Gold and Silver Content of Plant Helichrysum Arenarium, Popularly Known as the Golden Flower, Growing in Gümüşhane, NE Turkey

Abstract

Geochemical and biogeochemical methods in mineral exploration have been widely used in recent years because of the depletion of known deposits and the need to explore buried deposits. The aim of this study was to investigate the gold and silver content of Helichrysum arenarium, popularly known as the golden flower, for possible exploration of precious ore deposits. For this purpose, plant samples of the respective plant parts (roots, stem-leaves and flowers) collected from Demirören village of Gümüşhane in the northeastern Turkey were analysed for gold and silver by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Gold and silver contents of the plants was assessed on the basis of different statistical approaches. The results indicate that the plant has elevated levels of gold and silver concentrations, particularly in the case of gold. As a result, it was determined that the gold content of Helichrysum arenarium is remarkable and the gold accumulation capacity of the plant is high in the the stem-leaves, whereas the silver accumulation capacity of the plant is high in roots.

Determination of Multi-Elemental Analysis and Antioxidant Activities of Helichrysum arenarium (L.) Moench Species

“…The element contents of the stemleaves part were determined as 8.50 and 4.39 ppb (µg/kg), respectively. The element contents of the flower part were determined as 4.00 and 2.82 ppb (µg/kg), respectively [28].…”

Element transfer at the soil-plant interface and accumulation strategies of vegetation overgrowing mining waste dumps in the Upper Silesia area (Poland)

“…Com pared to the pub lished data this spe cies is en riched in Ag, K, Mn, B and Ni. Al though the Ag en rich ment might be ex pected based on the en rich ment (Vural, 2017(Vural, , 2018, this is not the case for Au. Even though most el e ments stud ied may be more en riched than in the Wojkowice sam ple, it shows much larger-thanknown BAFs for U, Au, Ba, La, P and K, and el e vated ones for Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Mn, Sr and Cd.…”

“…H. arenarium is a known and po ten tially ex treme scav en ger of Au and Ag, with BAF>1 and >50, re spec tively, for spec i mens col lected from geo log i cally vari able ar eas in Tur key (Vural, 2017(Vural, , 2018. Kharytonov et al (2018) stated that the el e men tal com po si tion of H. arenarium re mains largely un stud ied.…”

“…The most com mon anom a lies in dif fer ent ma te ri als from the USCB CHWs con cern Zn, Pb, Hg, Co and Ga, fol lowed by Sb, Ni, Cu, Bi, As, Se, Tl and other el e ments (Kruszewski, 2018). This, in turn, sug gests po ten tial in dus trial uti li za tion of heap-grown veg e tation, by phytomining (e.g., Siwek, 2008a, b;Vural, 2017).…”