Biscutella laevigata · Atlas of Contaminated Sites

How it works

Mechanisms: hyperaccumulation

Contaminants

Contaminant	Evidence	What was shown
Thallium	field	Survey of metallophytes at the former Raibl lead-zinc mine (Cave del Predil, Udine): up to 32,661 mg/kg Tl in shoots of B. laevigata subsp. laevigata (Fellet et al. 2012). In hydroponics, at 5 µM Tl, more than 3,000 µg/g in shoots, with thallium in the vacuoles of the leaf epidermis (van der Ent et al. 2026). Fellet et al., Metallophytes and thallium hyperaccumulation at the former Raibl lead/zinc mining site (Julian Alps, Italy), Plant Soil, air.uniud.it, 2012 van der Ent et al., Cellular-level thallium distribution in Biscutella laevigata revealed by X-ray fluorescence microscopy-computed tomography, Ann. Bot., 2026

Contaminant

Evidence

What was shown

field

Survey of metallophytes at the former Raibl lead-zinc mine (Cave del Predil, Udine): up to 32,661 mg/kg Tl in shoots of B. laevigata subsp. laevigata (Fellet et al. 2012). In hydroponics, at 5 µM Tl, more than 3,000 µg/g in shoots, with thallium in the vacuoles of the leaf epidermis (van der Ent et al. 2026).

Fellet et al., Metallophytes and thallium hyperaccumulation at the former Raibl lead/zinc mining site (Julian Alps, Italy), Plant Soil, air.uniud.it, 2012
van der Ent et al., Cellular-level thallium distribution in Biscutella laevigata revealed by X-ray fluorescence microscopy-computed tomography, Ann. Bot., 2026

Limits

Hyperaccumulation is facultative: it concerns only some populations (Les Malines in France, Cave del Predil in Italy). A small plant; the sources consulted report no field phytoextraction trials. Thallium-rich biomass is highly toxic.

Where it has been tried

Raibl mine, Cave del Predil

PhytoremediationField scale

Biscutella laevigata, Silene vulgaris

Not a clean-up trial but a survey of spontaneous metallophytes: plants collected on the tailings and along the banks of the Rio del Lago and Slizza, with bioconcentration and translocation factors calculated. A comparison of populations across north-eastern Italy showed that only the Cave del Predil one hyperaccumulates thallium, and that it is genetically distinct from the others.

Outcome In the shoots of B. laevigata: 0.49–1,587 mg/kg thallium, 20.6–3,391 zinc, 0.21–234 lead; in S. vulgaris: 0.01–578 thallium, 14.9–1,590 zinc. The authors prefer S. vulgaris for phytostabilising substrates low in thallium.

Sources

Fellet et al., Plant Soil (record in the University of Udine repository), air.uniud.it, 2012
van der Ent et al., Ann. Bot., 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.