Lol. I had these guys beat in terms of hours, and their job was nowhere near as physical as mine was.

Now I get to be a desk jockey, and it’s fucking sweet. Gonna milk it, because I put my hours in.

This is a brilliant comment - thanks for the laugh

This is an evolutionary strategy for them to occupy niches that other plants can’t, this giving them a competitive edge. Some other metal tolerant plants don’t hyper accumulate, and have pathways to selectively uptake what they need without poisoning themselves.

Hyper accumulators take up everything and then just store it in the vacuoles of their cells to isolate the metals.

Importantly, when the plants die, the metals are re-released, so if you’re phyroremediating you have to harvest them and then dispose of them in a landfill.

Finally, hyper accumulators can pose a risk to wildlife that might browse on them, whereas metal tolerant plants may not

I don’t know why, but this immediately popped into my head:

Earth has taco night it seems too