I think I can reveal a little bit of the results of our recent fieldwork trip to southern Chile. I think I will have to in any case, cause what we saw is too fascinating to keep silent about it here.

Some of our non-native example species we sowed grew spectacularly big, with big flowers and healthy large leaves.

It is exciting – but at the same time highly worrying – to see the plants doing so well at this place so extremely far from home. Even we had troubles to survive the cold, and it was only for one week (but, I should mention, mostly on the highest elevations only).

Especially the clover species were booming, as you might see for yourselves. But that should not surprise too much, as they were everywhere in the local ecosystem already. The climate at the lowest elevation seems to be perfectly suited for them.

White clover in a local roadside

And it is not only clovers that flourish in the south. The scary part is that large percents of the vegetation at this moment consists of exotic species of different kinds, most of them from European origin.

It is one of the main aims of our research to compare the situation in this area flooded by non-natives in Southern Chile with the more undisturbed situation in northern Sweden. Can we predict how the situation in both areas will evolve? Can we predict what will happen in the future? The results of the most recent trip to Chile look promising in any case, so I hope to get some interesting stories on here soon!