Scientists Discover Nickel-Eating Plant Species

An anonymous reader writes "A new species of metal-eating plant has been discovered in the Philippines, and the plant loves to eat nickel. From the article: 'Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños have discovered Rinorea niccolifera, a plant species that accumulates up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without poisoning itself, according to Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report and professor, said in a statement. Fernando and his team say that the hyper-accumulation of nickel is a very rare phenomenon, with only about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of plant species native to environments with nickel-rich soil.'"

Comments

Re:Sounds like a defense mechanism.

[ColdWetDog]

According to Wikipedia most current nickel deposits run around 1% ore purity. The plant comes out to about 1.8% nickel which is high enough grade but - you need thousand of tons of ore to make it commercially feasible. Thousands of tons of plant matter is one hell of a lot of bushes.