Abstract: A field survey was conducted in an antimony tailing pond in Guizhou Province of China. The samples of tailing residue and cattail growing in the mine tailing were collected and the concentrations of Sb and As were determined. The results showed that average contents of Sb and As in slag were 3216.49 and 27.12 mg·kg^-1, respectively. Their average contents were 617.64 and 19.87 mg·kg^-1 in cattail roots, and 183.63 and 0.41 mg·kg^-1 in leaves, respectively. Moreover, the average content of Sb in stems was 97.63 mg·kg^-1. Correlation analysis showed that there was a remarkable relationship between the contents of Sb in cattail leaves and stems and between the contents of As and Sb in slag. The study revealed that cattail was highly tolerable to Sb and As. It was estimated that the annual amount of Sb transfer by cattail was 1278 mg·m^-2 (342.71 mg·m^-2 in aboveground part, and 935.29 mg·m^-2 in underground part), and the annual amount of As transfer by cattail was 31.46 mg·m^-2 (0.75 mg·m^-2 in aboveground part, and 30.71 mg·m^-2 in underground part). Therefore, cattail can be applied as one of the target plants for ecological restoration of the areas contaminated by Sb and As.

Key words: heavy metal, acid deposition, dioecious, biomass, phytoremediation