NeoPlants-EU: Country-level first records and species characteristics of vascular plant neophytes in Europe

NeoPlants-EU records vascular plant neophytes, taxa introduced to Europe after ca. 1492 CE, at the level of a taxon in a country. Each record carries the earliest documented occurrence of that taxon in that country together with standardised life cycle, growth form, dispersal mode, and native source region. 6,672 records covering 2,219 taxa (2,185 species, 149 families) across 54 countries and territories. First-record years run from 1492 to 2020, median 1877. Version 1.2 adds the neophyte records the compilation had lost for want of a Seebens or GBIF year, corrects the residence status where a national checklist states it against the status table, names the source of each record's status, and checks every source region against WCVP. README.md, Changes in version 1.2, gives the details. Contents neophyte_data_v1.2.csv: the dataset, 6,672 rows by 45 columns, values and provenance together. README.md: full schema, trait definitions, matching rules, and known issues. taxonomy_lock_v1.2.json: the checklists the names were matched against, with their versions and checksums. datapackage.json: Frictionless Data descriptor with column types, definitions and row counts, plus a byte count and SHA-256 hash for every file in the release. Taxonomy Names were matched with the taxify R package against local copies of four checklists, each at a fixed version: World Flora Online 2026.06, Catalogue of Life 2026.09, Euro+Med PlantBase 2026.08, and the World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2026.08. A name had to match exactly, except for a difference in the hybrid sign. taxonomy_lock_v1.2.json gives the version and checksum of each checklist, so you can confirm that a copy downloaded later is the one used here. Records carry GBIF, Catalogue of Life and Euro+Med identifiers. Infraspecific taxa absent from WFO are kept as recorded rather than replaced by the parent species, because the alien plant is often the subspecies while the species itself is native in the same country. The WFO species is carried alongside as acceptedSpeciesName. Known limitations sourceRegion collapses a native range to coarse regions and is the weaker of the two range fields. It disagrees with isSourceRegionEurope on 39 records; prefer isSourceRegionEurope where they conflict. traitBasis flags 93 inferred trait values and names the basis for each. Trait coverage, out of the 6,672 records: lifeCycle: 6,668 carry a value, 6,664 carry a citation. growthForm: 6,659 carry a value, 6,659 carry a citation. dispersalMode: 6,495 carry a value, 6,361 carry a citation.A value recorded with no citation comes from LEDA or from a compiled checklist, neither of which has a per-taxon page to cite. 1,096 recorded trait values are contradicted by an outside page, out of 2,722 disagreements found; dispersalMode is the weakest of the three columns. Country coverage is uneven. France (591), Spain (538) and the Netherlands (448) are best represented; 11 of 54 countries hold fewer than 10 records. degreeOfEstablishment is missing on 120 records (1.8%); of the 6,552 that carry one, 6,487 (99.0%) read established, with casual and invasive making up the rest. Cross-checks: the infraspecific policy in this release was tested against GRIIS (Pagad, S., Bisset, S., Genovesi, P., Groom, Q., Hirsch, T., Jetz, W., Ranipeta, A., Schigel, D., Sica, Y.V. & McGeoch, M.A. (2022). Country Compendium of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species. Scientific Data 9, 391. doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01514-z). Full documentation, including the complete schema and all known issues, is in README.md.