Family: Simaroubaceae

High Risk Traits:

• Highly Invasive: Naturalized on every continent except Antarctica.
  
• Significant Environmental Impact: Outcompetes natives, alters soil chemistry, and forms dense, allelopathic thickets.
  
• Extreme Versatility: Tolerates a wide range of climates, soils, drought, and shade.
  
• Prolific Reproduction: Produces hundreds of thousands of wind and water-dispersed seeds.
  
• Rapid Growth & Early Maturity: Can flower within weeks of germination.
  
• Aggressive Vegetative Spread: Reproduces readily from root fragments and suckers, especially after damage.
  
• Disturbance-Adapted: Thrives after fire, cutting, or other landscape disturbances.
  
• Intentionally Planted: Widely cultivated as an ornamental, facilitating its spread.

Low Risk Traits:

• Absent from Hawaii: Not currently established there, preventing natural spread.
  
• Unpalatable to Wildlife: Avoided by many grazers and seed predators.
  
• Dioecious: Requires separate male and female plants to set seed (though clonal spread mitigates this).
  
• Short-Lived Seed Bank: Seeds lack long-term persistence in the soil.
  
• Not a Major Pest Host: Generally resistant to pests and diseases in its introduced range.