A contribution to the environmental biology of mercury accumulation in plants

✍ Scribed by S. M. Siegel; B. Z. Siegel; Corrado Barghigiani; Katharine Aratani; Pauline Penny; David Penny

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 412 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0049-6979
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00191378

✦ Synopsis

Samples of six common plant species collected in the old mining areas near Prince George, British Columbia (Canada) and Mount Amiata, Tuscany (Italy) show remarkable similarities in the variation of plant/soil Hg concentration ratio with soil Hg content irrespective of species or other biological differences. In contrast, plants sampled in the geothermally active areas of New Zealand, Hawaii and around Mount St. Helens exhibit more individuality in the concentration ratio to soil Hg relationship, but the relationships are distinctly different from the mine site specimens. This distinction is particularly evident when the same species of Equisetum and Plantago taken from these two different areas are compared. These and other data support the hypothesis that specific local environmental factors strongly influence the accumulation of Hg in plants even when the immediate soil concentrations are the same. Our findings show that some plants contain concentrations of total Hg as high as 5500 to 14000 Ixg kg-~ (dw).