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 Six chromosome-grade Noccaea caerulescens genomes trace cadmium hyperaccumulation to gene copy number — and finger a magnesium transporter as its possible oldest actor October 23, 2026 Literature One waste residue digests another — steel slag catalysis turns Pteris vittata fronds into phenolic bio-oil while fixing 94.4% of the arsenic in the char October 22, 2026 Literature Twelve "native" weeds, nine metals, and a bioconcentration factor of 14.91 that cannot be derived from the paper's own tables — what a Gazipur screening study actually shows October 21, 2026

All updates →

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.

species.json species.csv