Talk:List of Saxifragales, Vitales and Zygophyllales families

Notes

• Some of the text is my translation from Lotte Burkhardt's copyleft book, in pdf form at https://www.bgbm.org/en/bgbm-press/index-eponymic-plant-names-extended-edition. - Dank (push to talk) 21:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• In the list in the glossary section, the listed definitions are generally snippets taken word-for-word from our glossary of botanical terms. (Check the history of that page for attribution.) I'm only using snippets that are supported by the glossary in Plants of the World (see the citation). The point of putting a paragraph into what's supposed to be a glossary section is to clue readers in that the paragraph defines and links terms they'll be seeing in the table. (Besides, humans have a well-known tendency to try to organize raw data into some kind of storyline, and the paragraph may help with that.) - Dank (push to talk) 17:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Where are the fossil taxa?

Leaving aside the etymology column as very wp:crufty inclusion for the table, where are the extinct genera for each family? Altingaceae is not monotypic for example, (as noted at the family article it includes †Microaltingia, †Paleoaltingia, †Protoaltingia, & †Steinhauera).--Kevmin § 19:25, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Replying at WT:PLANTS#Another renaming question. - Dank (push to talk) 19:48, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It still leaves the list as named to be inaccurate and incomplete though.--Kevmin § 22:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

More notes

• I wasn't able to figure this out until I started working on the rosid clades, but now it seems obvious: I've moved this page to "List of Saxifragales, Vitales and Zygophyllales families". These are the only 3 superrosid orders that aren't included in the COM clade or the nitrogen-fixing clade or the malvids. They're also the three superrosid orders whose taxonomic placement is most uncertain within APG IV, and the case can be made (from these sources, at least) that they're also the ones that diverged first. The three families (total) of Vitales and Zygophyllales haven't been reviewed at FLC yet; we'll figure that out later. - Dank (push to talk) 13:40, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

• • What now seems obvious? How to split the list of superrosid families into multiple sublist articles? It still doesn't seem obvious to me, who know nothing of the topic, came here from the Main Page, and am still scratching my head. This article's lede and subsections and the tree in Superrosids#Phylogeny all make it seem like Saxifragales and Vitales have been tacked on here as an afterthought. The links in "Along with the COM clade, the nitrogen-fixing clade and the malvids" also violate WP:EGG. jnestorius^(talk) 06:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
    • Hi Jnestorius. What links do you recommend in place of those three? - Dank (push to talk) 12:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Dank, please replace "Along with …" by your own explanation These are the only 3 superrosid orders that aren't included in the COM clade or the nitrogen-fixing clade or the malvids. They're also the three superrosid orders whose taxonomic placement is most uncertain within APG IV, and the case can be made (from these sources, at least) that they're also the ones that diverged first.. It would be a much better introduction. PaulSch (talk) 10:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Part of what you're recommending, I can't do; I can't say "from these sources, at least". That's more useful as a talk page comment. The problem is that plants don't leave bony fossils in the same way that vertebrates do, and age estimates tend to vary a lot among various sources, so that's not something I want to get into in this list at all. Certainty of taxonomic placement: I don't feel strongly about this, I guess I'd like more feedback. If you look at the lead sections in the rest of this list series, that would feel out of place. I have no objection to adding that as a note. On the first point, is the word "constitute" the problem? I could change it to something like "They are a subgroup of the superrosids (along with ...), a group of around 150 ...". I guess this is just a general observation but, both at WP:FLC and at WP:FAC, I haven't see a lot of "this is the reason this series of articles is organized the way it is" in the article text itself; that kind of commentary is more likely to be found on the article talk pages and on the nomination pages. My general approach to list writing is that I don't feel strongly about anything; if discussion on among like-minded editors seems to indicate that it needs a change, then I change it. - Dank (push to talk) 12:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  What about the first sentence alone: These are the only 3 superrosid orders that aren't included in the COM clade or the nitrogen-fixing clade or the malvids. I needed a long time to understand "Along with …", even though the meaning is +/- the same. PaulSch (talk) 13:25, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Does this work? "Saxifragales, Vitales and Zygophyllales are three orders of flowering plants with a total of 18 families. They belong to the superrosids, a group of around 150 related families, including the rose family. They are the only such orders that are not included in the three largest three large subgroups of the superrosids: the COM clade, the nitrogen-fixing clade and the malvids." (I'm going to get a little bit of pushback on "three large", but I think it's defensible, and talking about other groupings, such as fabids, would be more of a digression than is generally present in the lead sections of this series of lists.) - Dank (push to talk) 14:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)