Noun. /zan-tho-FILLS/
by Margaret Dedloff
What does it mean?
Xanthophylls are yellow pigments found in plants. They can convert light energy into heat by passing the energy between themselves. The heat energy produced by xanthophylls can help protect chlorophylls, the main light absorbing pigments in plants, from heat damage.
How do I use it in a sentence?
Leaves on trees turn yellow in the fall because of xanthophylls.
When leaves change color, the different colors in the leaves are from the pigments present in the cells of the leaf. These pigments include chlorophylls, which are responsible for the green color, and xanthophylls, which are responsible for the yellow color. Plants stop making chlorophylls in the fall, which is why leaves lose their green color. Image taken by author.
Etymology
Xanthophyll is made up of two Greek words – xanthos, which means yellow, and phyllon, which means leaf.
