Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Xanthophyll
/ˈzænθəfɪl/noun
Any of the yellow pigments in plant leaves that help gather light and protect the leaf from excess of it.
The Greek roots
ξανθός
xanthós
yellow, golden
φύλλον
phýllon
leaf
Literally: “yellow leaf”
The story of the word
Berzelius separated the yellow fraction from autumn leaves in 1837 and named it after what it was. The pigment does not appear in October; it is there all summer, buried under chlorophyll, and shows only when the green is broken down and withdrawn. The same compounds colour egg yolks and maize, and two of them collect in the human retina.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1837
Same family
xanthanchlorophyllphyllotaxisxanthoma
In a sentence
The yellow of a birch in October is xanthophyll that was there in June.
Poultry feed is dosed with xanthophyll to keep the yolks orange.