Instead, they are mostly transparent, but each cell contains around 50 to 100 tiny green dots, called chloroplasts. This is where the light sensitive chlorophyll is found and where the process of photosynthesis happens. The chloroplast is like a tiny bay with even smaller bags inside called thylakoids . The green chlorophyll molecules are embedded in the surface of the thylakoids and carefully arranged in two types of photosytems, known as PS1 and PS2. Each taking care of a specific job in the steps of photosynthesis. When the sunlight hits the surface of the thylakoid, PS2 chlorophyll molecules catch it, specifically the red light of a specific wavelength. The thylakoid of the PS1 arrays catch the light from a different longer wavelength. At the same time chlorophyll and other molecules for example carotenoids absorb the violet and blue light. From all the wavelengths that fall on the grass, only one light is useless to them and this colour is simply reflected away, like a mirror. The colour of useless light to the plants is the green light that we see with our eyes."

Seeing is believing, that is what we have been told. It holds truth for many things in life, but not everything. It requires some knowledge to know when we should not trust our eyes. But then again, in a mainstream living, there is no point arguing that the grass is truly a transparent thing with tiny green dots. The grass is simply, either green, greener and dead brown.

Running on the 'green' grass helps me to recuperate faster, after each run. I hardly feel the little sensation on the joint of my left leg after the long run, which I sometimes feel after chasing the pavement. My running pace has gradually improved. I feel guilty though that I may have been seen running and raping the grass. I will continue to do so until one day I see the notice of "Keep Off The Grass", which has yet been on the spotlight of Dubai Municipality list of trendy things to introduce in its urban planning & control.