Nature reserves play a key role in biodiversity conservation. However, they confront numerous pressures including the invasion of alien species. The understanding of distribution pattern of invasive alien species in Nature reserves has been limited by inadequacy of distribution data. Here, we compiled distribution data of 72 national nature reserves in China for 35 invasive alien plants (IAPs), which issued by Ministry of Ecology and Environmental of the People's Republic of China. The distribution pattern and potential distribution pattern of 35 IAPs were explored, then related the species patterns with environmental and human activity factors. The results indicated that:1) 7.78±0.47 IAPs were recorded in 72 national nature reserves, moreover, 98.69% of national nature reserves in China all were faced with the invasion of IAPs based on prediction of MaxEnt model. 2) The largest number of IAPs was observed in national nature reserves located in low latitude region (8.07±0.73) and mid-latitude region (9.64±0.56), which distinguished more than those in high latitude regions. No difference of IAPs richness was found among the types of national nature reserves. 3) Analysis of CCA (canonical correspondence analysis) showed that temperature and precipitation jointly dominated spatial patterns of IAPs in national nature reserves in China, whereas, human activities such as length of the road and population density in natural reserves showed little effect. Moreover, the main factors varied among different life forms of IAPs:temperature explained most of distribution of annual IAPs, vine and shrubs. On the other hand, temperature, precipitation, altitude and build time of protected areas were all related with the distribution of perennial IAPs. We concluded that a lack of investigation and monitoring data of IAPS limited the understanding the invasiveness of IAPs in nature reserves. In the future, in order to reveal the underlying invasion mechanism of IAPs and improve the effectiveness of management, more studies should be conducted in national nature reserves.