Talk:Perilla

Purpose of this page?

I launched or relaunched this Perilla (genus) page. The Perilla page purported to be about the genus in some sentences, but it was flimsy on info about the genus overall, and it has become mostly about the culinary use of one specific crop species. This jumble-up was partly due to some unlogged-in user(s) who decided to move the original shiso page and subsequet additions to it into Perilla page. --Kiyoweap (talk) 23:43, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge

Are there any "Perilla" not a plant? Perilla (plant) and Perilla are basically the same theme.--Salatonbv (talk) 01:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose that merger - Since there is only one species in the genus, wikipedia conventions are to merge the species with the genus page, as per Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(flora)#Monotypic_taxa. To answer your questions, there are products, Perilla oil and Perilla. Many readers may not want to search through a botanical article to find the information they want about what they think of only as a food, and the general trend has been to have separate pages about the products and the plant from which they come, such as with coffee and Coffea arabica. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:57, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Is there only one species in the genus? The Perilla (plant) article states that there are 4 species (or possibly 3 according to some sources). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:03, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right (I misread an entry for Perillula!), and that is no doubt why no merger has been made. However, I'd still be inclined to treat the genus as one species, with a note that there might be three more. It's a classic problem in wikipedia that we cannot make taxonomic decisions here, but need to follow authoritative sources, as up to date as possible. The Plant List, and World Checklist of Selected Plant Families on which that is based, list three unplaced species names, P. cavaleriei, P. heteromorpha, and P. setoyensis, with all other species names now considered to belong in P. frutescens. The 2008 source on Perilla (plant) states that there are several wild species including three Japanese ones, P. citriodora, P. hirtella, and P. setoyensis. The first two of those are considered synonyms by the other sources, which I think indicates that the source on Perilla (plant) is not a good one (it's rather old). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:30, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Assuming it is monotypic, and perilla stands as an umbrella article, the genus and species should be at Perilla frutescens. While monotypic genera typically cover the species at the genus title, we are using binomial for natural disambiguation when the genus is ambiguous. And even though we usually use "(plant)" as a dab term, "Perilla (plant)" is terrible, as "perilla" is also about a plant related subject (this is basically identical to the situation we have with the plant product/genus pairs Vanilla/Vanilla (genus) and Stevia/Stevia (genus)). However, I wonder whether it might be better to move the perilla article to perilla leaf if it's not merged with genus; it's pretty much all about different uses of the leaves in different culture, with the oil barely being mentioned. Plantdrew (talk) 23:03, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

We have three articles overlapping in many respects: perilla, Perilla (plant), and Perilla frutescens. Each definition of the articles is confusing.

• Perilla - "about perilla as herb and spice"(see Perilla), "for a survey of the genus and economic uses"(Perilla frutescens), or "survey of the use of the herb or spice"(Perilla (disambiguation)).
• Perilla (plant) - "For the genus including wild species"(Perilla), or "a genus of plants of the mint family"(Perilla (disambiguation)).
• Perilla frutescens - "For the cultivated species more broadly"(Perilla), "the singlemost important species in the genus"(Perilla (disambiguation)), or "For in-depth botany and biochemistry"(Shiso).

My suggestion is simple like this:

• Perilla - a survey of the genus covering the single species "Perilla frutescens". Economic uses in varieties Shiso, Deulkkae (egoma) and Vietnamese perilla should be separate articles.--Salatonbv (talk) 04:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support the merger (genus + species → Perilla frutescens) but should Vietnamese perilla be a separate article? If what Vietnamese people call "tía tô" is var. crispa or var. frutescens, merging might be a good idea. If not, let's add a taxobox to its page. (I've just added one to the shiso article.) --Diospireiro (talk) 19:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

It's now just shiso which is simply the Japanese word for the monotypic species perilla. What a mess. Kortoso (talk) 00:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support merge. The bulk of the information on this will be redundant, and eventually contradictory. Differences between varieties and various cultural uses will enrich the single article. Kortoso (talk) 00:17, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is becoming hard to follow, so I'll restate a modified merger proposal:

• In keeping with Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(flora)#Monotypic_taxa "A genus with a single species is treated at the article for the genus.", let's merge Perilla frutescens into Perilla (genus).
• Support - per nom. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

What else?

• See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Perilla&namespace=0 . Perilla is also a place in Spain (Perilla de Castro) and a spider (Perilla teres). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:12, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Deulkkae (Perilla frutescens var. frutescens (L.) Britton) should merged into Perilla (Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton). I find it counter-intuitive to have an article on P. frutescens and another on P. frutescens var. frutescens, which is an autonym for P. frutescens. It is, in my opinion, a content fork. One thing is that this article currently seems to try to cover Perilla frutescens (var. frutescens) and the other infraspecific variety Perilla frutescens var. crispa at the same time, sometimes as a single plant and sometimes as two distinct varieties. (It is obviously not succeeding.) It may be a good idea to let this article discuss the botanical and culinary details of Perilla frutescens (var. frutescens). Since Perilla frutescens var. crispa already has its own article, its botanical and culinary details can perhaps be discussed in the article, letting this article have a hatnote and links to, and a short introduction/summary of, that variety. Brett (talk) 08:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I didn't know that there were possible perilla species other than P. frutescens. (P. cavaleriei, P. heteromorpha, P. setoyensis) If that's the case, the merge should not be done, and this article should be about the genus, not P. frutescens. --Brett (talk) 06:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Contradiction

The first two sentences of the lead contradict each other. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:47, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy: Hi, Lavateraguy! I've just edited the lead section to resolve this problem. --Brett (talk) 06:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I've spotted another apparent contradiction - the text implies that P. nankinensis is a synonym of P. frutescens, while a list further down says that P. nankinensis is a Plectranthus.

Flora of China says that Perilla is monotypic, and that P. frutescens has 3 varieties. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

FRPS (the previous standard Chinese flora) says that P. cavalierii and P. heteromorpha are synonyms of P. frutescens. I doubt that P. setoyensis (described in 1996) in particular is lacking herbarium specimens. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy: The two Perilla nankinensis are different. I made a disambiguation page. --Brett (talk) 14:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I did wonder whether it was something on those lines. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Etymology

Where does the name come from? --Error (talk) 02:51, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Culinary use

You might as well include Laos and China. Rubiks6 (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)