[vannrox]

You might find this interesting.

[Rockingham]

The tree often has blue sap due to the high nickel content.

[Larry Lucido]

zinc and cadmium by some plants, nickel hyperaccumulation

Maybe they're trying to evolve battery power.

[gaijin]

“....hangs in the balance.”

New law/funding demand detected.

[johnthebaptistmoore]

Plants LOVE heavy metal, as confirmed during an episode of Mythbusters.

[rjsimmon]

I’m waiting for the tree that stores Unobtanium...

[C210N]

One thing that has been proven, is the capacity of hyperaccumulators like Pycnandra acuminata to clean soil with a build-up of toxic material caused by human activity, through a process called “phytomining”.

How so? Might work I suppose if humans harvest the plants, removing them. Otherwise, they'd naturally drop and decay, returning the metals to the soils.

[Sacajaweau]

They're just sucking it up....I don't see the big deal. There are what....120 of these plants found??

Is nickel damaging the planet?

Whadda ya mean they need more grant money.

[Verginius Rufus]

Manganese is great to have around if poisonous snakes are a problem.

Or is that mongoose?

[bgill]

A couple more and they’ll have enough metal to build another Titanic.

[VanShuyten]

I read an article a long time ago about a proposal to plant such plants in areas of Detroit that had heavy metal soil contamination. It was abandoned because the roots didn’t go down deep enough, so only the very top of the soil would be cleared.

[moovova]

I built a deck using Ipe-Brazilian hickory (Pau Lope, Ironwood) from the Amazon. It’s an incredibly hard wood, 3x as hard as oak...weighs 69 lbs/cubic foot, requires carbide tipped saw blades and hardened drill bits. You can’t nail into it or drive a screw in...the wood has to be pre-drilled. And wear breathing apparatus when cutting it because the sawdust is very irritating to the lungs. Nasty (but beautiful) stuff.

As they’re growing, these trees pull silica up thru their root system and deposit the silica thru-out the tree...making it almost like a soft stone. Because of the method I used to install it, it will probably last 100 years.