India, Oct. 19 -- A pretty garden plant sounds like an unlikely forest villain. But that is exactly what lantana was in India: an ornamental shrub. Today it is far more than a garden plant. Its effect on dry forests of Madhya Pradesh was examined in a study published in 2025 in a Frontiers in Forests and Global Change study, based on fieldwork done in 2017 and 2018. The shrub, which threatens 44% of India's forest cover, covers over 13 million hectares.

Lantana camara is native to tropical Central and South America. It was originally introduced into India as an ornamental plant. Researchers writing in PLOS ONE, who studied two centuries of old records, found that it arrived in India shortly after 1800. The same team also tracked its spre...