This study aimed to understand why some plants introduced to China's botanical gardens end up naturalizing, which means they start growing on their own. Researchers looked at a large inventory of 13,718 introduced species to find out what makes certain species become naturalized.
They discovered that plants from the Americas, those that are more widely grown, and those that have been around for a longer time are more likely to naturalize. Additionally, plants that are a good match for the local environment are short-lived, mostly grown from seeds, and, in the case of herbs, relatively tall compared to other herbs, are also more likely to naturalize.
Furthermore, some of these effects are connected to how these plants are spread, and this varies depending on whether they are short-lived herbs, long-lived herbs, or woody plants. In the end, they found that the process of naturalization is influenced by the type of plant and how it's cultivated.
Dong, Bi-Cheng & Yang, Qiang & Kinlock, Nicole & Pouteau, Robin & Pyšek, Petr & Weigelt, Patrick & Yu, Fei-Hai & van Kleunen, Mark. (2023). Naturalization of introduced plants is driven by life‐form‐dependent cultivation biases. Diversity and Distributions. n/a-n/a. 10.1111/ddi.13788.