MANGANESE IN PLANTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16456, 18 June 1921, Page 12

MANGANESE IN PLANTS.

♦ Experiments have shown that the metal manganese exists in wheat, rice, and a great variety of vegetables. Wheat contains 1-fiOOOth to 1-15,000 th of its weight of tho metal, which exists in it as a salt of an organic acid. It 13 also found in potatoes, beetroot, carrots, beans, peas, asparagus, apples, grapes, etc. Tho leaves of the young vine are very rich in it; so are the stones of apricots. Tho proportion in cacao is very great, as it is in coffee, tobacco and tea. In fifty grammes of ash left from incinerating a kilogramme of tea, were found five grammes of manganese. Oranges, lemons, onions, etc., aro vegetables containing no inanMnnv medicinal plants contain it: for example, cinchona (the source of quinine), white mustard, and tho lichen Roccella tinctorin. Animal blood does not always contain it. but it is found in milk, bones, and hair. The blood, indeed, rejects it, and many medical men think * that manganese and iron should not he >tvrod together in medicine, as the iron is useful to the blood and the manganese is not wanted. Tea, coffee, and some other plants require abundance of manganese in the soil, and the failurG of some plantations 13 attributable to a lack of it.