Fussy Rainbow-Eaters
Leaves choose mostly orange-red
then bands of blue
to violet.
Using light to make a meal
of carbohydrate’s
sweet appeal
their chloroplasts feed on the Sun.
But only parts of
light’s spectrum.
Leaves don’t use all sunshine’s beams.
It seems they rarely
eat their greens!
First published in Double Helix (October 2015)
Reproduced with permission of CSIRO
Teacher Notes
Sunshine is made up of all the colours of the rainbow. It’s warming, illuminating, and essential for life. And plants mostly reflect the colour they don’t absorb – GREEN!
Notes by Jeanie Axton
Below is a template for an Australian Eucalyptus leaf. Print and get the students, after brainstorming, to write a shape poem around the shape of the leaf. They could all be cut out and attached to a Eucalyptus Poem Tree.
