Guardian Pollution

Metal-Tolerant Plants Thrive in Lead-Contaminated Mining Soils

Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away? At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little bigger than a football pitch, on the banks of the River Allen in Northumberland. This is a pocket of c