Ie. Geoghegan et Ji. Sprent, ALUMINUM AND NUTRIENT CONCENTRATIONS IN SPECIES NATIVE TO CENTRAL BRAZIL, Communications in soil science and plant analysis, 27(18-20), 1996, pp. 2925-2934
Forty species from eight angiosperm families occurring in the Cerrado
and neighboring regions of Bahia and Minas Gerais in Brazil were exami
ned for aluminum (Al) content. Twenty species from four families (Legu
minosae, Compositae, Rubiaceae, and Melastomataceae) were found to hav
e leaf Al contents above 1000 mg/kg dry wt. This constitutes the first
record of nodulating legumes accumulating Al, most notably certain sp
ecies of the caesalpinioid genus Chamaecrista. The amount of Al in the
leaves of the accumulating species ranged from 16,390 mg/kg dry wt in
Chamaecrista repens to 1012 mg/kg dry wt in Chamaecrista viscosa. The
se native plants on virgin soil had no visual adverse effects from the
high concentration of Al, in fact, they seemed to have an efficient m
echanism for absorbing all nutrients from the soil and growing and flo
urishing at levels considered very deficient for other crop species. T
he percentage of other foliar cations was not significantly different
between Al accumulating or non-accumulating species.