<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/15/farm-metal-from-plants-life-on-earth-climate-breakdown>
"For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with researchers in northern
Greece who are farming metal. In a remote, beautiful field, high in the Pindus
mountains in Epirus, they are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to
scientists as “hyperaccumulators”: plants which have evolved the capacity to
thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of
life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in
their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well
as providing a source for rare metals – in this case nickel, although
hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other
metals, including gold – these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating
the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering
carbon in their roots. One day, they might supplant more destructive and
polluting forms of mining.
The three plants being tested in Greece – part of a network of research plots
across Europe – are endemic to the region.
Alyssum murale, which grows in low
bushes topped by bunches of yellow flowers, is native to Albania and northern
Greece;
Leptoplax emarginata – taller and spindlier, with clusters of green
leaves and white petals – is found only in Greece; and
Bornmuellera tymphaea,
the most efficient of the three, which straggles across the ground in a dense
layer of white blossom, is found only on the slopes of the Pindus (its name
comes from Mount Tymfi, one of the highest peaks of the range).
What I have come to understand about these plants is that, by virtue of their
evolutionary history and their close association with the soil, climate and
wider ecosystem in which they have emerged, they embody a certain kind of
knowledge: an understanding and accommodation with the places they have found
themselves in. Humans have sought out deposits of rare metals for thousands of
years, and developed ever-more violent ways of accessing them, but these plants
have been around far longer, and have found more equitable and regenerative
ways of doing much the same thing. Perhaps we have something to learn from
them."
Via Future Crunch May 16, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-poverty-vietnam-wind-texas-ocean-conservation/>
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
