The green or gold leaf hostas including the variegated forms of these colored leaf perennials are a slugs idea of smorgasbord delights. The waxy coated leaves of this blue hosta are plants that slugs donât like to eat.
Skin pigmentation. Melanin, whose primary function is in pigmentation, has many more important functions to perform in the human body. Protection from UV radiation. Melanin functions as a sunscreen and as a broad spectrum sun radiation absorbent. The absorbed energy causes redox reactions, and both eumelanin and pheomelanin form free radical species. Eumelanin, being more photostable scavenges the originated oxidative species and neutralizes them.
Melanin is important because it's the most primitive and universal pigment in living organisms. Melanin is produced in the pineal gland. Abundantly found in primitive organisms such as fungi, as well as advanced primates. Furthermore within each living organism, melanin appears to be located in the major functional sites. For example, in vertebrates, melanin is not only present in the skin, eyes, ears, central nervous system, it can also be found in the pineal gland, pituitary gland, thyroid gland, thymus gland, adrenal gland, and the barathary gland.