Black plants and whether or not they're edible

[sailorhathor]

Hi, I'm working on a book that features aliens from a planet that orbits a red dwarf star. One of the theories I've read through research is that the plants on this planet would be black and dark purple. One of the sites that I read explained it this way:

As indicated in NASA studies announced in 2007, plants evolved under dim red dwarf suns or in

Comments

[eve_n_furter]

I don't know if it will help at all, but here are some related articles from The Straight Dope

[sailorhathor]

This gives me a lot of helpful things to think about. I'm not sure I'm ready to present the question to Cecil just yet, but if I do, I'll let everyone know. :D

[laurose8]

This might not fit your story...But perhaps by the time we're colonising other planets, it will be a simple matter to implant humans with something enabling them to detoxify/digest a much wider range of plant life.

[sailorhathor]

It's been suggested to me that the humans colonizing this planet could put the alien plants through a "chelation process" to remove any toxins. This is similar to your idea, just less biologically intensive, I would think. This would be part of the experiments the colonists would run.

[rheasilvia]

The plants NASA speaks about are earth species, trying to adapt to a radically different environment. Nothing that is true for them applies to plants that have truly evolved in the environment in question.

Since the plants you want to write about are not earth species, but have actually evolved on the red-dwarf-orbiting planet, they will not use chlorophyll at all; instead, they will have developed their own system, which (unlike the earth-adapted stystem chlorophyll) will be well-suited to the environment.

That means that they don't need to be black - they can be whatever color you like, and be as edible or inedible as you like. The chances of an alien plant being edible to humans is fairly low in general, I would say, simply because of the incompatible biologies (would the alien plants have any proteins or vitamins or other nutrients the human system could work with at all?). But that is up to you. :-)

[sailorhathor]

I guess then I need to know what else plants could use for growth beyond chlorophyll. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I want this planet to be similar to Earth in many ways because the two planets were seeded with the building blocks for life from the same source, but not so similar that there's no interesting conflict. So, how would a red dwarf sun change the evolution of plant life?

[orange_fell]

There are some plants that don't have chlorophyll. Most of them are parasites that leech off of other plants for food. So they do get their food from photosynthesis, but one or two steps removed! Look up Indian Pipes and Dodder, for two examples.

[sailorhathor]

Thank you, I will. :)

[learnsslowly]

I think the colour thing will be a complete red/ black herring. We know that non-toxic dark red/ black/ purplish pigments can exist.(Blackberries). The question is more what other chemicals can be present in the plants? Here are a few thoughts - by no means a definitive list

[sailorhathor]

Thank you, that gives me things to research that I can possibly use to my advantage.

[mindways]

My question is would these plants be edible?

I think that "are plants from this alien biome even *potentially* edible?" is really the more relevant question. Having an edible, nutritious, non-toxic alien "plant" would stretch my suspension of disbelief orders of magnitude more than having an edible, nutritious, non-toxic black-or-purple plant. If I can accept the former, the latter's not even an issue.

[sailorhathor]

If the two planets (Earth and this alien one) were seeded with the building blocks for life from the same source, would that help at all with the suspension of disbelief? If some alien plants could be consumed by humans after a detoxifying process, would that help at all as well?

If not, could you explain to me why not? I'm not being defensive when I ask these questions - I really want to know so I can try to come up with things that will eliminate the doubt as much as possible. It helps me brainstorm.