From bioGraphic, November 6:
Could phytomining—using plants to pull metal out of the soil—put the green in “green transition”?
Alpine pennycress is a charming little plant. Its low-growing rosette of green leaves is topped by leggy stalks bearing clusters of pinkish-white flowers. As they develop, these flowers transform into beautiful flattened seedpods that, in the words of botanist Liz Rylott from the United Kingdom’s University of York, “resemble a British old penny.” But alpine pennycress (Noccaea caerulescens) is notable for far more than its penny disguise. The plant is one of a select group—representing just 0.21 percent of the world’s known vascular plant species—that have evolved the ability to pull impressive amounts of valuable metals out of the soil. Known to scientists as hyperaccumulators, these plants undergird a developing industry that is looking to help secure the vital metals we want without wrecking the planet in the process.
Hyperaccumulators come in all shapes and sizes. Petite alpine pennycress accumulates zinc and cadmium, while shrubby, moth-pollinated Phyllanthus rufuschaneyi—a plant so obscure and narrowly distributed that it doesn’t have a common name—targets nickel. Pycnandra acuminata, a tree native to New Caledonia, has sap so nickel-rich that it “bleeds” a vibrant blue-green and is known as sève bleue, or blue sap, in French. Meanwhile, common buckler-mustard (Biscutella laevigata) collects thallium, and the cobalt wisemany (Haumaniastrum robertii), a plant in the mint family native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, pulls up copper and cobalt.
In all, researchers have identified plants that hyperaccumulate arsenic, cadmium, cerium, copper, cobalt, lanthanum, manganese, neodymium, nickel, selenium, thallium, and zinc. Many of these are among the so-called critical minerals that are needed to build batteries and other components for electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and other facets of the green energy transition....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
October 2013 - Mind the Koalas: "Gold Particles in Eucalyptus Trees Can Reveal Deposits Deep Underground"
March 2020 - Phytomining: Using Plants to Concentrate Valuable Metals as They Grow
