Research into Plant Invasions in a Crossroads Region: History and Focus

The Czech Republic is a central European country whose geographical location, natural conditions, history of human settlement, and present land-use management make it relatively prone to plant invasions, hence it represents a convenient model for their study. Research in plant invasions, which date to the late 19th century, is reviewed in the present paper. A long-term floristic tradition allowed for the accumulation of a large body of floristic data on alien plants. During the 1960s–1970s, the main research focus was on their distribution. In this period, attempts were also made to predict potential invasiveness of weeds of arable land. The success rate of this prediction was about 39%. Considerable effort was put into a detailed classification of human-accompanying plants and the terminology associated with the issue. There is a high level of taxonomic research conducted in the country, and the new Flora of the Czech Republic treats the immigration status of taxa with reasonable care and detail. A complete, serious catalogue of the alien plants of the country has been published recently: there are currently 1378 alien plants (33.4% of the total flora). The core of present research in plant invasions is in ecological, biological, and biogeographical studies, focussed on (i) the history of invasion of particular species since their introduction, (ii) the role and importance of alien species in vegetation, including their participation in succession, and (iii) the major invasive species of the Czech flora and comparison of congeners. Reynoutria spp., Heracleum mantegazzianum, Oenothera spp., Pinus strobus, and Bidens frondosa are among the taxa most intensively studied in recent time. A complete list of 69 invasive plants in the Czech flora introduced after the year 1500 following the definition of Richardson et al. (2000a) Diversity and Distributions 6: 93–107] is given. The available legal instruments relevant to the issue are reviewed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.