Dichapetalum gelonioides
Accumulation profile
- Substrate
- Ultramafic and metalliferous (incl. 'normal' soils)
- Habitat
- Tropical forest on metal-rich and normal soils
- Distribution
- Southeast Asia
- First reported
- 2018 · Nkrumah et al.
- Verification
- primary-measured
Description & ecology
A rare tropical woody zinc hyperaccumulator — most zinc accumulators are temperate herbs, making this an unusual and informative exception.
Correction (2026-07-26): the previous review-cited figure of 30,000 µg/g was unsupported and appears to have been the nickel value (30,260 µg/g, subsp. tuberculatum) mis-carried onto zinc. Re-read at the primary source (Nkrumah et al. 2018, open access), foliar Zn reaches 10,730 µg/g in subsp. sumatranum on 'normal' soil (soil Zn only ~20 µg/g); old leaves (9,780) and young leaves (7,720) are lower, and phloem (8,465) is specialised tissue, not the foliar maximum.
Historical herbarium values as high as 14,000 µg/g (subsp. sumatranum) and 25,000 µg/g (subsp. pilosum) are reported by Baker et al. (paywalled) and remain review-cited, not adopted as the maximum.
References
- Nkrumah, P. N., Echevarria, G., Erskine, P. D., & van der Ent, A. (2018). Contrasting nickel and zinc hyperaccumulation in subspecies of Dichapetalum gelonioides from Southeast Asia. Scientific Reports, 8, 9659. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-26859-7
- Reeves, R. D., Baker, A. J. M., Jaffré, T., Erskine, P. D., Echevarria, G., & van der Ent, A. (2018). A global database for plants that hyperaccumulate metal and metalloid trace elements. New Phytologist, 218, 407–411. doi:10.1111/nph.14907
- van der Ent, A., Baker, A. J. M., Reeves, R. D., Pollard, A. J., & Schat, H. (2013). Hyperaccumulators of metal and metalloid trace elements: facts and fiction. Plant and Soil, 362, 319–334. doi:10.1007/s11104-012-1287-3