In Gogol’s day, folk tales said a fern’s mythical midnight fire flower marked buried treasure.
Ferns don’t actually bloom; they reproduce with spores, tiny particles you can only see under a microscope.
But there are real flowers that point to hidden ground treasures. These aren’t pots of old gold coins or boxes of pearls. The treasures they indicate are mineral deposits — copper, gold, zinc, oil, and aluminum.
In the Altai, a plant called kachim grows; it looks like an oversized tumbleweed and can reach a meter high. Kachim tends to appear where copper ore lies beneath the surface.
Geologists used to curse this thorny plant because it made their work harder. Every time they began exploring for copper veins, they’d run into thickets of it. Observers noticed that kachim seemed to ‘prefer’ copper-rich ground. Over time it went from nuisance to ally, helping to point the way to valuable copper deposits.
There are violet species that grow only on zinc ore outcrops. Some tulips have been found that change color and shape when iron salt deposits are present beneath their roots.
Even uranium deposits can now be detected with the help of one of these flowering plants.
