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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/15/farm-metal-from-plants-life-on-earth-climate-breakdown

For the past couple of years, Ive been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. In a remote, beautiful field, high in the Pindus mountains in Epirus, they are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as hyperaccumulators: plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. One day, they might supplant more destructive and polluting forms of mining.