Many of the people on my friend’s list love wild flowers like I do. But, they can serve a greater purpose than being beautiful. There’s an artist, Mel Chin, that has used so-called weeds to remove toxic metals from a neighborhood park that had been left for dead. I really admired that work. Here’s something related to that coming directly from science.
A Taste for Heavy Metal. Researchers call for model to help us understand plants that hoard heavy metals. Understanding how such ‘hyperaccumulators’ manage metals could help in developing crops to grow on contaminated soils, supplement dietary deficiencies, mop up industrial pollution or even harvest metals from soil.