Color or Black and White?

I think that the detail/texture is limited in the B&W version I would tend toward color. The splash of green really draws the eye in and I feel the leaves themselves have a little more depth.

That's one opinion (and not a strong one), and I fully expect others to have differing views on this.

I love colour, but here I prefer the mono, Ruth. The textures are good in it. Much as I lament overblown colours, to my eye the green looks a little washed-out in the colour version, I think because it is no longer naturalistic (as reflected in where you've posted it), with the leaves contrasting so starkly against almost-black shade.

I hope you'll indulge my doing an edit where I've increased saturation, and made the yellows more greenish to give a "purer" look, which somehow seems to do the leaves' beauty more justice, for me.

I think your contrast increases have created a halo around the top left of the bottom-right leaf in the mono, which could easliy be burned-in. (I've had to do that on mine.)

Having said all that, they are both fine, weil-conceived and typically well-composed images as we can expect from you, Ruth.

Nice minimal composition Ruth. Not sure I can choose one over the other. The color version offers a wonderful 'full of life' character, the BW version allows me to see a bit more of the surface texture which I am enjoying. Both share the great positioning of the leaves, a wonderfully natural randomness that you captured.

Always greatness from you :)

I prefer the monochromatic over the color variant. I think it supports a certain kind of aesthetic look. I would change the processing a little to 'uncrush' the blacks and retain some of the nice details and textures.

Is this image still work in progress? There are a lot of weird artifacts in the background and on the leaves. There's a insect on the upper right leave as well, I would get rid of it (retouching, not killing ;) ). Additionally there are areas where the soft brush strokes are clearly noticeable as such. Maybe instead of removing the background completely, bringing back some of these background elements and slightly fade them out into a absolute black with fine graded tones. I bit like Robert Mapplethorpe did with his flower photographs:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ca/93/c2/ca93c271ca532cdd1da84942fbfe1399.jpg

https://georgedaud.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/robert-mapplethorpe-inspired...

I think this could support this kind of aesthetic feeling.

Finally I suggest changing the compositing a bit by moving the subject a little more to the center and rotating the image to get a better balancing, I think. (Rough suggestion see attachment)