

'Metal-Eating' Plant Capable of Absorbing 18,000 PPM of Nickel - jmadsen
http://www.autoworldnews.com/articles/7384/20140512/metal-eatiing-plant-capable-of-absorbing-18-000-ppm-of-nickle.htm

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ams6110
What is not really pointed out is that you can't just plant these on polluted
ground and have it magically cleaned up. You have to periodically harvest the
plants, otherwise when they die they'll decompose and the metals go back into
the soil.

The harvested plant material would then essentially be toxic waste which will
have to be specially landfilled, or if valuable, processed to extract the raw
metals absorbed.

Also not sure how deep their roots go but probably only a few inches of
topsoil could be cleaned up in this way.

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jmadsen
From the article:

"Once the plant absorbs a significant amount of metal, they can also be
harvested for their commercially valuable contents, according to the release."

"nickel, zinc, copper and manganese in high concentrations" are all
commercially viable metals worth collecting, assuming the extraction process
is cheaper than digging it out of the ground.

I haven't been able to find out how long the roots are, or how deep they
typically grow

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warfangle
Considering the family (Violaceae), I'd guess pretty shallow (<30cm).

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Scramblejams
Wonder if this is a step towards Freeman Dyson's carbon-dense tree that solves
the carbon emissions issue.

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keithly
I wonder how this plant compares to Sebertia acuminata from New Caledonia:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=BCQ49kJG8hgC&lpg=PA46&ots=N...](http://books.google.com/books?id=BCQ49kJG8hgC&lpg=PA46&ots=Nlk_3VAS_K&dq=new%20caledonia%20nickel%20tree&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q=new%20caledonia%20nickel%20tree&f=false)

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jmadsen
fascinating! thanks for sharing link - plan to read when I have time later

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TrainedMonkey
Article claims that this find can advance a lot of fields. However, besides
increase of knowledge in biochemical field, what other advantages would
studying it confer?

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ars
With some genetic engineering I wonder if this could be used to clean arsenic
or lead from a field.

Too bad it wouldn't work for gold.

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pyre
Drop some seeds in (e.g.) Fort Knox and watch the gold disappear?

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skywhopper
I look forward to near-future fields of fiber-optic-eating plants sown over
Internet trunk lines that can use MITM attacks to subvert the Bitcoin
blockchain, and store the stolen coins in SSD fruits that grow an organic USB
port for later harvesting.

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CodeCube
Reading this, I totally expected it to be featured in a future episode of
Almost Human ... and then I remembered it was canceled and I had a sad :(

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blahedo
Holy crap that autoplay video is annoying. I'd never before seen a video
widget that only lets you pause for about five seconds before it AUTOMATICALLY
UNPAUSES ITSELF. Please tell me this is not the future.

