Invasive plants have the potential to affect decomposition both directly, by introducing novel substrates that may differ from native species in key structural or chemical properties, and indirectly through changes to soil properties and microbial communities. The relative importance of these two mechanisms is unclear, especially with regard to wood decomposition. To explore these questions, we used a novel method to rapidly assess the wood decay rates of 11 native and 11 invasive non-native angiosperm species. The study was repeated at three pairs of sites, each consisting of an invaded and a relatively uninvaded forest. The invaded sites had either been colonized by a non-native grass (Microstegium vimineum (Trin.) A. Camus), a non-native woody shrub (Ligustrum sinense Lour.) or by multiple invasive species. After one year in the field, mass loss varied more than two-fold among the 22 wood species (24.2–52.3%). Wood origin (i.e., native or non-native) was only important at the Microstegium sites, with non-native species decomposing marginally faster than native species. Wood decomposed faster at both the Ligustrum-invaded and multiply-invaded sites than in their respective uninvaded sites but there were no differences between sites invaded or not by Microstegium. We detected positive relationships overall between mass loss and pH, K, P and NO₃⁻, but invasion had no consistent effects on these soil properties. The results from this study show that the differences in wood decay rates between native and non-native species and the effects of invasion are highly idiosyncratic, with effects depending greatly on species and ecological context.

通过引入可能在关键结构或化学性质上与本地物种不同的新型底物，以及通过改变土壤性质和微生物群落而间接地，侵入植物具有直接影响分解的潜力。这两种机制的相对重要性尚不清楚，尤其是在木材分解方面。为了探讨这些问题，我们使用了一种新颖的方法来快速评估11种本地和11种非本地入侵被子植物的木材腐烂率。该研究在三对地点重复进行，每个地点包括一个被入侵的森林和一个相对未被入侵的森林。入侵的地点已被非本地草（Microstegium v​​imineum（Trin。）A. Camus），非本地木本灌木（女贞Lour。）或多种入侵物种。在田间耕种一年后，质量损失在22种木材中变化了两倍多（24.2-52.3％）。木材起源（即本地或非本地）仅在微型种群站点很重要，非本地物种的分解速度比本地物种快。木材分解在两个更快大叶女贞-invaded和乘法入侵网站比在各自未侵入网站，但有被侵入或没有站点之间没有差异莠。我们检测到质量损失与pH，K，P和NO ₃之间总体呈正相关关系^-，但入侵对这些土壤特性没有持续的影响。这项研究的结果表明，本地和非本地物种之间的木材腐烂率差异和入侵的影响是高度特质的，其影响在很大程度上取决于物种和生态环境。