Humans cultivate thousands of economic plants (i.e. plants with economic value) outside their native ranges. To analyze how this contributes to naturalization success, we combine global databases on economic uses and naturalization success of the world's seed plants. Here we show that naturalization likelihood is 18 times higher for economic than non-economic plants. Naturalization success is highest for plants grown as animal food or for environmental uses (e.g. ornamentals), and increases with number of uses. Taxa from the Northern Hemisphere are disproportionately over-represented among economic plants, and economic plants from Asia have the greatest naturalization success. In regional naturalized floras, the percentage of economic plants exceeds the global percentage and increases towards the equator. Phylogenetic patterns in the naturalized flora partly result from phylogenetic patterns in the plants we cultivate. Our study illustrates that accounting for the intentional introduction of economic plants is key to unravelling drivers of plant naturalization.

Biodiversity Macroecology and Biogeography University of Goettingen Büsgenweg 1 D 37077 Göttingen Germany

Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use University of Goettingen Büsgenweg 1 D 37077 Göttingen Germany

Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany CZ 252 43 Průhonice Czech Republic

Department of Biosciences Durham University South Road Durham DH1 3LE UK

Department of Ecology Faculty of Science Charles University Viničná 7 CZ 128 44 Prague Czech Republic

Division of Conservation Biology Vegetation Biology and Landscape Ecology Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research University of Vienna Rennweg 14 1030 Vienna Austria

Ecology Department of Biology University of Konstanz Universitätsstrasse 10 D 78457 Konstanz Germany

Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering Institute of Biodiversity Sciences School of Life Sciences Fudan University Shanghai 200433 China

Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Taizhou University Taizhou 318000 China

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10.6084/m9.figshare.12278057.v1