Plants that mine metal from the ground up

Some plants do more than tolerate metal in the soil: they draw it into their living tissue at extraordinary concentrations. This site is a vendor-neutral scientific reference for those species. Browse eleven elements, trace every figure to a published source, and follow the botanical frontiers of phytoremediation and agromining.

Browse by metal → Open the species table

Browse by metal

Ni Nickel Primary · > 1,000 µg g⁻¹ 49 species Zn Zinc Primary · > 3,000 µg g⁻¹ 13 species Cd Cadmium Primary · > 100 µg g⁻¹ 9 species Co Cobalt Primary · > 300 µg g⁻¹ 4 species Mn Manganese Primary · > 10,000 µg g⁻¹ 11 species REE Rare Earth Elements Primary · > 1,000 µg g⁻¹ ΣREE 10 species Cu Copper Tracked · > 300 µg g⁻¹ 4 species As Arsenic Tracked · > 1,000 µg g⁻¹ 3 species Se Selenium Tracked · > 100 µg g⁻¹ 8 species Tl Thallium Tracked · > 100 µg g⁻¹ 7 species Pb Lead Tracked · > 1,000 µg g⁻¹ 5 species

Counts are derived live from the database. How records are verified →

Landmark accumulators

Astragalus bisulcatus Astragalus bisulcatus Fabaceae · North America (western) 13,685 µg g⁻¹ Se · 136.8× threshold Noccaea caerulescens Noccaea caerulescens Brassicaceae · Western & Central Europe 40,000 µg g⁻¹ Zn · 13.3× threshold P Psychotria gabriellae Rubiaceae · New Caledonia 63,750 µg g⁻¹ Ni · 63.8× threshold Pteris vittata Pteris vittata Pteridaceae · Pantropical and subtropical 22,630 µg g⁻¹ As · 22.6× threshold

How a species earns its place

A plant counts as a hyperaccumulator only when its living above-ground tissue exceeds a defined, element-specific threshold: 1,000 µg g⁻¹ dry weight for nickel, just 100 for cadmium. Thresholds follow van der Ent et al. (2013). Every record here cites the source of its concentration and carries a verification level, so you can see exactly how firmly each figure is established.

Read the methodology →

From the field

Literature The Ni hyperaccumulator's rhizosphere runs on its boring microbes — in Odontarrhena chalcidica, genome-scale modelling predicts that abundant "potentiator" taxa, not network keystones, carry the broader function and feed the keystones September 20, 2026 Literature The mercury strategy of the arsenic hyperaccumulator is chemical lock-up, not vacuolar pumping — Pteris vittata stores Hg as β-HgS and glutathione complexes, and its 83 mg/kg shoots leave the hyperaccumulator label deliberately unproven September 19, 2026 Database Türkiye's nickel-hyperaccumulator map is mostly an evidence-quality map — a source audit of 66 published records finds only 12 can be pinned to source-supported coordinates, and 51 cannot be located more precisely than a region September 18, 2026

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Open, citable data

The full species table is available as structured data under CC BY 4.0, with attribution to the cited primary sources. Reuse it, cite it, build on it.

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