Seed bank offers potential for active restoration of mountain meadows

The nitrogen‐fixing legume Lupinus polyphyllus invaded semi‐natural mountainous grasslands across Europe during the last decades. This invasion resulted in degraded habitats through changes in the structure and function of the mountain meadow vegetation. In our study, we analyzed (1) the effects of increasing cover of L. polyphyllus on the seed bank of mountain meadows, and (2) the potential of the seed bank of these stands for active restoration of mountain meadows in terms of species composition and number . We conducted a seed bank analysis on 84 plots with increasing cover of L. polyphyllus in three mountain‐meadow types of the Rhön Biosphere Reserve, Germany. Seedlings from 119 species germinated from the seed bank samples, including 17 Red List species but only a few seedlings of L. polyphyllus . The species composition of the seed bank matched distinct patterns of the three meadow types, but differed from the species composition of the current aboveground vegetation in a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination. While the influence of L. polyphyllus on the current vegetation was visible, no effects on the seed bank were apparent. L. polyphyllus had no influence on total seed density, seed density of typical mountain‐meadow species, or species numbers in the seed bank. Only the seeds of the Red List species were significantly related to the cover of L. polyphyllus . We conclude that the seed bank offers potential for active restoration of species‐rich mountain meadows, but species absent from the seed bank have to be added by other measures.