Metal Eating Plant Discovered

A newly discovered plant species was discovered in the Philippines, and as its name suggests, the Rinorea niccolifera can absorb nickel without poisoning itself.

Before you picture a carnivorous plant like the Venus flytrap, though, the Rinorea niccolifera absorbs metal from soil and is thriving in nickel-rich soil.

Found on the western part of the Luzon Island and  discovered by scientists from the University of the Philippines, lead researcher and author Professor Edwino Fernando reported that the leaves of the said plant can absorb as much as 18,000 parts per million of nickel, about a thousand times more than what can be stored in other plants.

In a report by the Liberty Voice, Rinorea niccolifera is not the only species of its kind. There are other similar plants, called hyperaccumulators, that are known around the world. Out of around 300,00 species of vascular plants, about 450 of them have similar metal-absorbing traits as the Ronnorea niccolifera. What makes this plant special, however, is that there is only less than one percent of similar plants with the same absorption ability as the niccolifera.

What is the significance of these kinds of plants in the environment?

According to the report in UPI, the said plants can be used to remove dangerous metals from the polluted ecosystem, and once plants can absorb significant amounts of these metals, they can also be harvested for their valuable contents.

Augustine Doronila of the University of Melbourne and co-author of the paper with Fernando explained, "Hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies for example, 'phytoremediation' and 'phytomining'."

According to Science Daily, phytoremediation refers to the use of similar plant species to remove heavy metals contained in soil, while phytomining is the use of the plants to grow and harvest to help "recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites."