Scientists have discovered that trees may turn golden for reasons that have nothing to do with the onset of autumn. Many plants send roots deep into the Earth, drawing up nutrients and minerals they need for life. Money doesn't exactly grow on trees but new findings show that gold can be among the minerals drawn up from the surrounding soil! Researchers hope this fact could one day help miners unearth gold, especially since discoveries of new deposits of the precious metal have dropped 45 percent over the last 10 years.
Scientists in Australia have focused on eucalyptus trees since traces of gold are sometimes found in soils surrounding these plants. However, researchers were not certain until now whether trees could actually absorb the precious metal from underground deposits or if the wind simply blew gold dust there from other sites.
Now one group has discovered the first evidence in nature of gold particles located within living tissue from trees. X-ray analysis revealed gold particles up to about 8 microns wide in cells from the eucalyptus trees - about 10 times thinner than the average human hair.
Field samples and greenhouse experiments suggest these gold particles are absorbed by the roots and transported to its extremities, such as leaves, where the highest concentrations were observed. Gold is toxic to plants, which may explain why the eucalyptus trees move much of the gold they absorbed from the ground to the leaves. By this process, the trees can easily shed the gold deposits.
These findings could tap into gold deposits up to 115 feet below the tree roots. The researchers are not proposing mining these eucalyptus trees for gold - the amount of gold in the trees is so small that you would need 500 trees or more to have enough gold to make a ring. Instead, eucalyptus trees could help miners identify where deeply buried gold deposits might be located and therefore avoid wasting time, money and resources hunting for the precious metal over vast tracts of land.
Source:
scientificamerican.com
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