Talk:Morchella snyderi

Morchella snyderi has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: December 22, 2013. (Reviewed version).

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Morchella snyderi/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 17:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to take a look; I can't imagine this will be too controversial!

You say "According to Kuo" without having already named him. You could say something like "According to Michael Kuo, who coauthored the species's description, …"

That sounds good, added. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"the M. elata clade along" In Morchella frustrata, you called this simply "the elata clade". Consistency would be good, but I do wonder whether a link to Morchella elata would be useful nonetheless!

Made them consistent, and added the name of the species in an explanatory gloss. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"other black morels" I wonder whether black should be in quotation marks. "Though Jane is a woman, she spends time with other men…"

Added quote marks for this instance. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In the caption, "duff" is a bit jargon

Changed to "plant litter" and w'linked. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering, are we comfortable calling the fruit bodies "mushrooms"? I wonder whether it's a little informal in this case (though I am certainly happy to defer to your opinion).

I have a pretty broad view of "mushroom", but more importantly, Kuo uses the term frequently when referring to morels in his 2005 book, and others refer to them as mushrooms too, so I think we're okay. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought, and I realise this is a bit boring to get caught up on, but... "Although the edibility of Morchella snyderi was not explicitly discussed in the original publication,[2] the genus Morchella contains many widely sought-after edible mushrooms.[5]" This is a weaker statement than in the article on M. frustrata; Amanita and Boletus both contain "widely sought-after edible mushrooms", but I wouldn't want to call a new species edible on that basis (as you do by your categorization).

Yeah, I'm just trying to cleverly imply they are edible without directly saying they are (but failing…), and minding that I'll be writing a dozen other similar articles that will have to say essentially the same thing! Actually, I'm just tempted to take this (and the edibility cat) out of the article until a source is published that explicitly says its edible. Do you agree? Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Morchella snyderi is suspected of being both saprobic and mycorrhizal at different stages in its life cycle." Any more information on this? If not, that's fine, but it does strike me as potentially interesting.

There is more about this topic in general (uncertainty about the the true nature of the morel life cycle), but it applies to most morels and so is best covered in the genus article. Sasata (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Engaging and readable; I'm sure this can be promoted soon. J Milburn (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy with the responses, so promoting. With the edibility question, you might try something like "North American Morchella are generally considered choice edibles,[cite] but the edibility of M. snyderi was not mentioned in its original description." I feel the difficulty you have here; it may even be worth emailing Kuo and asking him to add a note on the edibility of the species to his webpages on the species? Anyway, I'll promote this one now. J Milburn (talk) 11:40, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]