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Not only is Finland considered one of the happiest countries in the world, but a scientific study has also gathered enough information to confirm that the country’s trees contain gold particles. It sounds like fiction, but it’s not. Thanks to a series of microscopic tests on a specific type of plant that grows there, researchers found the presence of this precious metal in its needles, and it is not harmful to the plant’s health.
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The northern lights, arctic landscapes and sleigh rides have made Lapland famous, a region of Finland that now also boasts gold-bearing trees. A team of Finnish scientists extracted needles from 23 spruce trees (Picea abies) growing in the Tiira deposit. Analyzing them with microscopes and genetic samples, they detected biofilms of the precious metal on the cells of four specimens, which glowed even in the absence of sunlight.
Experts also found a community of “host” bacteria on the tree, known as endophytes, capable of absorbing traces of dissolved gold from the soil and converting it into solid particles. This process, called biomineralization, was surprising news for those involved in the research.
According to scientists, the gold nanoparticles are trapped in a type of gel formed by the microorganisms themselves, and in this way the tree incorporates them into its needles.
A fundamental discovery made by Finnish scientists was that the higher the concentration of gold in a pine tree, the lower the number of living bacteria in it. Likewise, even with lower levels of gold particles in your needles, microorganisms still predominate.
Can it be used for industrial purposes?
In the article published in August 2025, scientists clarified that the amount of gold in pine needles is minuscule and therefore not commercially viable. Furthermore, extracting each particle requires hard work and the results are not large-scale.
Furthermore, it is important to highlight that the Lapland region is one of the conservation territories of one of the indigenous European cultures that still prevail there, in an area that they consider sacred, therefore, the use of natural resources is moderate.
In conclusion, this work has helped us understand how trees can work together with bacteria without bacteria posing a threat to their survival. It even provides concrete evidence that trees can naturally transform liquid gold into solid gold, cleaning the soil in a sustainable way.
Furthermore, this discovery could pave the way for future searches for new gold deposits, simply by analyzing tree needles in an area where it is believed that this metal may be present, thus corroborating the amount that the plant contains.
Just as has already been proven with eucalyptus trees in Australia, fir trees in Lapland, Finland, act as ecosystem sentinels, with the ability to absorb and remove metal pollution from the soil and incorporate it into their own development, without harming them or the environment. On the contrary, this is a way they found to survive in soils where different elements predominate and do not always serve as nutrients.
