Pictures Capture the Invisible Glow of Flowers. Ultraviolet light reveals alien-like colors and fairy sparkles in seemingly normal plants.

Leaves reflect green, and flowers reflect red, or yellow, or whatever. But plants also fluoresce, which means when they absorb ultraviolet light, they emit longer wavelengths visible to the human eye.

Although our visual system can paint a vibrant portrait of the world, its palette of colors is actually quite limited, as we only see between 390 to 750 nm of the full electromagnetic spectrum ...

Flowers use colours, some of them invisible to human eyes, to attract bees in order to spread their pollen. But experts have long wondered why they don't use iridescence seen in other parts of nature.