Danish wetlands remained poor with plant species 17-years after restoration

Formorethantwodecades,wetlandrestorationhasbeensuccessfullyappliedinDenmarkasatooltoprotectwa- tercourses from elevated nutrient inputs from agriculture, but little is known about how the fl ora and fauna re-spond to restoration. The main objective of this study was therefore to: (1) examine plant community characteristics in 10 wetland sites in the River Odense Kratholm catchment, restored between 2001 and 2011 byre-meanderingthestreamanddisconnectingthetiledrains,and(2)explorewhethertheeffectsofrestoration on plant community characteristics change with the age of the restoration. Speci fi cally, we hypothesised that plant community composition, species richness and diversity would improve with the age of the restoration andeventuallyapproachthestateofnaturalwetlandvegetation.Wefoundthattheprevailingplantcommunities couldbecharacterisedashumidgrasslands,moistfallow fi eldsandimprovedgrasslands,whereastheabundance of natural wetland plant communities (e.g., rich fens, fen-sedge beds and humid grasslands) was lower in both the recently restored as well as in older restored wetlands. Additionally, species richness and diversity did not seem to improve with the age of the restoration. We suggest that the continued high nutrient input at the re- storedsitesincombinationwithrestricteddispersalofwetlandplantspeciesmayhampertherecoveryofnatural plant communities and that the sites therefore may stay botanically poor for many decades. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).