Plant Naturalizations and Invasions in the Eastern United States: 1634-1860

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.iiy early deliberate and accidental introductions were species that would soon become naturalized in eastern hele America: Artemisia absinthium, Hyoscyamus niger, Plantago lanceolata, and raxacum fficinale.he ized seasonings, and medicine were imported, cultivated, and escaped the bounds of c fields.Importation of what become the most common category of naturalized species, erstwhile ornamentals, had a modest beginning by the mid Ih century.The first recorded invasion, the spread and un of | Linaria opea: in the Mid-Atlantic colonies, was recognized by the mid 18th century, and Berberis vulgaris was ran ipant in southern New gn before 1800.Botanical records, including published became much more common in the first decades of the 19th century and reveal a naturalized flora in the d that was quite similar in composition to the agricultural weed flora of Western Europe.Many ruderals and agricultural weeds were widespread in the eastern U.S., but probably not invasive by 1860, and included Bromus secalinus, (ences officinale, Galium , and Senecio p vularis Other alien species had, however, become invasive by the 1 s, such as Echium vulgare in Virginia.Species that were to form pron invasions in the peii States from 1860 onward (e.g., Bromus tectorum, Euphorbia esula, Lonicera japonica, Me laleuca quinquenervia) had e not arrived by 1860, were undetected, or were not reported as having escaped from cultivation.Growth of the a flora and the ae mber of invasive taxa was certail any facilitated, and probably sparked, by the enormous growt of railroads and rail-borne commerce in the late 19th century