Photo rejected, I know it was a long shot

What was the refusal reason? Quality issues or Commercial appeal?

Even that the first and the last picture are too small to check, I've seen several issues on your first.

• noise
• missing parts with you'r leaves, which will make them unusable for most applications.

Your second asset also exposes noise. Yes, it could be used as a background, but I suppose there are multiple assets in the database that fulfill that task better. 

now wouldn't this photo make a good abstract background?

By @Fluryf

No, it wouldn't.

It's too distracting for a background for the reasons mentioned!

The large image isn't really suitable as a background due to the composition, shadows and contrast of light and dark elements. 

The small thumbnail assets are too small to make objective comments on. As for the large one, although I'm assuming the "borders" at the top and right-hand side aren't really borders but part of the asset, they still com across as borders and Adobe does not allow those. Overall, it looks like a very poorly done scan.