For many weeks we have been surrounded by the photosynthetic fecundity of green plants. With cooler weather this process mostly will have reached fruition for this growing season. But, stay tuned for 2017!

Photosynthesis, the biosphere's metabolic foundation, is centered in the green pigment chlorophyll contained within leaf cell structures called chloroplasts. Electrons in chlorophyll, powered by red and violet wavelengths from sunlight, activate a series of enzymatic reactions that drive the chemical syntheses of high-energy storage compounds and of a certain 3-carbon sugar that soon is converted into the familiar 6-carbon sugar, glucose--the same sugar we worry about in our blood streams.

To make a molecule of glucose, a green plant uses six molecules of carbon dioxide and six of water. The products, plus glucose are six molecules of oxygen.

Glucose, before being moved from plant leaves to elsewhere within the plant, is converted to sucrose (table sugar). Glucose and sucrose are the raw materials from which numerous enzymatic pathways synthesize the wide variety of compounds needed by the plant. The plant's own metabolism uses about 50 percent of the "food" compounds it synthesizes and less oxygen than it produces. We animals depend upon foods stored in plants, our atmosphere (about 21 percent oxygen at sea level) depends upon this excess oxygen for replenishment, and green plants serve as carbon dioxide "sinks" by sequestering carbon in compounds in plant structures.

For photosynthesis, typical green plants use carbon dioxide from the air, plus water and a short list of minerals from the soil. And from these few "essential nutrients" plants synthesize every compound they need for life. We can't do that! Our bodies can synthesize many of the needed compounds, but we require some 50 essential nutrients from the environment, which includes several amino acids, 1-2 fatty acids, and a long list of minerals.

On a global scale, scientists estimate that chloroplasts (from all sources) produce annually about 171 billion tons of carbohydrates. This includes much cellulose, a very common plant polysaccharide synthesized from glucose. And whether or not plant material passes through some animal, or, as dead plant material, is digested by microbes, all eventually is oxidized back to carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, and minerals--all again available for use by photosynthesis to make more plant material and to release more oxygen. Nature is very good at recycling.

Beautiful!   Time to hug a tree or kiss a leaf.