Copper

Hyperaccumulation threshold: 300 µg g⁻¹ [ref] Tracked

Copper is essential but toxic in excess. Genuine copper hyperaccumulators are few and largely confined to the Central African Copperbelt; many historical records were inflated by soil dust contamination of samples and are being critically reassessed.

4 species recorded in this database; highest cited value 10,000 µg g⁻¹.

		Metal			Region	Uptake	Verify
Aeolanthus biformifolius	Lamiaceae	Cu Copper	10,000	33.3×	DR Congo (Katanga/Copperbelt)	Obligate	review
Anisopappus davyi	Asteraceae	Cu Copper	1,200	4×	DR Congo, Zambia	Facultative	review
Haumaniastrum katangense	Lamiaceae	Cu Copper	8,360	27.9×	DR Congo, Zambia (Copperbelt)	Obligate	review
Haumaniastrum robertii	Lamiaceae	Cu Copper	2,800	9.3×	DR Congo, Zambia (Copperbelt)	Facultative	review

Copper news & analysis

Research, industry and conservation context for Copper hyperaccumulation and phytoremediation.

Literature

To mine copper out of a vineyard, harvest the whole plant — chicory wins by its roots, and still recovers only a tenth of the fungicide copper

October 14, 2026 · Lapie et al. (2026), Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture

Field trials in three Loire vineyards show whole-crop-harvested chicory removes twice as much soil copper as any crop tested — by exploiting the root, the compartment phytoextraction usually discards — yet even the best treatment clawed back only ~10% of the copper that fungicides keep adding.

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Literature

A remediated site keeps a metal-adaptive memory — Leersia hexandra's formerly contaminated ecotype still out-accumulates a clean-site ecotype up to 23.5-fold in leaves under renewed Cu+Ni exposure

September 29, 2026 · Chen et al. (2026), Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Two ecotypes of the grass Leersia hexandra — one from a historically contaminated, now remediated site, one from clean cropland — were re-exposed to combined copper and nickel in hydroponics, and the remediated-site plants still accumulated up to 17.6-fold more Cu in stems and 23.5-fold more in leaves, suggesting metal-adaptive traits can persist after the contaminating pressure that selected them is gone.

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