{"id":14564,"date":"2014-01-25T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-25T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=14564"},"modified":"2014-01-24T15:44:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T20:44:12","slug":"looking-for-flowers-that-scrub-toxic-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2014\/01\/25\/looking-for-flowers-that-scrub-toxic-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for flowers that “scrub” toxic land"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Echinacea<\/a>

Echinacea purpurea (eastern purple coneflower or purple coneflower) Source: Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

Many gardeners are well-acquainted with echinacea<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0or coneflower – which grows well from Texas to Ontario and most states in between<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most common color is purple, though it comes in white, yellow or even green too. Purple coneflower much-loved as a hardy perennial that needs little care, can handle drought and is excellent for attracting bees and butterflies.<\/p>\n

In herbal circles, echinacea\u00a0has a longstanding reputation<\/a> of doing all sorts of helpful things, including reducing the incidence or severity of common colds. Mind you, some scientific studies appear to\u00a0support<\/a> those medicinal claims, while others do not<\/a>. (This post takes no position on that question.)<\/p>\n

\"Victoria<\/a>

Victoria island (bottom) in the Ottawa River, connected by bridge to City of Ottawa near Parliament hill (top). Wikipedia image by Shanta Rohse<\/p><\/div>\n

Now comes word that studies taking place in Ottawa are trying to see if echinacea can help clean contaminated land. As reported by Tom Spears,\u00a0University of Ottawa\u00a0biologists Christiane Charet<\/a> and Jules Blais<\/a> have been working since last summer with test plots on Victoria Island, a small Ottawa site that collected a lot of hydrocarbons and other pollutants from long use as a factory and rail area.<\/p>\n

According to the Ottawa Citizen article<\/a> the cleaning action consists of a tag-team event that takes place below the soil and above:<\/p>\n

The research looks at how natural soil fungus helps plant roots to absorb a class of contaminants called polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. Plants often draw on underground fungus to help them absorb nutrients. The work is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re finding is that they (fungi) makes the hydrocarbons much more bioavailable,\u201d Blais explained. In other words, it makes the pollutants easier for the plants to take in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not entirely sure how they do this.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re testing now to see to what extent the plants can metabolize and break down these (chemicals),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the very early stages but it does appear quite promising.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this case, tough, pretty, low-maintenance echinacea got the nod for the plant part of that experiment. Which is great, because there’s a real need to de-contaminate polluted land. And all the better if the cleaning is based on natural, sustainable processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many gardeners are well-acquainted with echinacea\u00a0–\u00a0or coneflower – which grows well from Texas to Ontario […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,14394,14396,884,14395,5638,11496,5670,13334],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14564"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14591,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14564\/revisions\/14591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}