Phytomining offers to literally extract nickel metal from plants. Here Sukaibin Sumail of Sabah Parks in Malaysia collects green nickel-rich sap (20% nickel) from a rainforest tree for laboratory analysis.

Future generations of miners could harvest metals from trees, capitalising on the ability of some plants to isolate and accumulate metals in their shoots.

25 September 2014
UQ's Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation's Antony van der Ent says researchers have identified dozens of new plant species that contain high concentrations of nickel in Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.

Mount Kinabalu is well known to climbers and adventurers all over the world – now a University of Queensland researcher is putting the Borneo mountain region on the map for trees that contain some of the world's highest concentrations of nickel.

11 November 2013