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Background and purpose: Some plants can survive and even very successfully flourish in heavy metal polluted habitats. These plants are suitable to accumulate harmful substances in relatively great quantities with no side effects to themselves. Such plants are known as hyper-accumulators and act as biological cleansers. Asiatic Reynoutria japonica Houtt. is an urbanophil species, widely spread in Europe. It is an aggressive ruderal weed especially invasive to roadways, railways and waterways where it usually forms compact, thick layers. Due to the pollution of the city environs, this research aimed to examine the ability of Reynoutria japonica to accumulate heavy metals: copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd). Subjects and methods: The leaves of R. japonica were collected at six sites of the Zagreb area and one site of the Čakovec area. The analyses of the content of heavy metals were made by Zeiss AAS3 atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The sample solutions were aspirated into an air-acetylene flame. Results: The range of heavy metal content in leaves of R. japonica was for the metals as follows: Cu from 4.4 to 11.2, Zn from 16.4 to 48.5, Pb from 5.0 to 11.4 and Cd from 1.1 to 2.2 ug/g d.m. Conclusion: Based on the analytic data it may be concluded that R. japonica is hyper-accumulator of Zn and Cd and therefore suitable to decontaminate by bioremediation Zn and Cd polluted habitat. |
