Can you grow plants under a green light source?  Probably not for long!  The plant simply can't effectively utilize that fraction of the spectrum, however,  a closer look at what makes up light is necessary.  There is actually no such thing as "white" light, the kind you see around you all day long.  Go to the library, check out a physics book, and look up "acromatic color" for a better explanation of this bit of physical science.  The "white" light you see is made up of three different wave lengths: blue, green and red.  These are known as the primary colors.  There is no such thing as yellow light either in the strictly technical sense and certainly no such thing as "black light".  Black is simply the absence of light.  All the other colors are generated by combinations of the three primary colors.

You probably don't realize it but when you type a search term into any search engine there are companies who are tracking what you ask.  Not who you are, but what you are trying to discover.  They make that information available to website webmasters so we can see what people are trying to learn and what brought you to this or any other website.  I utilize one of those services so I can try to understand what people want to know about their plants.  But don't be alarmed, I have no way of knowing who is looking for what!  Recently someone somewhere in the world typed in a question to Google and asked "will green light kill plants"?I thought that was a very interesting question.   And I wondered, why would anyone ask?  But the answer is it very likely will!

I'm a retired commercial photographer.  I used to be paid by major clients to photograph cruise ships, resort hotels, clothing, boats, airliners and all sorts of other things including tropical fish and girls in little bikinis  since I used to work for dive magazines and shoot swimsuit catalogues.  (click on the photo and you can see some of my commercial work)  I use that as an example because taking photographs underwater is a photographic challenge and requires specific knowledge of how light reacts.  If you don't understand light you are less likely to get a quality photograph, especially beneath the surface.  Light below the water is very blue due to selective absorption and if you don't understand how to correct for that excess blue light all the fish, and girls, will look blue on film!  So I was forced more than 30 years ago to learn about light and how it is composed as well as how to manipulate and correct it's make-up.   

People love to take photographs in the morning and evening, at least they did before digital cameras came along!  In the morning and late afternoon the sun's light has more red content because the other portions of the spectrum are being reflected away as a result of the Earth's angle in relation to the sun.  When everyone used film in our cameras we loved that "warm" look because it made everything, and everyone, appear richer in the morning and late afternoon.  Working photographers often make models get up before sunrise so they can benefit from that early morning color saturation.  Sunsets and sunrises are (were) much more colorful and people look great (using film) because skin appeared "warmer".  Typically you must use some sort of warming filter to get the same results with digital cameras since digital has built-in color regulating meters known as automatic "white balance".  The cameras often automatically correct for the warmer morning light and try to make it appear "normal".  But as the sun gets higher in the sky the light appears "white" because the full spectrum of blue, green and red light is present.  Our eyes don't selectively see the colors, that requires a prism.  But those three primary light colors, or various combinations of those colors, are present. 

Have you ever noticed that many flowers don't open until the sun begins to rise in the sky?  They are reacting to the presence of the full color spectrum.  Have you ever noticed that leaves begin to change color and fall off the trees in the fall?  They too are reacting to the changing color spectrum (more or less red and blue) along with the light's intensity.  But people just see it as "white" light.  Our brains have the ability to compensate so most of the time we don't notice the difference in the light's color known scientifically as color temperature.  But inherently the plants are getting green light along with red and blue.  But since the plant's leaves are green they reflect away the green portion of the spectrum and use little if any.  Too much of any one portion of the spectrum may be bad for some living organisms while others crave only a certain spectrum. 

Coral reefs love blue light.  Corals actually use the blue light created when the water filters away the red first and then the green to feed an organism within their tissues.  By the time a diver gets down to 50 or 60 feet the only portion of the light spectrum left in the water is blue!  If you try to take underwater photos without a corrected flash attachment you'll quickly see the result!  That organism in the coral needs blue light to produce sugars which in turn feed the corals.  Few corals actually "eat" much of anything in the ocean.  Effectively, they are largely being fed sugar by an algae living inside the tiny coral polyp which through photosynthesis utilize the blue spectrum.  If you happen to be a coral reef aquarium keeper you already know this!  That's why you added those actinic blue lights to your aquarium.

Plants appear to be the same way, at least to some extent.  Many plants don't like brilliant strong sunlight.  Some do, like Musa sp. (bananas) and a bunch of other sun loving plants.  The thing they crave more than the color is the intensity.  Most plants need a fairly specific intensity of light (orchids are a good example) in to grow, live, and flower.  That's why many Philodendron sp. will live in your home in relatively low light levels and grow adequately well.  However, if allowed to reach brigher light a Philodendron will become much larger than the juvenile plant you grow in your home.  They don't need as strong a light source as the banana "tree".   But some need much brighter light.  A few, such as Microsorum thailandicum, the iridescent blue fern (Microsorum thailandicum) actually prosper in very low light levels.  If they get what they want (dim blue light) they will reward you by turning a beautifully dark iridescent blue!  Give them too much light and they just stay green. 

I suspect this question arose because of a question about the light bulbs that are commonly known as "grow lights".  Or perhaps, someone wanted to do something ornamental and display plants under a green light bulb.  There is no way of knowing why the question was originally asked.  Those "grow bulbs" have visibly more blue in their spectrum.  That is in part to simulate shady light which many "house plants" prefer.  Fluorescent lights in general have more blue light and that's why if you take a photo with a film camera under fluorescent light everything generally looks awful.  A trained photographer adds a red correction filter to either the light source or the camera lens to help alter that "awful" coloration.  But what is missing in fluorescent light is largely the red spectrum.  The green is still there along with the blue.  Interestingly, your eyes never seem to miss the absence of the red spectrum and consider fluorescent light still to be "white".  Your brain simply makes a visual compensation without you realizing it has happened.

Many plants appear to need the blue, and possibly red, portions of the spectrum more.  You can go and spend $500 or more and a color meter if you want to experiment with this, but unless you're a well paid photographer it likely will serve little purpose.  Experimentation will teach you the same lessons with light.  I once tried growing philodendrons and orchids under an incandescent lamp.  Didn't work.  All of them began to die.  That's because incandescent light bulbs, the kind you use most of the time in your lamps and ceiling lights, are actually red light sources.  If you measure them in Degrees of Kelvin Temperature which in theory measures the color of light from zero to 10,000 degrees (a method used by trained photographers)  you'll find incandescent light bulbs are around 3200 to 4000 degrees K (Kelvin).  That's red.  Fluorescent lights measure closer to 7000 to 8000 degrees K.  That's blue.  Grow bulbs tend to be more blue, but also just don't have a very strong intensity.

I don't think you can find a reference to the color temperature of green light because it is an element of the composition of "white" light.  It takes all three (red, blue, green) to make "white" light.  Again, go read a good text regarding acromatic color.  (Have you ever wondered why stage foot lighting is red, blue and green?)  If you add green light to the lower temperature red light it just becomes less red.  And if you add green light to the higher Kelvin temperature blue light you just get light that is less blue.  There is no need to measure the color temperature of the green spectrum because it can be seen in the temperature of the warmer (or less warm) and bluer (or less blue) light sources.  I'm sure it exists in some lab somewhere, but is of no value, at least to photographers, since they can easily see the effect as the color temp of daylight tends towards "white" which is somewhere around 5600 degrees K.