Invaders in disguise. Conservation risks derived from misidentification of invasive plants

Misidentifications are an important but neglected problem in studies on plant invasions. This review shows how taxonomic education of staff and stakeholders is of great importance for correctly assessing threats provoked by alien plant species in field and literature based studies. Four randomly chosen recent examples (Digitaria violascens, Eleocharis pellucida, Juncus dichotomus and Vicia dalmatica) from Europe demonstrate that, as a result of an initial erroneous identification and/or confusion with similar harmless species, potentially noxious environmental weeds have been able to become fully naturalised. They act as “invaders in disguise” and therefore constitute a real problem for conservation management. Keywords Taxonomy, alien species, Digitaria violascens, Eleocharis pellucida, Juncus dichotomus, Vicia dalmatica Bio-sketch The author has been studying non-native plants (ephemerals as well as invasives) for some 20 years by now. His work chiefly emphasizes on recognition (identification) and taxonomy. F. Verloove has produced lots of publications on naturalized vascular plants in Europe. Since several years, he is working on online "Manual of alien plants of Belgium.