1. In cities, trees growing along streets could play an important ecological role for spontaneous plants that grow at their bases. For example, these trees could represent corridors that allow species to move in the urban matrix by potentially connecting large green spaces (e.g., parks, gardens, etc.) We considered sets of urban trees in 15 streets as metapopulations for 15 plant species. Our objective was to determine the factors influencing the dynamics of colonization and extinction of populations based on the distance of the streets from green spaces and the biological traits of each species. 2. The species in 1,324 tree bases of the Bercy district of Paris were surveyed annually from 2009 to 2015. For each species and each street, we used SPOMSIM software to identify the best-fit metapopulation model: the propagule rain model (PRM), Levins model (LM), and the PRM and LM with a fixed extinction or a rescue effect. 3. The results demonstrated that the species more often conformed to the PRM in streets near green spaces, which suggested that green spaces could act as the sources for the populations in those streets. Species with seeds with long-term persistence more often conformed to the PRM, indicating that a soil seed bank helps species invade entire streets. Finally, a higher percentage of species with a short height conformed to models with a rescue effect, which indicated that those species resisted the effects of weeding by the city technical services more often than taller species. 4. Synthesis and applications. This study showed how the biological traits of species and the geography of the district determine the dynamics of the plants in the streets, and the results may provide important information for biodiversity management in cities
