A team of researchers from Russia’s St. Petersburg University has discovered that wheat and couch grass are both capable of absorbing a number of trace chemical elements simultaneously from contaminated soil.

The research team determined that couch grass and wheat grass both accumulated trace elements — including bromine, europium, scandium, thorium and uranium — all at once in the aerial regions of the plants, thereby removing the toxicants from soil in a process called phytoextraction.

Although research exists detailing how certain plants can accumulate heavy metals — including cadmium, nickel, selenium and other trace elements — researchers determined that most plants only accumulate one of these at a time and not simultaneously as the wheat and couch grass varieties do, and without harming the soil.

The research appears in the journal Environmental Geochemistry and Health.