Sunflowers Helpers

Are you familiar with phytoremediation? It’s a technique that uses plants to clean up contaminated environments. It’s made possible by plants capable of taking up high concentrations of toxic materials. These types of plants are called hyperaccumulators and sunflowers are part of this family.

“Plants can help clean up many types of contaminants including metals, pesticides, explosives, and oil,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency explains. It’s been proved efficient by scientists who planted sunflowers in contaminated soils after nuclear disasters. But it’s also used on a much smaller scale by gardeners.

How does this work?

• Plants have to be able to grow in soils with very high concentrations of metals. Not all species can do that.

• Then they have to be able to absorb the metals through their roots and support extremely high levels of metals in their tissues.

• After the plants sucked up the toxins they have to be cut down and thrown away.

Besides being hyperaccumulators sunflowers have several advantages: they grow quickly, they don’t require a lot of management and they’re adaptable to a lot of different climates.

Phytoremediationhas been around for many years. I find this process beautiful and very poetic: nature healing itself. However the process has its limits: it works best when contaminant levels are low and the high contamination of metals in plants can be a problem during its disposal.