Agricultural wetland restorations on the USA Atlantic Coastal Plain achieve diverse native wetland plant communities but differ from natural wetlands

• We compared vegetation between restored, natural, and drained cropland sites.
• Restored wetlands had diverse native wetland plant communities.
• Herbaceous plants characterized restored sites, while natural sites were forested.
• Restoration project goals should be explicitly stated in planning documents.

Wetland restoration is globally important for offsetting effects of wetland loss and degradation but is not consistently successful. Vegetation studies provide insight into the effectiveness of restoring wetland ecosystem functions. We compared plant community composition in 47 non-tidal wetlands under different management (natural, restored, and former wetlands that had been converted to cropland) in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the USA. As expected, drained cropland sites were dominated by conventional upland row crops, had low species richness and evenness, and were highly disturbed. Plant communities in restored sites were more like natural sites based on the percentage of species that were native and hydrophytic, plant community evenness, and floristic quality. However, natural sites were forested, while restored and drained cropland sites were primarily herbaceous. Restored sites continued to be impacted by anthropogenic disturbance compared to natural sites. Our findings demonstrate that restored wetlands in agricultural settings can develop diverse native wetland plant communities within a decade but they remain very different from natural wetlands, raising questions about restoration goals, ecosystem service tradeoffs, and our ability to restore wetlands to ecological conditions found in reference sites.