Abstract
The outer layers of a range of plant tissues, including flower petals, leaves and fruits, exhibit an intriguing variation of microscopic structures. Some of these structures include ordered periodic multilayers and diffraction gratings that give rise to interesting optical appearances. The colour arising from such structures is generally brighter than pigment-based colour. Here, we describe the main types of photonic structures found in plants and discuss the experimental approaches that can be used to analyse them. These experimental approaches allow identification of the physical mechanisms producing structural colours with a high degree of confidence.
Highlights
Structural colour in nature is typically associated with the animal kingdom [1]
Plant anatomy is directly influenced by the light conditions in which plants grow
Plants exploit light to harvest solar energy through photosynthesis and to communicate with animals. The characterization of their optical properties is important in understanding the evolution of the interplay between plants and the animals that pollinate them or disperse their seeds
Summary
Structural colour in nature is typically associated with the animal kingdom [1]. Diverse typologies of photonic structures including ordered [2,3], quasi-ordered [4] and completely random morphologies [5] have been reported in a range of animal species, such as butterflies, beetles, jellyfishes and birds. Examples of photonic structures in plants are much more rare and many of them have been described only very recently. These include a variety of flowers [6,7,8,9], leaves [10] and fruits [11,12]. The functional significance of structural colour in leaves is, on the other hand, not fully understood [10,13,14]. We review the main mechanisms of structural colour in flowers, leaves and fruits, and the most common optical techniques used to characterize these optical phenomena
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