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Hi all,
My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.
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Adikhajuria (
talk)
11:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I got a good chuckle out of this one and could not resist sharing it. I suggest looking at the history of the page on Vasqueziella. Several people edited this without noticing that the two species listed were in the wrong genus. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 14:36, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone have a good understanding of the taxonomy of Bamboos? Bamboo is generally about tribe Bambuseae, but in the section called "Genus and geography" (yes, the page needs a lot of editing) is the sourced statement "Bamboo grows in two main forms: the woody bamboos (Arundinarieae and Bambuseae) and the understory herbaceous bamboos (Olyreae)." Does anyone know what rank or clade or non-monophyletic group is the term "bamboo" generally used to mean? Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:49, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I assume that it is considered undesirable for Wikipedia to be containing misinformation, and that part of the editor's job is to catch errors. Hence the entire "verifiability" phenomenon as I understand it. There are certain errors I keep seeing over and over, so I point this out so that people might be alerted to it. My policy, incidentally, has become that I shall add to an existing website, but I shall not delete anything unless it is egregiously erroneous. I found one plant page with an entire paragraph-long description in Latin. I had to question the wisdom of having this in Wikipedia, but I do not feel comfortable deleting someone else's work. Anyway, my point today has to do with type species. This is another esoteric topic of interest only to professional taxonomists, hence should be relegated to the taxobox, if even there, but some people want to give it more emphasis than it deserves. I feel that if it is to be included, we should at least make an effort to get it right. Here's the problem. Suppose I discover a new genus and name it "Gondoria." I designate "Gondoria gandalfii" as type species. Years later, someone points out that the same plant was previously described in the Nazgul Journal of Botany under the name "Modoria sauronii." Priority rules dictate that my species now becomes "Gondoria sauronii." Does this mean that "Gondoria sauronii" is now type species of "Gondoria?" No. "Gondoria gandalfii" remains type. This is so that if at some even later date, DNA analysis reveals that the two deserve to be considered separate genera, the name Gondoria must forever include "Gondoria gandalfii." On a practical level, this does not make a whole lot of difference, but as I said, if we are going to do this, we might as well get it right. Tropicos, incidentally, does frequently have info on type species for various genera. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:14, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
>Peter: Exactly my point, yet I have seen many people get this wrong, including professional botanists. Another complicating factor is that many older names from the 18th and early 19th centuries do not have type designations with their original descriptions. This is for much the same reason as herbarium specimens from that era not having GPS coordinates on the labels. So typification has to be done retroactively, which is why taxonomists buy so much acetaminophen. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 11:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
I am hoping you good people might have an idea on how to handle a particular situation, some ideas that I have not considered. Problem lies with infrapsecific taxa. Several times, I have encountered species in which Plant List and Kew's World Checklist and other such sources accept names at more than one infraspecific level. So one species will contain both varieties and subspecies. Problem is that these are supposed to be hierarchical. Just as each genus is supposed to be part of a family and each species is supposed to be part of a genus, so too each variety is supposed to be part of a subspecies, if indeed both exist with the same species. Yet these secondary sources never have this sort of information, which variety is supposed to belong to which subspecies. Indeed, it usually seems that the various authors of the infraspecific taxa were blissfully unaware of each other, so it would some investigation and access to appropriate type specimens to sort this out. What I have been doing is simply ignoring this, listing the infraspecific taxa as reported in the World Checklist and pretending that there is nothing wrong with this. Anyone have any better suggestions? Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 01:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
We have been using WCSP for Agave species. According to WCSP, Agave boscii is a synonym of Agave geminiflora, not the other way round. Could an admin please move Agave boscii to Agave geminiflora? Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:49, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
I am new to WikiProject Plants and would like to contribute articles, but I would like to get a better idea for how robust datasources need to be. My idea is to provide information for species for which there is not a lot information in the form of published literature by mining herbarium specimen notes and synthesizing that information (giving credit to herbaria and collectors) and by interviewing local experts who have spent their lives in the field. However, I am concerned that such an approach might 1) be perceived as "orginal research" in that it is synthesis of primary source information and 2) not meet the criteria for providing authoratative sources, even though the men and women providing the information are the best in the field. Would biographical information on each collector or interviewee need to be provided to make my case? I am also wondering about whether or not observations in the field can be used, such as a specific butterfly visiting a specific plant species. Thanks for your input. Krobertson1970 16:06, 24 July 2014
I was alerted earlier today that a botanical authority page was nominated for speedy deletion as not notable. Fortunately the nomination was withdrawn after vigorous protest.
I am proposing that we should, as a matter of priciple, declare that botanical authorities are 'notable by definition, and should not be deleted. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 01:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
My argument in the specific case was that if there's a taxobox containing that person's standard author abbreviation, then it should be wikilinked, which requires there to be an article. This isn't saying that we should create articles on authors in advance, but that once the author abbreviation is used, it is right to create an article.
Now this idea could be qualified; e.g. we could say that the person has to have been a (co)author of X names, where X > 1. Or we could say that it applies when the author abbreviation is not obvious, so that, say, "J.Smith" wouldn't need an article if X is small, but "Sm.f." would. It's the desire/need to wikilink which drives my wish to have an article. Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Maybe authorities without articles should be linked to List of botanists by author abbreviation or similar? Stuartyeates ( talk) 07:22, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
It would have been good to have reached a consensus on this, but I think we haven't. There seem to be two issues:
Peter coxhead ( talk) 07:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Summation: I think this has been a useful discussion, and as I anticipated, has seen a variety of opinions. Obviously no issue is ever completely black and white, and all Wikipedia style pages are to some extent guidelines not laws. Thus 'notability' is partly subjective. From that perspective there are two issues, one being Wikipedia's general guidelines on notability, and the other being the more specific issue of notability to botanists. I think the whole point of having WikiProjects is that we can have a certain degree of autonomy in setting guidelines specific to our own subject. To be completely logical, if standard nomenclature attaches an authors name to a taxon, that name has been 'noted. This issue arose because I wrote a page to provide information on a taxa's authority, and someone tried to delete it on notability grounds, untill I explained the whole concept of botanical authority. However there were no guidelines to point to, hence this discussion.
There is no point in having these discussions unless it leads to some sort of policy, or we will have them all over again in a few years, and other editors will be none the wiser. So I am going to try and translate this into some sort of policy on our page which is more of a guideline than a black and white law. In describing a taxa with an authority, it would be preferable to have a link to information about that authority, and there are certain basic elements that should be in that page, including IPNI, the {{botanist}} template, and links to the taxon or taxa, and vice versa, and also inclusion in our list of authorities. If you write a page about a botanist who is linked to a taxon, and someone tries to delete it, point them to this guideline (still to be written). At present we have no guidelines regarding botanist pages, and as such that would be useful in itself. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 13:42, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone identify the plant in this featured image for me (and the community)? Res Mar 02:03, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion of whether or not use of the content in Jepson, or use of content in plant field guides that cite Jepson as their authority, constitutes a violation of WP:Copyright. The discussion can be found here Talk:Hilaria_rigida#Copyright_problem_removed, and a realted discussion is here Copyright investigations (manual article tagging) Syntrichopappus fremontii. FloraWilde ( talk) 15:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello. I was wondering if any of you would be interested in creating a page on garidella, a subclass of the thalamiflorae, named in honour of French botanist Pierre Joseph Garidel. Let me know if you are. Please reply on my talkpage. Thank you. Zigzig20s ( talk) 18:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
I think these categories have not much botanic sense, since plants do not recognize national borders, and they create a huge mass of categories for some species. As an example Lily of the valley has about thirty such categories. I propose to suppress these categories, or admit only those that are for English speaking countries.-- Auró ( talk) 21:38, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
I've been working with @ Peter coxhead: and getting valuable advice from @ V111P:, creating tools that might be of interest to other plant editors, for rapidly reformatting synonym lists and species lists. A prototype tool is described at User:Sminthopsis84/TPLSynonyms. That one uses synonym data from http://www.theplantlist.org chosen by the wikipedian, who uses copy/paste to give input data to the program and to add the result to wikipedia. The program is written in HTML and javascript, and would run in your browser (we've tested it on a few of the many available browsers), thereby avoiding the security problems that come with a compiled language like java. I'd be very interested to know if people think this would be useful, and happy to answer questions. It is possible to create programs that work with other databases, WCSP, algaebase, ...
We've discussed possibly integrating such tools further into wikipedia, perhaps creating a button that you would click to go to the program, and perhaps working directly from the plant database without using copy/paste. Those sophisticated additions don't seem to be warranted at present, unless people think they would be helpful.
The prototype tool is easily downloaded as described at User:Sminthopsis84/TPLSynonyms. You would put the two files into the same directory anywhere on your computer, and then open one of them with your browser. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 17:53, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
There's a working prototype temporarily here which takes a list of species pasted from a WCSP checklist (using the "Build a checklist" option in the left column), extracts records according to selected criteria, and produces a wikified list for copying and pasting into Wikipedia. WCSP is not entirely consistent in its formatting, so automated parsing doesn't always work; careful review of the output is needed! Comments welcome. Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:06, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
The accuracy of TPL has been questioned in these talk pages in the past. I entirely agree; for those plant families it covers I've found WCSP much more reliable. A particular problem with TPL is that it does not extract information correctly from Tropicos. Here's just one example I've found.
The authorities should ring an alarm bell, so let's look at Tropicos directly.
So Tropicos does not accept Maurandya acerifolia Pennell; it regards it as a synonym of the name it accepts, Mabrya acerifolia (Pennell) Elisens.
Sadly this isn't an isolated example. The status of names in TPL derived from Tropicos needs to be checked directly with Tropicos.
However, Tropicos isn't itself a reliable source for the status of names, since it collates information including specimens in herbaria, which may well be wrongly labelled. Here's an example. TPL claims that Lophospermum nubiculum Elisens is an accepted name in Tropicos. Tropicos does indeed have an entry for Lophospermum nubiculum Elisens, but doesn't cite the source of the name, only a secondary source. The name isn't in IPNI; a search of plant names by author in IPNI shows that Elisens didn't name species after 1985. His 1985 monograph which covers Lophospermum is online; there's no such name as Lophospermum nubiculum although there is a Lophospermum nubicola. The epithet nubiculum appears to be an orthographic error based on the re-labelling of a single herbarium specimen (see here) which cites Elisens (1985) which doesn't contain the name.
This probably counts as original taxonomic research so can't be included in Wikipedia, but the moral seems to be "don't believe what you see in (some?) online taxonomic databases". Peter coxhead ( talk) 06:30, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Dandelion currently redirects to Taraxacum. Opinions are invited at Talk:Dandelion_(disambiguation) on a proposal to rename and move Dandelion (disambiguation) to Dandelion. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 16:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
User:FloraWilde recently made some significant changes to the Project's Article Template, including re-ordering and renaming the "Distribution and habitat" section. Such changes need discussion and consensus here first, so I reverted them wholesale and then added back changes some I thought useful and uncontroversial. Please revert these too if you don't agree. Peter coxhead ( talk) 20:28, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
:Talk page discussion of possible revisions is
here.
FloraWilde (
talk) 20:48, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
(I think it's better to discuss it here; this page is more often visited and it's where we've usually discussed changes to the project's subpages.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
21:30, 19 July 2014 (UTC))
FloraWilde ( talk) 20:48, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Subsections might include "growth pattern", "stems and leaves (and maybe roots)", "inflorescence and fruit", or further subdivisions of these subsections. For example, "it is a branching perennial shrub that grows to 1 meter with a taproot. Stems are woody and covered with corky bark. Foul smelling leaves are opposite, compound pinnate, with hairy oval opposite leaflets having toothed edges. The inflorescence is a a corymb. Fragrant, radially symmetric flowers have five pointed green sepals and blue to violet petals fused into a tube flaring five lobes, with five anthers opposed to the petals. Pistils have three-parted styles. Ovaries are superior. Fruits have three dehiscent chambers filled with many black seeds."
I agree with Peter that a description section should come first, before distribution and habitat etc. Regarding FloraWilde's concerns, I wonder if some plant articles might appear 'too technical' at the start simply because their leads aren't sufficiently fleshed out to give a good general overview - I think this applies to quite a few plant articles. Also in some plant articles the taxonomy sections are far more detailed than any other section, giving an impression of technical impenetrability, but I think the solution to these situations is not necessarily to reorder sections, but to expand and rewrite information so that articles are more balanced and the text is easier for laypeople to understand. PaleCloudedWhite ( talk) 18:55, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
A new user has moved Dracaena braunii to Dracaena braunii (Lucky Bamboo) thereby violating several principles of article titling. I've explained on their talk page, but could some admin please move it back. Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 07:04, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
I have found several pages recently where lists of species have been tagged {{one source}} by an enthusiastic editor who does not realise that something like the Plant List or Checklist is the authoritative source. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 03:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Many authors of plant field guides are notable experts at plant identification. But they often add comments about traditional or alternative medicine uses, or exaggerate actual or potential medical use, often with an apparent end of furthering a conservation agenda by trying to find some reason other than just loving the plants for conservation of them. They are often not qualified to even read a proper medical study. Plant field guides and manuals do not meet WP:MEDRS standards for reliability of medical information. This should be stated in the template. FloraWilde ( talk) 21:35, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Note - There is a related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Template#Uses. FloraWilde ( talk) 10:01, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
I've suggested a split of English rose (personal description) into a girl and a plant article. See talk:English rose (personal description). Is this plant concept significant? -- 65.94.169.222 ( talk) 06:37, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flora of the Sierra Nevada alpine zone. FloraWilde ( talk) 02:27, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
You may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 August 7#Template:Botanist where it is proposed that the {{ Botanist}} template is deleted. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:39, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
What should be done with Dioscorea opposita (see Talk:Dioscorea opposita#Nomenclature_is_all_mixed_up for some background)? I'm kind of confused by it, but what I think I understand follows. Nomenclaturally, D. opposita is an illegitimate and superfluous name for the south Asian (India) species Dioscorea oppositifolia (and thus a synonym of that species). However, the name Dioscorea opposita is widely used to refer to an east Asian (Japan, China, South Korea) species that is used as a vegetable and which is naturalized/invasive in the United States. The vegetable/invasive is apparently best treated as Dioscorea polystachya.
Most people searching for D. opposita are probably interested in the east Asian vegetable/invasive, not the Indian species. There would be less need to disambiguate incoming links to Dioscorea opposita if it redirects to D. polystachya. But that doesn't mesh with the nomenclature situation. Would it be better to redirect to D. polystachya or would it be better to make D. opposita into a disambiguation page, or is it best to redirect oppposita to oppositifolia as nomenclatural rules prescribe? Plantdrew ( talk) 05:48, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
I've tried to explain some of this by removing the taxobox from the Dioscorea opposita page, and adding taxonomy sections there, on Dioscorea polystachya, and Dioscorea oppositifolia. I don't know whether these species are interchangeable as food and medicine, in particular whether Dioscorea oppositifolia is known by the various common names that were listed there and whether it can be safely eaten raw. For now, I've removed that material from Dioscorea oppositifolia. If anyone has that knowledge, please re-add the statements. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Please could an uninvolved person from this project close the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 April 27#Category:Drosera by synonymy? If the closure is done by a non-admin and requires admin action to implement it, just ping me. – Fayenatic L ondon 15:01, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
A reader contacted the Wikimedia Foundation, noting that Leontopodium alpinum states it belongs to the sunflower family. while Leontopodium states it is in the daisy family,.
The implication being that one or the other is wrong.
I looked at Asteraceae, which suggest that the same family is known by both names.
I'm out of my depth, but would it make sense to have more harmonized wording. If one usage is more common, change one, or if both are quite common, refer to both?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 15:29, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
..is at FAC.. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Epacris impressa/archive1...and it's going pretty slowly. Would appreciate any input from folks....especially botanists..cheers, Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 06:05, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
i have put the photos of some bamboo species in their respective pages, Bambusa membranaceus, Bambusa multiplex var yellow, Bombus affinis, Bambusa oldhamii , Bambusa wamin , Bambusa teris. , Bambusa multiplex , Bambusa tulda please develop these pages. -- Dvellakat ( talk) 14:09, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Happy anniversary to all plant editors, past and present, and thanks for your improvement to plant articles and contributions to the many informative discussions here over 10 years.-- Melburnian ( talk) 13:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Hello from AfC! Can someone please review the draft article located at Draft:Chloroplast migration, which is fairly technical, and check if it is original research or not, or if it makes sense? Thanks. Revent talk 23:55, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Image request for Aristolochia watsonii. FloraWilde ( talk) 01:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The Euphorbia Planetary Biodiversity Inventory project web page, last updated July 2012, says [2] -
"Euphorbia. With over 2000 accepted species, it is second in size only to the legume genus Astragalus among the flowering plants."
This is inconsistent with information in the List of the largest genera of flowering plants.
The Euphorbia PBI is "Supported by the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) Program of the National Science Foundation", Smithsonian Institution, University of Michigan, and University of Florida, which is pretty good support as a reliable source. Can anyone resolve the inconsistency. Can anyone help resolve the inconsistency? FloraWilde ( talk) 18:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
Allan A. Schoenherr wrote A Natural History of California. His book is a classic. A [ Google Scholar search] produces many results. Does anyone know any sources to establish notability for a Wikipedia article on him, or on his book? FloraWilde ( talk) 04:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Pinus sabiniana has various names, among them are "digger pine" and "gray pine". The problem with the usage of digger pine is two-fold. For one the term "digger" originated as a derogatory term for native Americans in the central California region around which Pinus sabiniana is distributed. To quote an historical interpreter for the California State Indian Museum in Sacramento:
To see that the latter two terms are officially preferred is easily verifiable by visiting the webpages concerning Pinus sabiniana on any official website such as the USDA plant database.
The second problem is that of usage, which although I have only my own personal experience as well as Google results to support, I believe "gray pine" to be the most widely used common name. The relevant Google search counts are: digger pine = 35,300, gray pine = 42,700, grey pine = 96,500, foothill pine = 11,400. The reason I support the choice of gray over grey is because gray is the American spelling and the tree is American and I expect most articles mentioning the gray pine to be concerned with American ecology, although I'm not concerned with either one being used. I will await responses and if there are no objections I will start switching out mentions of "digger pine" to "gray pine". AioftheStorm ( talk) 19:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion of a proposed Barnstar - For improving botany and plant related articles here [3]. FloraWilde ( talk) 18:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
Could an admin please move Lanariaceae to Lanaria in accordance with our policy on monotypic taxa? Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 21:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
According to the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)#Monotypic taxa when a monospecific genus needs to be disambiguated, instead of creating the article at the disambiguated plant genus, it should be created at the species name. I've checked all of Category:Monotypic_plant_genera and the only case left is Stokesia (plant) which should be moved to Stokesia laevis. Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Arising from the move above (Lanariaceae to Lanaria), there's an issue about categorizing articles and redirects involving monotypic taxa. The project's current advice is here but only covers the "R" templates. The issue that concerns me is the main taxonomic categories. There seem to be three choices:
I think we've discussed this before, but not added the conclusions to the project page (as often seems to happen). At present, we're somewhat inconsistent (at least I know I am).
Comments, please.
Peter, the previous discussion I'm aware of was at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 33#Categorizing taxa vs. common names. At this point, sets of articles and redirects for monotypic plants (but not animals) are pretty consistently categorized following choice #2. Some people are unaware that redirects can be categorized, and others are generally opposed to categorizing redirects; indeed, the practice of categorizing redirects (aside from via the "R from/to" maintenance templates) is generally discouraged. However, the guideline at WP:INCOMPATIBLE suggests some situations where categorizing redirects is appropriate. The Lanaria article at the genus title is WP:INCOMPATIBLE with Category:Asparagales families and Category:Monogeneric plant families, but the Lanariaceae redirect is "compatible" with these categories.
And the related issue which kicked off the thread at Tree of Life was how to categorize redirects from scientific names to articles with a common name title. We have very few of these for plants. In the handful of cases where a plant article has a common name title, both the scientific name redirect and the common name article are usually categorized (i.e. the Allium sativum redirect and the Garlic article are both in Category:Plants described in 1753 and Category:Allium). I don't mind the duplicated categorization, but I'd probably argue that "garlic" was incompatible with Category:Allium if I had to pick only the species redirect or the article for the genus category.
"Described in year" categories are a whole other issue which I've complained about being problematic before. The status quo is that (were it not monotypic), a Lanaria lanata article would get placed in the described in 1753 category, not the Hyacinthus lanatus redirect. I don't particularly like that situation, but I can accept it. Putting the "described in year" category at the monotypic genus article just seems like a really bad idea though. "Described in year" categories are almost entirely species. If genera are getting a description date category, it should be a parallel set of year categories. It just seems super misleading to have Lanaria in "Category:Plants (species) described in 1753" and not a hypothetical Category:Plant genera described in 1789. Plantdrew ( talk) 05:13, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
As no-one seems to dissent (or be very interested!), I'm going to edit the project page to reflect (2) above, which is what mostly seem to happen currently. Revert if you don't agree! Peter coxhead ( talk) 15:42, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
at Talk:Acacia pycnantha regarding phytochemistry. An issue with alot of acacia pages I see. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 02:48, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Here is an update on something we were discussing a few weeks ago. You may recall that we were discussing the use of geographic categories on plant pages. Policy is to use the highest-level category instead of listing all the more local categories, e.g. "Flora of Africa" instead of "Flora of Ghana" + "Flora of Togo' + "Flora of Benin" etc. I have been attempting to comply with those guidelines that were outlined here on this page. Problem is that I have received complaints about this, people reverting my changes to existing pages or sending me strongly worded emails. One person objected strongly to my deletion of "Flora of Lebanon" category from one page, despite that the plant discussed on that particular page does not grow in Lebanon. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 18:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
@ User:Joseph Laferriere, can you provide a link to the discussion you referred to as "those guidelines that were outlined here on this page"? Is there somewhere "highest-level category" was defined? @ User:Rkitko, does "geographic category" mean political geography or a contiguous area with some shared environmental feature, as what might lead to creation of a plant community or vegetation type? In this case, a category like "flora of the Golan Heights", makes much more sense than "flora of Syria" or "flora of Israel". Similarly " Flora of the Great Basin desert region", Flora of the Sonoran Desert, Flora of the Mojave Desert, make sense. Putting the former two in a category defined by political boundaries is possible, since both are in the western US, but the latter crosses over international boundaries. Is there a place that defines a purpose or intended use of categories? FloraWilde ( talk) 02:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi All
I've started writing about Helianthemum squamatum, it's the only know species able to extract water of crystallization from rock. I know a little about plants but would really appreciate help in writing the article if anyone is interested.
Many thanks
-- Mrjohncummings ( talk) 16:05, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
There are some plant categories with "taxonomy" in their name. For example Category:Taxonomy of Banksia which is placed in Category:Angiosperm taxonomy. These categories are for articles about taxonomy not for the taxonomy/classification itself. Thus we don't put Category:Asparagales into "Category:Taxonomy of monocots" but directly into Category:Monocots. I've been sorting out all the incorrectly used "taxonomy" categories that I've found, but if you come across any used incorrectly, please fix them. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Taxonomy of the Bambuseae. Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 09:22, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Opinions are invited about recent changes on Opopanax, which in part involve a difference of opinion about how to treat the multiple plants historically used, in light of a statement that currently "all production" is from one species. A copyright issue has also surfaced. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 19:50, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
MOS says use plain English. But that does not mean we should not include the technical term after the plain English. I propose that the plant article template suggest stating a common name for the family in the lead sentence, followed by the scientific name in parentheses with a link, as here - Sarcodes. FloraWilde ( talk) 15:57, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone shed light on the veracity (or not) of this edit and its source? PaleCloudedWhite ( talk) 22:04, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
The answer may seem obvious at first, but reliable sources are not consistent. Please contribute to the discussion here. 23:46, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone know what is the plant species? -- Yuriy Kvach ( talk) 19:05, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Australia's floral emblem is at FAC - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Acacia pycnantha/archive1 - any input from botanists would be welcome...cheers, Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 14:45, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Is there anyone anyone with expertise on the holobiont theory of lichens who can review this edit, and verify that I correctly summarized the content of the four cited sources? FloraWilde ( talk) 19:15, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
I made this edit because it is what the RS said, " Many Sierra Nevada alpine plants have reddish or whitish leaves to protect them from damage from intense ultraviolet radiation in the alpine zone". It is plausible that if we could see UV, then UV-colored leaves would indicate protection from UV since it is reflected, but it is not clear why reddish leaves, or even whitish leaves, would. Can anyone explain why reddish leaves might protect from intense solar radiation? What about whitish leaves? FloraWilde ( talk) 21:10, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej ( talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
I have stumbled across a vexing nomenclatural mess that I cannot solve using the on-line resources I have available. I am hoping someone with better literature as her/his disposal might be able to help. Problem concerns what the correct name is for a certain plant. WCSPF calls it "Aparisthmium cordatum." Tropicos, however, says that the genus name Aparisthmium is an illegitimate superfluous name. That means that the author who coined the name listed another name as synonym, thus voiding his own name. I do hope that he got paid for his work anyway. Tropicos says the plant should be in the genus Conceveibum A. Rich. ex A. Juss., and the species should be Conceveiba cordata A. Juss. But wait! Notice the different endings on these two genus names: "-bum" vs "-ba." There is another genus called Conceveiba Aubl. 1775, not the same thing as Conceveibum A.Rich. ex A.Juss. 1824. Are you confused? I am. What do I call this thing? Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 22:30, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) says "When Taxon was initiated in 1951 it was, among other things, to provide a single place for (previously scattered) proposals of nomina conservanda. Yet so far no guidance on how to write such proposals has been provided, and although certain traditions have built up through the years the format and especially the length of proposals have greatly varied." Joseph, I would like to propose your name as a botanist who might like to undertake publishing such a proposal
On the project page are instructions about templates to include in redirects. Which include:
Since I'm not sure of the uses that these categorizations are put to, I don't know what to do about redirects for synonyms. Linum crepitans, Linum humile, and Linum indehiscens as synonyms of Linum usitatissimum could redirect to Flax, but it is a different situation from the Pseudotsuga menziesii example. Should redirects from these synonyms include the R from scientific name template? Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 12:36, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
such as the various Medicago species that would redirect to Alfalfa. Only one accepted species name would redirect to alfalfa, surely? (Which is Joseph's point, I think.) Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:38, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
If I add another row to the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants#R templates for redirects not involving monotypic taxa, it perhaps clarifies the issue:
To | |||
Accepted scientific name | English/vernacular name | ||
From | Accepted scientific name | — | {{ R from scientific name|plant}} |
Alternative scientific name | {{ R from alternative scientific name|plant}} | {{
R from alternative scientific name|plant}} ? {{ R from scientific name|plant}} ? | |
English/vernacular name | {{ R to scientific name|plant}} | (not relevant here) |
Rather than use one of the two possible existing templates, there could be a new template in the shaded cell (it would have to be called something like "R from alternative scientific name to vernacular name" with a corresponding category), but would it be worthwhile? I'd like to see some more views on this. (It would also need to be put to other relevant WikiProjects; WP:WikiProject Tree of Life should be the forum but seems inactive at present.) Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I think I'm responsible for placing probably 90% of the redirects now found in Category:Redirects from scientific names of plants. It was very much my intention that the category should be able to function as a "list [which] could be used in statements about how many plant species [and genus] pages have a common name as a title" (I'm not so interested in the pages where a cultivar group or a hybrid has a common name for a title; clearly nobody is going to suggest that boysenberry should be titled with the scientific name Rubus ursinus × R. idaeus). I played around with a couple different ways of creating said list before arriving on the redirect templates. The most straight-forward way, directly categorizing the common name titled articles probably wouldn't fly; a category on "Maori names for plants" was deleted as it was about an aspect of the article title (apparently not appropriate for a category), rather than a defining characteristic of the article subject. That said, I really don't want to see the category cluttered with dozens of obscure synonyms for Medicago sativa. For the most part, Category:Redirects from scientific names of plants is now a comprehensive list of our common name titled species and genus pages (as the targets of the categorized redirects), although it does have a few hybrids, and a few cases where there are two redirects to the same common name whether because of monotypy or synonymy (I'm not too worried about having both Malus pumila and Malus domestica listed, as there is an outstanding conservation proposal for M. domestica; similarly, Lycopersicon esculentum continues to enjoy currency alongside Solanum lycopersicum as a scientific name for tomatoes).
There are another 48 redirects that I know of which should go into the category eventually (see User:Plantdrew/sandbox#Single_edit_scientific_name_redirects_not_categorized, but otherwise, Category:Redirects to scientific names of plants give us a very good handle on which articles have common name titles. There seem to be less than 400, out of more than 40,000+ plant articles. In spite of common name titles being 1% of the total, almost all of our highly viewed articles ( Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Popular_pages)are titled by common name. The presence of Salvia hispanica (#49 most viewed, in spite of the fact that the most likely search term, " chia" is a SIA) shows that readers can still find articles even with scientific name titles (and they're not scared off by our "elitist" use of scientific names). WP:FLORA works!
Getting back on topic, we either need another template for scientific synonyms redirecting to common names, or we could just skip categorizing them for now (with tens of thousands of uncategorized synonym redirects, there's no need to push for categorizing the handful that point to a common name, but I do realize there's no guarantee that somebody won't come along and categorize them anyway). Plantdrew ( talk) 21:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Please help adding a taxobox and with a WP:BOLD rewrite of the Dendriscocaulon article . FloraWilde ( talk) 14:41, 17 September 2014 (UTC) Resolved per article talk page. Thanks. FloraWilde ( talk) 02:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Why is Caloplaca albovariegata commonly called variegated ORANGE lichen? [4] Is some commonly observable feature ever close to being orange? FloraWilde ( talk) 23:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
Question for you good people. I found a genus page for Aldrovanda, which apparently has one living species and several long-extinct species known only from fossils. I placed it in a "monotypic" category as it has only one non-fossil species. Someone reverted this and deleted the category, saying it is not monotypic because of the existence of the fossil species. Who is correct about this? The way I see it, every genus on Earth has extinct species somewhere in the history of the planet, although only a few will have left any fossils good enough to identify. Such is the nature of how fossils are made. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 09:56, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
Advice, please, on the Guava page. The genus name, Psidium, redirects to the common name page. It seems to me that the genus with taxonomic info and a list of species should be on a separate page. I can handle this, but I wanted to check with you good people to be sure that this should be done. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
Xanthoria is described as "irregularly coalescing". Are there cases here, or in other lichen species, where the "coalescing" involves fungi in the same species, but with different DNA, coexisting in a single lichen "organism"? (This is a different question from a that of a lichenized fungal species taking over the algae from another, e.g. "[Verrucaria bernardinensis is the pale-colored lichen. It is growing out of the brown lichen, Staurothele monicae. Verrucaria bernardinensis steals the green algae from the brown lichen." [5]) FloraWilde ( talk) 15:52, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
There is often no link to the genus in plant articles, not in the lead, and not in the body. Conversely, there is almost always a link to the family in the first sentence. (If a user happens to know to look in the taxo-box, and there happens to be a taxo-box, that is the only place to find the genus link.) It is possible to put the link in the genus part of the bold faced binomial name, in the first sentence of the article. Other than producing bicolored binomial names, is there a good reason why this is almost never done? FloraWilde ( talk) 22:54, 13 September 2014
."The genus and family should be overtly stated in the lead first paragraph, with a link to both " genus" and " family", e.g., "It is in the Fooia genus of the commoners family ( Commonaceae)."
. FloraWilde ( talk) 03:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)"If possible, the lead first sentence should contain descriptive information in plain English that informs a general reader about the plant, e.g., growth form (tree, shrub, annual), size, flower colors, where it naturally grows, etc. Although stating what the genus is may seem redundant, given it is already in the article title, the genus and family should be overtly stated in the lead first paragraph, with a link to both the term " genus" and the term " family", so that readers unfamiliar with these concepts, or who may have learned them but do not readily recall what they learned, can quickly link to them - e.g., "It is in the Helianthus genus of the sunflower family ( Asteraceae)."
Please see Talk:Masterwort#Requested_moves to comment on a multiple move request. The vernacular names Masterwort, Spurge Olive and Milk Parsley may refer to multiple plants and it is proposed to move these articles to scientific name titles. Plantdrew ( talk) 16:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Great masterwort. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. 67.70.35.44 ( talk) 01:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
There is a question about the reliability of a source regarding plants (www.plantvillage.com) on WP:RSN here, members of this wikiproject may be helpful with regards to their expertise in this area. Thanks! Yobol ( talk) 20:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I have seen something on several pages that conflict with established botanical practice. The Asteraceae pages in particular seem riddled with this problem. I just thought I would make sure everyone is up to speed on this, so that you can recognize the error if you should come across it. I estimate that for me to go through the entire Asteraceae correcting this problem would take 14.3 years. Issue is generic synonyms. Let me say for example that we have a plant called Planta hypothetica. There are other species in the genus: P. realistica, P. hallucinogenica, P. somnia, etc. You decide that P. hypothetica does not belong in the genus Planta, so you create a monotypic genus Greenthingia. Thus the plant now becomes Greenthingia hypothetica. In creating a genus page for the genus Greenthingia, you list Planta as a synonym for Greenthingia on the grounds that the species now called Greenthingia hypothetica was formerly in Planta. No. This is bass-ackwards. To say that Planta is a synonym of Greenthingia is to say that Planta is no longer recognized as a distinct genus, and the type species of Planta is now included in Greenthingia. If you were to merge the two genera back together, so that the type of Greenthingia reverts to being in Planta, then Greenthingia gets listed as a synonym of Planta. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
@
Joseph Laferriere: in your response to me above you inadvertently illustrate my underlying point. There's no such thing as a "type species" in the ICN; the term appears nowhere in the Code. The type of a genus is the type of the species (see Article 10). Nevertheless the term "type species" is widely used by botanists (and indeed is used in some taxoboxes). Similarly "pro parte" synonyms are not defined in the Code, but nevertheless the term is still in use, old-fashioned or not. (For species it's very easy to find lists including p.p. synonyms;
here is one from a source I've used in Wikipedia articles.) So for me the question is why the one is acceptable but not the other; it can't be a simple question of the terminology used in the Code.
By the way, presumably
Synonym (taxonomy)#Other usage is wrong in your view?
Peter coxhead (
talk)
07:31, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
Any thoughts on what to do with redirects for synonymized genera that were monotypic? Hermodactylus is now treated as a synonym of Iris, but if somebody is searching for Hermodactylus, they'll find more relevant information at Iris tuberosa than at Iris (plant). Should Hermodactylus redirect to the genus or the species? Plantdrew ( talk) 18:46, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone know any sources discussing the mechanism of for " Some lichens have lost the ability to reproduce sexually, yet continue to speciate" [6]? FloraWilde ( talk) 12:50, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Many of our English language plant articles start of with characters that few English speakers have ever seen. "प्रत्यक्श्रेणी-tʃən" is a combination of the characters found at the beginning of two articles, Jatropha curcas and lichen. (All I learned in college was that "ʃ" is read "integral of", and "ə" is read "such that", otherwise the symbols are unintelligible to me.) There seems to be a consensus to include such characters in all articles at Wiki, by good-faith special-universal-character-pronunciation-technocrats at the Wiki-pronunciation division of MOS. Few at Wiki:PLANT likely ever participated in forming this consensus. That consensus is inconsistent with the more basic consensus at MOS to use plain English, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia being accessible to English language speakers. I propose adding to the plant article templete:
"Any non-standard characters, such as for pronunciation, should not appear in the lead, so that the lead is accessible to general readers."
FloraWilde ( talk) 15:46, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
Because of a story in the UK news, a number of editors are adding "toxicology" material to this page based on something speculative said during an inquest. I've been reverting but more expert eyes/views would help, as always ... Alexbrn talk| contribs| COI 14:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Hello. Is anyone here interested in helping me create a page about Petit Gulf cotton? I have started a userpage. I think this could easily become a start, but I am not an expert at all. It seems very historically significant. Thank you. Zigzig20s ( talk) 08:54, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
Plant articles on Wikipedia have been upgraded to the latest in evolutionary knowledge except for one of the most important articles. Plants that were once considered dicotyledons link to families, orders, and appropriate unranked clades from APG3, but plants that were considered monocotyledons link to an article about the old concept monocotyledon (as the other half of "monocots and dicots") instead of to the monocot clade. There are articles based on APG3 about all of the unranked clades, except for the monocot clade. Why is such a major clade reduced to its old concept? Even if the morphologies and many of the relationships are sound, compared to the dissolution of the dicots, there should be an article on every unranked APG3 clade. The text of the article that appears in my cell phone includes only one line about the monocot clade, "The APG III system recognises a clade called "monocots" but does not assign it to a taxonomic rank." The full article compares APG3 and other systems, after more interesting information like, "The name monocotyledons is derived from the traditional botanical name "Monocotyledones," and "From a diagnostic point of view the number of cotyledons is neither a particularly useful (as they are only present for a very short period in a plant's life), nor completely reliable characteristic."
This article is very bad. It is hard to improve it because there should be an article about the monocot clade, which this article is attempting to be after a bad start as the monocotyledons article. This is not about that monocotyledons are monocots; it's about helping someone who can't make sense of the monocot clade from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.250.153.211 ( talk) 03:34, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
This makes no sense. When and why did the Hardy Palms article become "List of hardy Palms"? The article is quite a bit more than just a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hardy_palms 173.73.232.183 ( talk) 00:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I am starting to fill out the articles on lichen genera, from A-Z, then on species within the genera. The plant template does not quite fit when it comes to lichens. Also, I am finding variations from article to article on the format for lichen genera aricles, e.g., on lists of species being partial "selected" lists in the article body, being collapsed lists in the article body, being collapsed lists entirely contained in the taxobox and not the article body, and being their own articled that is linked from the genus article. I just did some work on Acarospora. I would appreciate it if someone could review it and make suggestions or comments for improvements, then I will use the resulting formatting and style for other lichen genus articles. (I already know one improvement is to use more sources, which I will do, especially dispositive sources on the genus. FloraWilde ( talk) 20:08, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
Does the Plant project "officially" have an opinion on articles that resemble field guides, e.g. short sentence fragments like "Leaves: lanceolate, 5 cm . Fruits: 3 cm spherical." See for instance Meconopsis lancifolia. I feel this should be politely discouraged, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a field guide or plant identification manual. If there is a guideline, and other people feel this field guide structure is too common, perhaps the guidelines should be more prominent on the Project Page. Cheers. --Animalparty-- ( talk) 21:47, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
One problem I've encountered is how to be consistent in converting botanical terminology to plain English in those articles in which it is appropriate. For example, I was originally quite inconsistent in my use of "stem" and "stalk", which seem to me to be more-or-less synonymous in ordinary language, although not in botanical terminology.
Eventually I decided to base my usage on The Kew Plant Glossary. It defines "stalk" as "any support of an organ that has length". In its terminology, a leaf has a "stalk" (a "petiole"), a single flower has a "stalk" (a "pedicel"), an inflorescence has a "stalk" (a "peduncle"). A naked peduncle arising from the ground is a "scape". A "stem", on the other hand, would be expected to have at least internodes, and usually also leaves and perhaps flowers. So I've tried, doubtless not always successfully, to gloss "petiole", "pedicel", "peduncle" and "scape" from botanical sources as "stalk" in Wikipedia rather than "stem", using "stem" in the stricter botanical sense.
The botanical terminology for inflorescences is tricky to translate into plain English, in my experience. I seem to remember being taken to task (rightly I think) by Joseph Laferriere for accepting "flower head" as a gloss for the "umbel" of an Allium species. I've glossed "raceme" in the past as "flower spike", but "spike" has a narrower botanical use.
We'd probably find it hard to agree on some "standard translations" although I believe they would be useful. Peter coxhead ( talk) 22:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 60 | ← | Archive 62 | Archive 63 | Archive 64 | Archive 65 | Archive 66 | → | Archive 70 |
Hi all,
My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.
One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.
This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:
• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film
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• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____
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For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (
talk)
11:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I got a good chuckle out of this one and could not resist sharing it. I suggest looking at the history of the page on Vasqueziella. Several people edited this without noticing that the two species listed were in the wrong genus. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 14:36, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone have a good understanding of the taxonomy of Bamboos? Bamboo is generally about tribe Bambuseae, but in the section called "Genus and geography" (yes, the page needs a lot of editing) is the sourced statement "Bamboo grows in two main forms: the woody bamboos (Arundinarieae and Bambuseae) and the understory herbaceous bamboos (Olyreae)." Does anyone know what rank or clade or non-monophyletic group is the term "bamboo" generally used to mean? Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:49, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
I assume that it is considered undesirable for Wikipedia to be containing misinformation, and that part of the editor's job is to catch errors. Hence the entire "verifiability" phenomenon as I understand it. There are certain errors I keep seeing over and over, so I point this out so that people might be alerted to it. My policy, incidentally, has become that I shall add to an existing website, but I shall not delete anything unless it is egregiously erroneous. I found one plant page with an entire paragraph-long description in Latin. I had to question the wisdom of having this in Wikipedia, but I do not feel comfortable deleting someone else's work. Anyway, my point today has to do with type species. This is another esoteric topic of interest only to professional taxonomists, hence should be relegated to the taxobox, if even there, but some people want to give it more emphasis than it deserves. I feel that if it is to be included, we should at least make an effort to get it right. Here's the problem. Suppose I discover a new genus and name it "Gondoria." I designate "Gondoria gandalfii" as type species. Years later, someone points out that the same plant was previously described in the Nazgul Journal of Botany under the name "Modoria sauronii." Priority rules dictate that my species now becomes "Gondoria sauronii." Does this mean that "Gondoria sauronii" is now type species of "Gondoria?" No. "Gondoria gandalfii" remains type. This is so that if at some even later date, DNA analysis reveals that the two deserve to be considered separate genera, the name Gondoria must forever include "Gondoria gandalfii." On a practical level, this does not make a whole lot of difference, but as I said, if we are going to do this, we might as well get it right. Tropicos, incidentally, does frequently have info on type species for various genera. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:14, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
>Peter: Exactly my point, yet I have seen many people get this wrong, including professional botanists. Another complicating factor is that many older names from the 18th and early 19th centuries do not have type designations with their original descriptions. This is for much the same reason as herbarium specimens from that era not having GPS coordinates on the labels. So typification has to be done retroactively, which is why taxonomists buy so much acetaminophen. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 11:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
I am hoping you good people might have an idea on how to handle a particular situation, some ideas that I have not considered. Problem lies with infrapsecific taxa. Several times, I have encountered species in which Plant List and Kew's World Checklist and other such sources accept names at more than one infraspecific level. So one species will contain both varieties and subspecies. Problem is that these are supposed to be hierarchical. Just as each genus is supposed to be part of a family and each species is supposed to be part of a genus, so too each variety is supposed to be part of a subspecies, if indeed both exist with the same species. Yet these secondary sources never have this sort of information, which variety is supposed to belong to which subspecies. Indeed, it usually seems that the various authors of the infraspecific taxa were blissfully unaware of each other, so it would some investigation and access to appropriate type specimens to sort this out. What I have been doing is simply ignoring this, listing the infraspecific taxa as reported in the World Checklist and pretending that there is nothing wrong with this. Anyone have any better suggestions? Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 01:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
We have been using WCSP for Agave species. According to WCSP, Agave boscii is a synonym of Agave geminiflora, not the other way round. Could an admin please move Agave boscii to Agave geminiflora? Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:49, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
I am new to WikiProject Plants and would like to contribute articles, but I would like to get a better idea for how robust datasources need to be. My idea is to provide information for species for which there is not a lot information in the form of published literature by mining herbarium specimen notes and synthesizing that information (giving credit to herbaria and collectors) and by interviewing local experts who have spent their lives in the field. However, I am concerned that such an approach might 1) be perceived as "orginal research" in that it is synthesis of primary source information and 2) not meet the criteria for providing authoratative sources, even though the men and women providing the information are the best in the field. Would biographical information on each collector or interviewee need to be provided to make my case? I am also wondering about whether or not observations in the field can be used, such as a specific butterfly visiting a specific plant species. Thanks for your input. Krobertson1970 16:06, 24 July 2014
I was alerted earlier today that a botanical authority page was nominated for speedy deletion as not notable. Fortunately the nomination was withdrawn after vigorous protest.
I am proposing that we should, as a matter of priciple, declare that botanical authorities are 'notable by definition, and should not be deleted. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 01:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
My argument in the specific case was that if there's a taxobox containing that person's standard author abbreviation, then it should be wikilinked, which requires there to be an article. This isn't saying that we should create articles on authors in advance, but that once the author abbreviation is used, it is right to create an article.
Now this idea could be qualified; e.g. we could say that the person has to have been a (co)author of X names, where X > 1. Or we could say that it applies when the author abbreviation is not obvious, so that, say, "J.Smith" wouldn't need an article if X is small, but "Sm.f." would. It's the desire/need to wikilink which drives my wish to have an article. Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Maybe authorities without articles should be linked to List of botanists by author abbreviation or similar? Stuartyeates ( talk) 07:22, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
It would have been good to have reached a consensus on this, but I think we haven't. There seem to be two issues:
Peter coxhead ( talk) 07:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Summation: I think this has been a useful discussion, and as I anticipated, has seen a variety of opinions. Obviously no issue is ever completely black and white, and all Wikipedia style pages are to some extent guidelines not laws. Thus 'notability' is partly subjective. From that perspective there are two issues, one being Wikipedia's general guidelines on notability, and the other being the more specific issue of notability to botanists. I think the whole point of having WikiProjects is that we can have a certain degree of autonomy in setting guidelines specific to our own subject. To be completely logical, if standard nomenclature attaches an authors name to a taxon, that name has been 'noted. This issue arose because I wrote a page to provide information on a taxa's authority, and someone tried to delete it on notability grounds, untill I explained the whole concept of botanical authority. However there were no guidelines to point to, hence this discussion.
There is no point in having these discussions unless it leads to some sort of policy, or we will have them all over again in a few years, and other editors will be none the wiser. So I am going to try and translate this into some sort of policy on our page which is more of a guideline than a black and white law. In describing a taxa with an authority, it would be preferable to have a link to information about that authority, and there are certain basic elements that should be in that page, including IPNI, the {{botanist}} template, and links to the taxon or taxa, and vice versa, and also inclusion in our list of authorities. If you write a page about a botanist who is linked to a taxon, and someone tries to delete it, point them to this guideline (still to be written). At present we have no guidelines regarding botanist pages, and as such that would be useful in itself. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 13:42, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone identify the plant in this featured image for me (and the community)? Res Mar 02:03, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion of whether or not use of the content in Jepson, or use of content in plant field guides that cite Jepson as their authority, constitutes a violation of WP:Copyright. The discussion can be found here Talk:Hilaria_rigida#Copyright_problem_removed, and a realted discussion is here Copyright investigations (manual article tagging) Syntrichopappus fremontii. FloraWilde ( talk) 15:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello. I was wondering if any of you would be interested in creating a page on garidella, a subclass of the thalamiflorae, named in honour of French botanist Pierre Joseph Garidel. Let me know if you are. Please reply on my talkpage. Thank you. Zigzig20s ( talk) 18:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
I think these categories have not much botanic sense, since plants do not recognize national borders, and they create a huge mass of categories for some species. As an example Lily of the valley has about thirty such categories. I propose to suppress these categories, or admit only those that are for English speaking countries.-- Auró ( talk) 21:38, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
I've been working with @ Peter coxhead: and getting valuable advice from @ V111P:, creating tools that might be of interest to other plant editors, for rapidly reformatting synonym lists and species lists. A prototype tool is described at User:Sminthopsis84/TPLSynonyms. That one uses synonym data from http://www.theplantlist.org chosen by the wikipedian, who uses copy/paste to give input data to the program and to add the result to wikipedia. The program is written in HTML and javascript, and would run in your browser (we've tested it on a few of the many available browsers), thereby avoiding the security problems that come with a compiled language like java. I'd be very interested to know if people think this would be useful, and happy to answer questions. It is possible to create programs that work with other databases, WCSP, algaebase, ...
We've discussed possibly integrating such tools further into wikipedia, perhaps creating a button that you would click to go to the program, and perhaps working directly from the plant database without using copy/paste. Those sophisticated additions don't seem to be warranted at present, unless people think they would be helpful.
The prototype tool is easily downloaded as described at User:Sminthopsis84/TPLSynonyms. You would put the two files into the same directory anywhere on your computer, and then open one of them with your browser. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 17:53, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
There's a working prototype temporarily here which takes a list of species pasted from a WCSP checklist (using the "Build a checklist" option in the left column), extracts records according to selected criteria, and produces a wikified list for copying and pasting into Wikipedia. WCSP is not entirely consistent in its formatting, so automated parsing doesn't always work; careful review of the output is needed! Comments welcome. Peter coxhead ( talk) 08:06, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
The accuracy of TPL has been questioned in these talk pages in the past. I entirely agree; for those plant families it covers I've found WCSP much more reliable. A particular problem with TPL is that it does not extract information correctly from Tropicos. Here's just one example I've found.
The authorities should ring an alarm bell, so let's look at Tropicos directly.
So Tropicos does not accept Maurandya acerifolia Pennell; it regards it as a synonym of the name it accepts, Mabrya acerifolia (Pennell) Elisens.
Sadly this isn't an isolated example. The status of names in TPL derived from Tropicos needs to be checked directly with Tropicos.
However, Tropicos isn't itself a reliable source for the status of names, since it collates information including specimens in herbaria, which may well be wrongly labelled. Here's an example. TPL claims that Lophospermum nubiculum Elisens is an accepted name in Tropicos. Tropicos does indeed have an entry for Lophospermum nubiculum Elisens, but doesn't cite the source of the name, only a secondary source. The name isn't in IPNI; a search of plant names by author in IPNI shows that Elisens didn't name species after 1985. His 1985 monograph which covers Lophospermum is online; there's no such name as Lophospermum nubiculum although there is a Lophospermum nubicola. The epithet nubiculum appears to be an orthographic error based on the re-labelling of a single herbarium specimen (see here) which cites Elisens (1985) which doesn't contain the name.
This probably counts as original taxonomic research so can't be included in Wikipedia, but the moral seems to be "don't believe what you see in (some?) online taxonomic databases". Peter coxhead ( talk) 06:30, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
Dandelion currently redirects to Taraxacum. Opinions are invited at Talk:Dandelion_(disambiguation) on a proposal to rename and move Dandelion (disambiguation) to Dandelion. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 16:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
User:FloraWilde recently made some significant changes to the Project's Article Template, including re-ordering and renaming the "Distribution and habitat" section. Such changes need discussion and consensus here first, so I reverted them wholesale and then added back changes some I thought useful and uncontroversial. Please revert these too if you don't agree. Peter coxhead ( talk) 20:28, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
:Talk page discussion of possible revisions is
here.
FloraWilde (
talk) 20:48, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
(I think it's better to discuss it here; this page is more often visited and it's where we've usually discussed changes to the project's subpages.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
21:30, 19 July 2014 (UTC))
FloraWilde ( talk) 20:48, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Subsections might include "growth pattern", "stems and leaves (and maybe roots)", "inflorescence and fruit", or further subdivisions of these subsections. For example, "it is a branching perennial shrub that grows to 1 meter with a taproot. Stems are woody and covered with corky bark. Foul smelling leaves are opposite, compound pinnate, with hairy oval opposite leaflets having toothed edges. The inflorescence is a a corymb. Fragrant, radially symmetric flowers have five pointed green sepals and blue to violet petals fused into a tube flaring five lobes, with five anthers opposed to the petals. Pistils have three-parted styles. Ovaries are superior. Fruits have three dehiscent chambers filled with many black seeds."
I agree with Peter that a description section should come first, before distribution and habitat etc. Regarding FloraWilde's concerns, I wonder if some plant articles might appear 'too technical' at the start simply because their leads aren't sufficiently fleshed out to give a good general overview - I think this applies to quite a few plant articles. Also in some plant articles the taxonomy sections are far more detailed than any other section, giving an impression of technical impenetrability, but I think the solution to these situations is not necessarily to reorder sections, but to expand and rewrite information so that articles are more balanced and the text is easier for laypeople to understand. PaleCloudedWhite ( talk) 18:55, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
A new user has moved Dracaena braunii to Dracaena braunii (Lucky Bamboo) thereby violating several principles of article titling. I've explained on their talk page, but could some admin please move it back. Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 07:04, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
I have found several pages recently where lists of species have been tagged {{one source}} by an enthusiastic editor who does not realise that something like the Plant List or Checklist is the authoritative source. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 03:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Many authors of plant field guides are notable experts at plant identification. But they often add comments about traditional or alternative medicine uses, or exaggerate actual or potential medical use, often with an apparent end of furthering a conservation agenda by trying to find some reason other than just loving the plants for conservation of them. They are often not qualified to even read a proper medical study. Plant field guides and manuals do not meet WP:MEDRS standards for reliability of medical information. This should be stated in the template. FloraWilde ( talk) 21:35, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Note - There is a related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Template#Uses. FloraWilde ( talk) 10:01, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
I've suggested a split of English rose (personal description) into a girl and a plant article. See talk:English rose (personal description). Is this plant concept significant? -- 65.94.169.222 ( talk) 06:37, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flora of the Sierra Nevada alpine zone. FloraWilde ( talk) 02:27, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
You may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 August 7#Template:Botanist where it is proposed that the {{ Botanist}} template is deleted. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:39, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
What should be done with Dioscorea opposita (see Talk:Dioscorea opposita#Nomenclature_is_all_mixed_up for some background)? I'm kind of confused by it, but what I think I understand follows. Nomenclaturally, D. opposita is an illegitimate and superfluous name for the south Asian (India) species Dioscorea oppositifolia (and thus a synonym of that species). However, the name Dioscorea opposita is widely used to refer to an east Asian (Japan, China, South Korea) species that is used as a vegetable and which is naturalized/invasive in the United States. The vegetable/invasive is apparently best treated as Dioscorea polystachya.
Most people searching for D. opposita are probably interested in the east Asian vegetable/invasive, not the Indian species. There would be less need to disambiguate incoming links to Dioscorea opposita if it redirects to D. polystachya. But that doesn't mesh with the nomenclature situation. Would it be better to redirect to D. polystachya or would it be better to make D. opposita into a disambiguation page, or is it best to redirect oppposita to oppositifolia as nomenclatural rules prescribe? Plantdrew ( talk) 05:48, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
I've tried to explain some of this by removing the taxobox from the Dioscorea opposita page, and adding taxonomy sections there, on Dioscorea polystachya, and Dioscorea oppositifolia. I don't know whether these species are interchangeable as food and medicine, in particular whether Dioscorea oppositifolia is known by the various common names that were listed there and whether it can be safely eaten raw. For now, I've removed that material from Dioscorea oppositifolia. If anyone has that knowledge, please re-add the statements. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Please could an uninvolved person from this project close the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 April 27#Category:Drosera by synonymy? If the closure is done by a non-admin and requires admin action to implement it, just ping me. – Fayenatic L ondon 15:01, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
A reader contacted the Wikimedia Foundation, noting that Leontopodium alpinum states it belongs to the sunflower family. while Leontopodium states it is in the daisy family,.
The implication being that one or the other is wrong.
I looked at Asteraceae, which suggest that the same family is known by both names.
I'm out of my depth, but would it make sense to have more harmonized wording. If one usage is more common, change one, or if both are quite common, refer to both?-- S Philbrick (Talk) 15:29, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
..is at FAC.. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Epacris impressa/archive1...and it's going pretty slowly. Would appreciate any input from folks....especially botanists..cheers, Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 06:05, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
i have put the photos of some bamboo species in their respective pages, Bambusa membranaceus, Bambusa multiplex var yellow, Bombus affinis, Bambusa oldhamii , Bambusa wamin , Bambusa teris. , Bambusa multiplex , Bambusa tulda please develop these pages. -- Dvellakat ( talk) 14:09, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Happy anniversary to all plant editors, past and present, and thanks for your improvement to plant articles and contributions to the many informative discussions here over 10 years.-- Melburnian ( talk) 13:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Hello from AfC! Can someone please review the draft article located at Draft:Chloroplast migration, which is fairly technical, and check if it is original research or not, or if it makes sense? Thanks. Revent talk 23:55, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Image request for Aristolochia watsonii. FloraWilde ( talk) 01:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The Euphorbia Planetary Biodiversity Inventory project web page, last updated July 2012, says [2] -
"Euphorbia. With over 2000 accepted species, it is second in size only to the legume genus Astragalus among the flowering plants."
This is inconsistent with information in the List of the largest genera of flowering plants.
The Euphorbia PBI is "Supported by the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) Program of the National Science Foundation", Smithsonian Institution, University of Michigan, and University of Florida, which is pretty good support as a reliable source. Can anyone resolve the inconsistency. Can anyone help resolve the inconsistency? FloraWilde ( talk) 18:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
Allan A. Schoenherr wrote A Natural History of California. His book is a classic. A [ Google Scholar search] produces many results. Does anyone know any sources to establish notability for a Wikipedia article on him, or on his book? FloraWilde ( talk) 04:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Pinus sabiniana has various names, among them are "digger pine" and "gray pine". The problem with the usage of digger pine is two-fold. For one the term "digger" originated as a derogatory term for native Americans in the central California region around which Pinus sabiniana is distributed. To quote an historical interpreter for the California State Indian Museum in Sacramento:
To see that the latter two terms are officially preferred is easily verifiable by visiting the webpages concerning Pinus sabiniana on any official website such as the USDA plant database.
The second problem is that of usage, which although I have only my own personal experience as well as Google results to support, I believe "gray pine" to be the most widely used common name. The relevant Google search counts are: digger pine = 35,300, gray pine = 42,700, grey pine = 96,500, foothill pine = 11,400. The reason I support the choice of gray over grey is because gray is the American spelling and the tree is American and I expect most articles mentioning the gray pine to be concerned with American ecology, although I'm not concerned with either one being used. I will await responses and if there are no objections I will start switching out mentions of "digger pine" to "gray pine". AioftheStorm ( talk) 19:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion of a proposed Barnstar - For improving botany and plant related articles here [3]. FloraWilde ( talk) 18:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
Could an admin please move Lanariaceae to Lanaria in accordance with our policy on monotypic taxa? Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 21:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
According to the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)#Monotypic taxa when a monospecific genus needs to be disambiguated, instead of creating the article at the disambiguated plant genus, it should be created at the species name. I've checked all of Category:Monotypic_plant_genera and the only case left is Stokesia (plant) which should be moved to Stokesia laevis. Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Arising from the move above (Lanariaceae to Lanaria), there's an issue about categorizing articles and redirects involving monotypic taxa. The project's current advice is here but only covers the "R" templates. The issue that concerns me is the main taxonomic categories. There seem to be three choices:
I think we've discussed this before, but not added the conclusions to the project page (as often seems to happen). At present, we're somewhat inconsistent (at least I know I am).
Comments, please.
Peter, the previous discussion I'm aware of was at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 33#Categorizing taxa vs. common names. At this point, sets of articles and redirects for monotypic plants (but not animals) are pretty consistently categorized following choice #2. Some people are unaware that redirects can be categorized, and others are generally opposed to categorizing redirects; indeed, the practice of categorizing redirects (aside from via the "R from/to" maintenance templates) is generally discouraged. However, the guideline at WP:INCOMPATIBLE suggests some situations where categorizing redirects is appropriate. The Lanaria article at the genus title is WP:INCOMPATIBLE with Category:Asparagales families and Category:Monogeneric plant families, but the Lanariaceae redirect is "compatible" with these categories.
And the related issue which kicked off the thread at Tree of Life was how to categorize redirects from scientific names to articles with a common name title. We have very few of these for plants. In the handful of cases where a plant article has a common name title, both the scientific name redirect and the common name article are usually categorized (i.e. the Allium sativum redirect and the Garlic article are both in Category:Plants described in 1753 and Category:Allium). I don't mind the duplicated categorization, but I'd probably argue that "garlic" was incompatible with Category:Allium if I had to pick only the species redirect or the article for the genus category.
"Described in year" categories are a whole other issue which I've complained about being problematic before. The status quo is that (were it not monotypic), a Lanaria lanata article would get placed in the described in 1753 category, not the Hyacinthus lanatus redirect. I don't particularly like that situation, but I can accept it. Putting the "described in year" category at the monotypic genus article just seems like a really bad idea though. "Described in year" categories are almost entirely species. If genera are getting a description date category, it should be a parallel set of year categories. It just seems super misleading to have Lanaria in "Category:Plants (species) described in 1753" and not a hypothetical Category:Plant genera described in 1789. Plantdrew ( talk) 05:13, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
As no-one seems to dissent (or be very interested!), I'm going to edit the project page to reflect (2) above, which is what mostly seem to happen currently. Revert if you don't agree! Peter coxhead ( talk) 15:42, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
at Talk:Acacia pycnantha regarding phytochemistry. An issue with alot of acacia pages I see. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 02:48, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Here is an update on something we were discussing a few weeks ago. You may recall that we were discussing the use of geographic categories on plant pages. Policy is to use the highest-level category instead of listing all the more local categories, e.g. "Flora of Africa" instead of "Flora of Ghana" + "Flora of Togo' + "Flora of Benin" etc. I have been attempting to comply with those guidelines that were outlined here on this page. Problem is that I have received complaints about this, people reverting my changes to existing pages or sending me strongly worded emails. One person objected strongly to my deletion of "Flora of Lebanon" category from one page, despite that the plant discussed on that particular page does not grow in Lebanon. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 18:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
@ User:Joseph Laferriere, can you provide a link to the discussion you referred to as "those guidelines that were outlined here on this page"? Is there somewhere "highest-level category" was defined? @ User:Rkitko, does "geographic category" mean political geography or a contiguous area with some shared environmental feature, as what might lead to creation of a plant community or vegetation type? In this case, a category like "flora of the Golan Heights", makes much more sense than "flora of Syria" or "flora of Israel". Similarly " Flora of the Great Basin desert region", Flora of the Sonoran Desert, Flora of the Mojave Desert, make sense. Putting the former two in a category defined by political boundaries is possible, since both are in the western US, but the latter crosses over international boundaries. Is there a place that defines a purpose or intended use of categories? FloraWilde ( talk) 02:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi All
I've started writing about Helianthemum squamatum, it's the only know species able to extract water of crystallization from rock. I know a little about plants but would really appreciate help in writing the article if anyone is interested.
Many thanks
-- Mrjohncummings ( talk) 16:05, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
There are some plant categories with "taxonomy" in their name. For example Category:Taxonomy of Banksia which is placed in Category:Angiosperm taxonomy. These categories are for articles about taxonomy not for the taxonomy/classification itself. Thus we don't put Category:Asparagales into "Category:Taxonomy of monocots" but directly into Category:Monocots. I've been sorting out all the incorrectly used "taxonomy" categories that I've found, but if you come across any used incorrectly, please fix them. Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Taxonomy of the Bambuseae. Thanks. Peter coxhead ( talk) 09:22, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Opinions are invited about recent changes on Opopanax, which in part involve a difference of opinion about how to treat the multiple plants historically used, in light of a statement that currently "all production" is from one species. A copyright issue has also surfaced. Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 19:50, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
MOS says use plain English. But that does not mean we should not include the technical term after the plain English. I propose that the plant article template suggest stating a common name for the family in the lead sentence, followed by the scientific name in parentheses with a link, as here - Sarcodes. FloraWilde ( talk) 15:57, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone shed light on the veracity (or not) of this edit and its source? PaleCloudedWhite ( talk) 22:04, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
The answer may seem obvious at first, but reliable sources are not consistent. Please contribute to the discussion here. 23:46, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone know what is the plant species? -- Yuriy Kvach ( talk) 19:05, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Australia's floral emblem is at FAC - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Acacia pycnantha/archive1 - any input from botanists would be welcome...cheers, Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 14:45, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Is there anyone anyone with expertise on the holobiont theory of lichens who can review this edit, and verify that I correctly summarized the content of the four cited sources? FloraWilde ( talk) 19:15, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
I made this edit because it is what the RS said, " Many Sierra Nevada alpine plants have reddish or whitish leaves to protect them from damage from intense ultraviolet radiation in the alpine zone". It is plausible that if we could see UV, then UV-colored leaves would indicate protection from UV since it is reflected, but it is not clear why reddish leaves, or even whitish leaves, would. Can anyone explain why reddish leaves might protect from intense solar radiation? What about whitish leaves? FloraWilde ( talk) 21:10, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej ( talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
I have stumbled across a vexing nomenclatural mess that I cannot solve using the on-line resources I have available. I am hoping someone with better literature as her/his disposal might be able to help. Problem concerns what the correct name is for a certain plant. WCSPF calls it "Aparisthmium cordatum." Tropicos, however, says that the genus name Aparisthmium is an illegitimate superfluous name. That means that the author who coined the name listed another name as synonym, thus voiding his own name. I do hope that he got paid for his work anyway. Tropicos says the plant should be in the genus Conceveibum A. Rich. ex A. Juss., and the species should be Conceveiba cordata A. Juss. But wait! Notice the different endings on these two genus names: "-bum" vs "-ba." There is another genus called Conceveiba Aubl. 1775, not the same thing as Conceveibum A.Rich. ex A.Juss. 1824. Are you confused? I am. What do I call this thing? Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 22:30, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) says "When Taxon was initiated in 1951 it was, among other things, to provide a single place for (previously scattered) proposals of nomina conservanda. Yet so far no guidance on how to write such proposals has been provided, and although certain traditions have built up through the years the format and especially the length of proposals have greatly varied." Joseph, I would like to propose your name as a botanist who might like to undertake publishing such a proposal
On the project page are instructions about templates to include in redirects. Which include:
Since I'm not sure of the uses that these categorizations are put to, I don't know what to do about redirects for synonyms. Linum crepitans, Linum humile, and Linum indehiscens as synonyms of Linum usitatissimum could redirect to Flax, but it is a different situation from the Pseudotsuga menziesii example. Should redirects from these synonyms include the R from scientific name template? Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 12:36, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
such as the various Medicago species that would redirect to Alfalfa. Only one accepted species name would redirect to alfalfa, surely? (Which is Joseph's point, I think.) Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:38, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
If I add another row to the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants#R templates for redirects not involving monotypic taxa, it perhaps clarifies the issue:
To | |||
Accepted scientific name | English/vernacular name | ||
From | Accepted scientific name | — | {{ R from scientific name|plant}} |
Alternative scientific name | {{ R from alternative scientific name|plant}} | {{
R from alternative scientific name|plant}} ? {{ R from scientific name|plant}} ? | |
English/vernacular name | {{ R to scientific name|plant}} | (not relevant here) |
Rather than use one of the two possible existing templates, there could be a new template in the shaded cell (it would have to be called something like "R from alternative scientific name to vernacular name" with a corresponding category), but would it be worthwhile? I'd like to see some more views on this. (It would also need to be put to other relevant WikiProjects; WP:WikiProject Tree of Life should be the forum but seems inactive at present.) Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I think I'm responsible for placing probably 90% of the redirects now found in Category:Redirects from scientific names of plants. It was very much my intention that the category should be able to function as a "list [which] could be used in statements about how many plant species [and genus] pages have a common name as a title" (I'm not so interested in the pages where a cultivar group or a hybrid has a common name for a title; clearly nobody is going to suggest that boysenberry should be titled with the scientific name Rubus ursinus × R. idaeus). I played around with a couple different ways of creating said list before arriving on the redirect templates. The most straight-forward way, directly categorizing the common name titled articles probably wouldn't fly; a category on "Maori names for plants" was deleted as it was about an aspect of the article title (apparently not appropriate for a category), rather than a defining characteristic of the article subject. That said, I really don't want to see the category cluttered with dozens of obscure synonyms for Medicago sativa. For the most part, Category:Redirects from scientific names of plants is now a comprehensive list of our common name titled species and genus pages (as the targets of the categorized redirects), although it does have a few hybrids, and a few cases where there are two redirects to the same common name whether because of monotypy or synonymy (I'm not too worried about having both Malus pumila and Malus domestica listed, as there is an outstanding conservation proposal for M. domestica; similarly, Lycopersicon esculentum continues to enjoy currency alongside Solanum lycopersicum as a scientific name for tomatoes).
There are another 48 redirects that I know of which should go into the category eventually (see User:Plantdrew/sandbox#Single_edit_scientific_name_redirects_not_categorized, but otherwise, Category:Redirects to scientific names of plants give us a very good handle on which articles have common name titles. There seem to be less than 400, out of more than 40,000+ plant articles. In spite of common name titles being 1% of the total, almost all of our highly viewed articles ( Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Popular_pages)are titled by common name. The presence of Salvia hispanica (#49 most viewed, in spite of the fact that the most likely search term, " chia" is a SIA) shows that readers can still find articles even with scientific name titles (and they're not scared off by our "elitist" use of scientific names). WP:FLORA works!
Getting back on topic, we either need another template for scientific synonyms redirecting to common names, or we could just skip categorizing them for now (with tens of thousands of uncategorized synonym redirects, there's no need to push for categorizing the handful that point to a common name, but I do realize there's no guarantee that somebody won't come along and categorize them anyway). Plantdrew ( talk) 21:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Please help adding a taxobox and with a WP:BOLD rewrite of the Dendriscocaulon article . FloraWilde ( talk) 14:41, 17 September 2014 (UTC) Resolved per article talk page. Thanks. FloraWilde ( talk) 02:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Why is Caloplaca albovariegata commonly called variegated ORANGE lichen? [4] Is some commonly observable feature ever close to being orange? FloraWilde ( talk) 23:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
Question for you good people. I found a genus page for Aldrovanda, which apparently has one living species and several long-extinct species known only from fossils. I placed it in a "monotypic" category as it has only one non-fossil species. Someone reverted this and deleted the category, saying it is not monotypic because of the existence of the fossil species. Who is correct about this? The way I see it, every genus on Earth has extinct species somewhere in the history of the planet, although only a few will have left any fossils good enough to identify. Such is the nature of how fossils are made. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 09:56, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
Advice, please, on the Guava page. The genus name, Psidium, redirects to the common name page. It seems to me that the genus with taxonomic info and a list of species should be on a separate page. I can handle this, but I wanted to check with you good people to be sure that this should be done. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:02, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
Xanthoria is described as "irregularly coalescing". Are there cases here, or in other lichen species, where the "coalescing" involves fungi in the same species, but with different DNA, coexisting in a single lichen "organism"? (This is a different question from a that of a lichenized fungal species taking over the algae from another, e.g. "[Verrucaria bernardinensis is the pale-colored lichen. It is growing out of the brown lichen, Staurothele monicae. Verrucaria bernardinensis steals the green algae from the brown lichen." [5]) FloraWilde ( talk) 15:52, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
There is often no link to the genus in plant articles, not in the lead, and not in the body. Conversely, there is almost always a link to the family in the first sentence. (If a user happens to know to look in the taxo-box, and there happens to be a taxo-box, that is the only place to find the genus link.) It is possible to put the link in the genus part of the bold faced binomial name, in the first sentence of the article. Other than producing bicolored binomial names, is there a good reason why this is almost never done? FloraWilde ( talk) 22:54, 13 September 2014
."The genus and family should be overtly stated in the lead first paragraph, with a link to both " genus" and " family", e.g., "It is in the Fooia genus of the commoners family ( Commonaceae)."
. FloraWilde ( talk) 03:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)"If possible, the lead first sentence should contain descriptive information in plain English that informs a general reader about the plant, e.g., growth form (tree, shrub, annual), size, flower colors, where it naturally grows, etc. Although stating what the genus is may seem redundant, given it is already in the article title, the genus and family should be overtly stated in the lead first paragraph, with a link to both the term " genus" and the term " family", so that readers unfamiliar with these concepts, or who may have learned them but do not readily recall what they learned, can quickly link to them - e.g., "It is in the Helianthus genus of the sunflower family ( Asteraceae)."
Please see Talk:Masterwort#Requested_moves to comment on a multiple move request. The vernacular names Masterwort, Spurge Olive and Milk Parsley may refer to multiple plants and it is proposed to move these articles to scientific name titles. Plantdrew ( talk) 16:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Great masterwort. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. 67.70.35.44 ( talk) 01:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
There is a question about the reliability of a source regarding plants (www.plantvillage.com) on WP:RSN here, members of this wikiproject may be helpful with regards to their expertise in this area. Thanks! Yobol ( talk) 20:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I have seen something on several pages that conflict with established botanical practice. The Asteraceae pages in particular seem riddled with this problem. I just thought I would make sure everyone is up to speed on this, so that you can recognize the error if you should come across it. I estimate that for me to go through the entire Asteraceae correcting this problem would take 14.3 years. Issue is generic synonyms. Let me say for example that we have a plant called Planta hypothetica. There are other species in the genus: P. realistica, P. hallucinogenica, P. somnia, etc. You decide that P. hypothetica does not belong in the genus Planta, so you create a monotypic genus Greenthingia. Thus the plant now becomes Greenthingia hypothetica. In creating a genus page for the genus Greenthingia, you list Planta as a synonym for Greenthingia on the grounds that the species now called Greenthingia hypothetica was formerly in Planta. No. This is bass-ackwards. To say that Planta is a synonym of Greenthingia is to say that Planta is no longer recognized as a distinct genus, and the type species of Planta is now included in Greenthingia. If you were to merge the two genera back together, so that the type of Greenthingia reverts to being in Planta, then Greenthingia gets listed as a synonym of Planta. Joseph Laferriere ( talk) 12:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
@
Joseph Laferriere: in your response to me above you inadvertently illustrate my underlying point. There's no such thing as a "type species" in the ICN; the term appears nowhere in the Code. The type of a genus is the type of the species (see Article 10). Nevertheless the term "type species" is widely used by botanists (and indeed is used in some taxoboxes). Similarly "pro parte" synonyms are not defined in the Code, but nevertheless the term is still in use, old-fashioned or not. (For species it's very easy to find lists including p.p. synonyms;
here is one from a source I've used in Wikipedia articles.) So for me the question is why the one is acceptable but not the other; it can't be a simple question of the terminology used in the Code.
By the way, presumably
Synonym (taxonomy)#Other usage is wrong in your view?
Peter coxhead (
talk)
07:31, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
Any thoughts on what to do with redirects for synonymized genera that were monotypic? Hermodactylus is now treated as a synonym of Iris, but if somebody is searching for Hermodactylus, they'll find more relevant information at Iris tuberosa than at Iris (plant). Should Hermodactylus redirect to the genus or the species? Plantdrew ( talk) 18:46, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Does anyone know any sources discussing the mechanism of for " Some lichens have lost the ability to reproduce sexually, yet continue to speciate" [6]? FloraWilde ( talk) 12:50, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Many of our English language plant articles start of with characters that few English speakers have ever seen. "प्रत्यक्श्रेणी-tʃən" is a combination of the characters found at the beginning of two articles, Jatropha curcas and lichen. (All I learned in college was that "ʃ" is read "integral of", and "ə" is read "such that", otherwise the symbols are unintelligible to me.) There seems to be a consensus to include such characters in all articles at Wiki, by good-faith special-universal-character-pronunciation-technocrats at the Wiki-pronunciation division of MOS. Few at Wiki:PLANT likely ever participated in forming this consensus. That consensus is inconsistent with the more basic consensus at MOS to use plain English, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia being accessible to English language speakers. I propose adding to the plant article templete:
"Any non-standard characters, such as for pronunciation, should not appear in the lead, so that the lead is accessible to general readers."
FloraWilde ( talk) 15:46, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
Because of a story in the UK news, a number of editors are adding "toxicology" material to this page based on something speculative said during an inquest. I've been reverting but more expert eyes/views would help, as always ... Alexbrn talk| contribs| COI 14:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
Hello. Is anyone here interested in helping me create a page about Petit Gulf cotton? I have started a userpage. I think this could easily become a start, but I am not an expert at all. It seems very historically significant. Thank you. Zigzig20s ( talk) 08:54, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
Plant articles on Wikipedia have been upgraded to the latest in evolutionary knowledge except for one of the most important articles. Plants that were once considered dicotyledons link to families, orders, and appropriate unranked clades from APG3, but plants that were considered monocotyledons link to an article about the old concept monocotyledon (as the other half of "monocots and dicots") instead of to the monocot clade. There are articles based on APG3 about all of the unranked clades, except for the monocot clade. Why is such a major clade reduced to its old concept? Even if the morphologies and many of the relationships are sound, compared to the dissolution of the dicots, there should be an article on every unranked APG3 clade. The text of the article that appears in my cell phone includes only one line about the monocot clade, "The APG III system recognises a clade called "monocots" but does not assign it to a taxonomic rank." The full article compares APG3 and other systems, after more interesting information like, "The name monocotyledons is derived from the traditional botanical name "Monocotyledones," and "From a diagnostic point of view the number of cotyledons is neither a particularly useful (as they are only present for a very short period in a plant's life), nor completely reliable characteristic."
This article is very bad. It is hard to improve it because there should be an article about the monocot clade, which this article is attempting to be after a bad start as the monocotyledons article. This is not about that monocotyledons are monocots; it's about helping someone who can't make sense of the monocot clade from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.250.153.211 ( talk) 03:34, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
This makes no sense. When and why did the Hardy Palms article become "List of hardy Palms"? The article is quite a bit more than just a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hardy_palms 173.73.232.183 ( talk) 00:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I am starting to fill out the articles on lichen genera, from A-Z, then on species within the genera. The plant template does not quite fit when it comes to lichens. Also, I am finding variations from article to article on the format for lichen genera aricles, e.g., on lists of species being partial "selected" lists in the article body, being collapsed lists in the article body, being collapsed lists entirely contained in the taxobox and not the article body, and being their own articled that is linked from the genus article. I just did some work on Acarospora. I would appreciate it if someone could review it and make suggestions or comments for improvements, then I will use the resulting formatting and style for other lichen genus articles. (I already know one improvement is to use more sources, which I will do, especially dispositive sources on the genus. FloraWilde ( talk) 20:08, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
Does the Plant project "officially" have an opinion on articles that resemble field guides, e.g. short sentence fragments like "Leaves: lanceolate, 5 cm . Fruits: 3 cm spherical." See for instance Meconopsis lancifolia. I feel this should be politely discouraged, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a field guide or plant identification manual. If there is a guideline, and other people feel this field guide structure is too common, perhaps the guidelines should be more prominent on the Project Page. Cheers. --Animalparty-- ( talk) 21:47, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
One problem I've encountered is how to be consistent in converting botanical terminology to plain English in those articles in which it is appropriate. For example, I was originally quite inconsistent in my use of "stem" and "stalk", which seem to me to be more-or-less synonymous in ordinary language, although not in botanical terminology.
Eventually I decided to base my usage on The Kew Plant Glossary. It defines "stalk" as "any support of an organ that has length". In its terminology, a leaf has a "stalk" (a "petiole"), a single flower has a "stalk" (a "pedicel"), an inflorescence has a "stalk" (a "peduncle"). A naked peduncle arising from the ground is a "scape". A "stem", on the other hand, would be expected to have at least internodes, and usually also leaves and perhaps flowers. So I've tried, doubtless not always successfully, to gloss "petiole", "pedicel", "peduncle" and "scape" from botanical sources as "stalk" in Wikipedia rather than "stem", using "stem" in the stricter botanical sense.
The botanical terminology for inflorescences is tricky to translate into plain English, in my experience. I seem to remember being taken to task (rightly I think) by Joseph Laferriere for accepting "flower head" as a gloss for the "umbel" of an Allium species. I've glossed "raceme" in the past as "flower spike", but "spike" has a narrower botanical use.
We'd probably find it hard to agree on some "standard translations" although I believe they would be useful. Peter coxhead ( talk) 22:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)