ON THE INTERPRETATION OF ABSORPTION SPECTRA OF LEAVES–II. THE NON-ABSORBED RAY OF THE SIEVE EFFECT and THE MEAN OPTICAL PATHLENGTH IN THE REMAINDER OF THE LEAF

Abstract— The sieve effect and scattering within leaves are analysed by the use of a simple model. By plotting the leaf transmittance (corrected for light not entering the leaf) vs the transmittance of an equivalent amount of homogeneous plastid pigments, an intercept is found where the latter is zero. This minimum transmittance represents the fraction of the leaf area devoted to the ray of the sieve effect which strikes no chloroplasts. It varied between 7% and 0.2% in non-senescent leaves. When this was subtracted from the leaf spectrum, the peak absorbance was greater than that of the homogeneous leaf pigments in all cases. The ratio of the leaf absorbance to that of the homogeneous pigments, at the same wavelength, is the apparent optical pathlength, which increases with decreasing absorbance. By plotting this ratio vs the absorbance of the equivalent homogeneous pigment, an intercept is found where the latter is zero. This intercept is interpreted as an estimate of the true mean scattering pathlength. Leaves with high chlorophyll contents had low pathlengths (mean and SD = 2.30 ± 0.25); with moderate and low contents, the values were higher (2.75 ± 0.28, 3.95 ± 0.77). Another application of the model gave values between 3 and 4 for the true scattering pathlength.