Botany · Ch 2 — Mineral Nutrition
Essential Mineral Elements
2.2
Essential Mineral Elements
More Elements Are Absorbed Than Are Needed
Plant roots are not fussy about what they take up from the soil — more than 60 of the roughly 105 known chemical elements have been detected inside one plant species or another, sometimes in extremely small, trace amounts (as low as one hundred-millionth of a gram per millilitre of tissue). Some plants even accumulate unusual elements: certain species build up selenium, others accumulate gold, and plants growing near old nuclear test sites have been found carrying radioactive strontium.