Scientists in Western Australia claim to have made a new discovery—they have found gold in the leaves and twigs of trees. The researchers believe that the trees suck up the gold from deep underground, over 30 metres down. The discovery has been described as the first of its kind in the world. Australian gold exploration companies are pleased because it will make finding gold cheaper. Rather than drilling deep holes to find gold, they have more ways to examine tree leaves and branches. There is only a tiny amount of gold in the leaves. It would take 500 trees to make one gold ring. The gold is found using a special X-ray machine owned by an Australian government agency. A pure X-ray and a powerful microscope scan the leaves and branches.
The claim that this is the first time that gold particles (微粒) have been found in living material might not be true, though. Ancient Chinese wisdom understood the connection between plants and the precious stones and minerals underneath them. They used plant life to find minerals and that was thousands of years ago. In the Zhou Dynasty, it was written in a book that a certain plant grew only near deposits of gold. Over the next 2,000 years, Chinese people wrote about different plants and how they grew, showed where minerals and precious stones such as jade, copper, lead, silver and gold were.
Even more importantly, in the 1, 000s, Su Song described how copper, gold, silver, lead and tin were observed and taken from certain plants. These were amazing scientific discoveries. Meanwhile, this knowledge was unknown in the rest of the world until about 1, 600. This was when a British man realised that oak trees grew larger and greener where there was alum (明矾) in the ground. Maybe ancient Chinese has more knowledge to teach modern scientists.
