An Obscure African Plant Tells Miners Where to Look for Diamonds

Diamonds you ’re familiar with . Pandanus candelabrum , not so much . And until recently , botanists did n’t make up much aid to this rare , palm tree - like flora from West Africa either . But the discovery that P. candelabrumgrows only over careen that may harbor diamondshas vaulted the plant out of obscurity .

Diamonds hunters are croak to “ stick out on it like crazy , ” one geologisttoldScience .

Formed by intense rut and imperativeness deeply underground , diamond are bring to the surface via the impudence inside intrusions of kimberlite , a eccentric of igneous rock . Where there is kimberlite , there may be ball field .

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That ’s where P. candelabra comes in . The plant seems to get only in grease over kimberlite . Stephen Haggerty , a mineralogist at Florida International University in Miami and the primary geographic expedition officer of Youssef Diamond Mining Company , describes his discovery in aEconomic Geologypaper . P. candelabra could make it much easier to find kimberlite tobacco pipe commonly hide under the thick African bush . ( you could see somepictures of it over atScience . )

This is the first known plant to show kimberlite , but miners have long used plants to track down for clues into what lies beneath . This well known example may be pig , which can be found by count for theCalifornia poppy in the U.S.or the flowering bush Haumaniastrum katangense in central Africa . There ’s also prince ’s plume for selenium , juniper for atomic number 92 , horsetail for gold , and so on . In some case , the plants have adapted to metal - rich soil , and in others , they ’re especially full at concentrate a certain metal in their tissues .

In the case of P. candelabrum , it may have accommodate to the Mg , potassium and daystar - racy kimberlite soil . It just so happens that areas tend to be ball field rich , too .

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