Does the color of light make any difference in how plants grow?
A. Light quality refers to the color or wavelength reaching the plant surface. Sunlight can be broken up by a prism into respective colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. On a rainy day, raindrops act as tiny prisms and break the sunlight into these colors, producing a rainbow. Red and blue light have the greatest effect on plant growth. Green light is least effective to plants as they reflect green light and absorb none. It is this reflected light that makes them appear green to us. Blue light is primarily responsible for vegetative growth or leaf growth. Red light, when combined with blue light, encourages flowering in plants. Fluorescent light or cool white is high in the blue range of light quality and is used to encourage leafy growth. Such light would be excellent for starting seedlings. Incandescent light is high in the red or orange range, but generally produces too much heat to be a valuable light source. Fluorescent grow lights have a mixture of red a
