Plant naturalizations and invasions in the Eastern United States: 1634-1860.

By R. N. Mack. 2003

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plant immigrants to North America arrived from Europe with the first human immigrants, products of the intense incentive early colonists felt to transplant European agriculture into the Western Hemisphere. Among early deliberate and accidental introductions were species that would soon become naturalized in eastern North America: Artemisia absinthium, Hyoscyamus niger, Plantago lanceolata, and Taraxacum officinale. The naturalized flora grew as species for food, forage, seasonings, and medicine were imported, cultivated, and escaped the bounds of cultivated fields. Importation of what has become the most common category of naturalized species, erstwhile ornamentals, had a modest beginning by the mid 17th century. The first recorded invasion, the spread and proliferation of Linaria vulgaris in the Mid-Atlantic colonies, was recognized by the mid 18th century, and Berberis vulgaris was rampant in southern New England before 1800. Botanical records, including published floras, became much more common in the first decades of the 19th century and reveal a naturalized flora in the U.S. that was quite similar in composition to the agricultural weed flora of Western Europe. Marly ruderals and agricultural weeds were widespread in the eastern U.S., but probably not invasive by 1860, and included Bromus secalinus, Cynoglossum officinale, Galium aparine, and Senecio vulgaris. Other alien species had, however, become invasive by the 1840s, such as Echium vulgare in Virginia. Species that were to form devastating invasions in the United States from 1860 onward (e.g., Bromus tectorum, Euphorbia esula, Lonicera japonica, Melaleuca quinquenervia) had either not arrived by 1860, were undetected, or were not reported as having escaped from cultivation. Growth of the naturalized flora and the subsequent number of invasive taxa was certainly facilitated, and probably sparked, by the enormous growth of railroads and rail-borne commerce in the late 19th century.

Subfields: Anthropology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82c109ba6fc0893c3cb509632ae28ce2a2bbcb13

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In Anthropology

1. M. Rejmánek
2. Chang-Fu Hsieh
3. P. Hulme
4. S. Chaw
5. Shan-Huah Wu

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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2. M. Rejmánek
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In Plant Science

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Citations in the corpus

• Cultivar selection prior to introduction may increase invasiveness: evidence from Ardisia crenata (2006, background): “In Florida, the percentage of invasive species introduced as ornamental species is particularly high, due to active horticultural importation of both temperate and tropical species (Mack 2003).”
• Patterns of plant invasions in China: Taxonomic, biogeographic, climatic approaches and anthropogenic effects (2010, background): “It has been shown that most of successful, established, invasive species were introduced intentionally as ornamentals, or for forage, medicine, and other purposes (Mack and Erneberg 2002; Mack 2003), while unintentional introductions usually occurred through contaminated fodder or crop seeds, footwe”
• Trade, transport and trouble: managing invasive species pathways in an era of globalization (2009, background): “Europe has the highest road and rail density of any continent, while North America leads the way with canals (Table 1).”
• The alien flora of Kashmir Himalaya (2007, background): “…lists a sizeable number of plant species (45) that mostly invade aquatic and marshy habitats but perusal of alien floras re- veals less emphasis laid on aquatic habitats and species they sustain (Corlett 1992; Weber 1997; Mack 2003; Mosyakin and Yavorska 2002; Villasenor and Espinosa-Garcia 2004).”
• Introduced species policy, management, and future research needs (2005, unknown): “Mack RN. 2003.”
• Plant invasions in Taiwan: Insights from the flora of casual and naturalized alien species (2004, background): “350 Diversity and Distributions , 10 , 349–362, © 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd It has been shown in other regions that most invasive species were introduced intentionally as ornamentals, for forage, medicine, and for other purposes (Mack & Erneberg, 2002; Mack, 2003), while unintentional introducti”