http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100608183044.htm
A particular fern can process "100 to 1,000 times more arsenic than other plants. Jody Banks, a professor of botany and plant pathology, and David Salt, a professor of horticulture, uncovered what may have been an evolutionary genetic event that creates an arsenic pump of sorts in the fern.
"It actually sucks the arsenic out of the soil and puts it in the fronds," Banks said. "It's the only multi-cellular organism that can do this..."It stores it away from the cytoplasm so that it can't have an effect on the plant."
...
Salt said the gene that regulates arsenic tolerance could be a duplicate of the other that has changed slightly to give itself a new function.
"The fact that it has these two genes could be a sign of evolution," Salt said. "One of the thoughts of gene evolution is that one copy could continue to do what it has always done, while the duplicate can develop another function."
The plant might have evolved to accumulate arsenic, Banks and Salt theorized, as a defense against animals or insects eating them...."
AND a few other tidbits that caught my eye
Biochemists have shown that air pollution inhibits the distance that flower's fragrances can travel. Scent molecules usually travel easily in the air, but pollutants break them apart...
AND one kind of cancer protects from another kind:
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