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Abstract
Black pigmented leaves are common among horticultural cultivars, yet are extremely rare across natural plant populations. We hypothesised that black pigmentation would disadvantage a plant by reducing photosynthesis and therefore shoot productivity, but that this trait might also confer protective benefits by shielding chloroplasts against photo-oxidative stress. CO2 assimilation, chlorophyll a fluorescence, shoot biomass, and pigment concentrations were compared for near isogenic green- and black-leafed Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’. The black leaves had lower maximum CO2 assimilation rates, higher light saturation points and higher quantum efficiencies of photosystem II (PSII) than green leaves. Under saturating light, PSII photochemistry was inactivated less and recovered more completely in the black leaves. In full sunlight, green plants branched more abundantly and accumulated shoot biomass quicker than the black plants; in the shade, productivities of the two morphs were comparable. The data indicate a light-screening, photoprotective role of foliar anthocyanins. However, limitations to photosynthetic carbon assimilation are relatively small, insufficient to explain the natural scarcity of black-leafed plants.
Highlights
The leaves of black mondo grass, Ophiopogon planiscapus Nakai ‘Nigrescens’, are exceptionally dark
Even though the black- and green-leafed O. planiscapus were near isogenic and grown adjacent to one another under full sun, they showed significant differences in their photosynthetic responses
Rates of CO2 assimilation were lower for the black than the green leaves at irradiances above approx. 400 μmol m-2 s-1 (Figure 2)
Summary
The leaves of black mondo grass, Ophiopogon planiscapus Nakai ‘Nigrescens’, are exceptionally dark. Their chromaticity coordinates approach those of a flat black paint commonly used as the standard in colour comparisons, and are comparable to those of black-pigmented fruits from various plant species [1,2]. Black-pigmented leaves are exceedingly rare in nature, prominent only among certain genera of mosses, such as Andreaea and Grimmia, and of liverworts such as Cephalomitrion, Isophyllaria, and Marsupella [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. There are no reports of natural communities of vascular plants with black leaves. Many of the ornamental angiosperms currently popular for landscaping possess black or dark purple leaves [12], these arose either from the selection and propagation of sports, or from directed breeding programmes
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