Angolan vines found hoarding huge amounts of metal in leaves
Morgenstern T, Baumgärtel C, Lautenschläger T, Götzke L, Neinhuis C
Phytoremediation
Decades-old pressed plant specimens sitting in museum drawers just revealed a living toolkit for cleaning up metal-contaminated soil, showing how much science is hiding in collections gardeners might dismiss as dusty archives.
Researchers tested 234 dried plant samples from Angola, kept in herbarium collections, to see how much metal they'd absorbed from the soil during their lives. Some plants, especially vines in the genus Landolphia, turned out to be metal hoarders: one species packed leaves with over 2% manganese by weight, and others held nearly 5% aluminum. These 'hyperaccumulator' plants could eventually help clean up polluted land or even be farmed to harvest metals from the ground.
Key Findings
234 samples from 132 Angolan plant species were screened for 10 metals using microwave digestion and optical emission spectrometry
Landolphia species showed aluminum levels up to 4.5% of dry leaf mass, and Landolphia congolensis exceeded 2% manganese by dry mass
Leaves consistently accumulated more metal than fruits or inflorescences, and accumulation varied strongly by collection site
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists dug through old herbarium plant specimens from Angola and found several plant species, especially in the Landolphia group, that soak up extraordinary amounts of aluminum and manganese from the soil, some at levels never before recorded in African plants.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Screening for potential metal hyperaccumulator plants in Angola: a herbarium-based approach.
Metal hyperaccumulator plants play a key role in understanding plant adaptation to metal-rich soils and offer potential for phytoremediation and phytomining. Angola hosts highly weathered tropical ...
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Landolphia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae first described as a genus in 1806. They take the form of vines that scramble over host trees. Landolphia is native to tropical Africa.