An international team of botanists has described a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species of plant from Luzon Island, Philippines.

Nickel hyperaccumulation is such a rare phenomenon with only about 0.5–1 per cent of plant species native to nickel-rich soils having been recorded to exhibit the ability.

Throughout the world, only about 450 species are known with this unusual trait, which is still a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants.

“Hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies, for example, phytoremediation and phytomining,” said Dr Augustine Doronila from the University of Melbourne, who is the senior author of a paper published in the journal PhytoKeys.

Phytoremediation refers to the use of hyperacccumulator plants to remove heavy metals in contaminated soils.

Phytomining, on the other hand, is the use of hyperacccumulator plants to grow and harvest in order to recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites.

The new nickel-hyperaccumulating species has been named Rinorea niccolifera. The specific epithet, niccolifera, refers to the ability of this species to hyperaccumulate nickel in its stem and leaf tissues.

“It accumulates up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned,” explained study first author Prof Edwino Fernando from the University of the Philippines.

“Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants.”

Rinorea niccolifera is a shrub or small tree, 1.5-8 m tall, stem 3–13 cm diameter. Its outer bark is generally smooth, inner bark whitish, leaves simple, distichous, lamina elliptic to narrowly obovate.

The species grows in forests on ultramafic soils, usually along gullies or sloping areas with large boulders or rocks at elevations of 320–825 m.

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Fernando ES et al. 2014. Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines. PhytoKeys 37: 1–13; doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.37.7136