Bayonne-born ecologist Frank Gallagher remembers sneaking into railroad cars and diving off the docks a half century ago at what is now New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, just 2,000 feet across the bay from the Statue of Liberty. The park now inspires a different sort of awe in the Rutgers University professor: native and non-native plants have formed unique communities that actually prevent toxic materials from spreading through the soil. These “novel assemblages,” as Gallagher calls them, are found in the innermost 100 of the park’s 1,200 acres. Not only do the plants appear to keep contaminant metals in the soil from moving about, they stay in the soil and out of the plants’ leaves so they are not ingested by birds or other animals.