Right now in Dayton you can see Acer saccharinum (silver maple) absolutely full of maturing samaras (little "helicopters" with seeds).

They have a LOT of samaras, and the samaras are green, which makes me think of chlorophyll. My question:

Are these samaras photosynthetic?

It would be a neat trick to ameliorate the reproduction-growth trade off by having your developing seeds actually send in some energy as they grow! I really dont know if this is a thing | plant physiology twitter maybe can set me straight.

Also- #phenology

Also, a related matter, if these samaras are photosynthetic, they might be more, maybe a lot more, frost tolerant than a standard leaf. The samaras are very early (rel to leaves of eastern US trees). A low risk way to capture the vernal window of high light conditions??