User:Meteorquake

In Brief

I spend time in both Scotland and Antalya where I look at plants, and I have a wide interest in meaningful philosophy and the paths people journey on whether of a human or spiritual nature.

My endeavour in life is to be impartial and fair in all things, and to avoid forming unnecessary opinions.

Plant Entries on Wikipedia

A quick note for anyone doing plant entries on Wikipedia, as this is bound to come up. It cannot be emphasised enough that to write a plant species description, you cannot simply use a description from one source, you have to use several, and you cannot reference them inline for each feature, since all the references you consult are critical to the presentation of each feature. Sources are regional (such as a country or state), whereas most plants span far beyond such regions and present themselves differently in them, and Wikipedia is global. So a plant in high latitudes or high altitudes will present differently from one in low latitudes or low altitudes, a species in the Americas may present differently from the species in Europe, or European ones from Middle-Eastern or Asian ones, one in a windy or rainy country differently from one with different weather. One might say leaf size is 3-5 cm, another say it is 4-7 cm, and whether you convey that as (3)4-5(7) cm or 3-7 cm is going to depend on various factors and is not attributable to one of the sources, but to all of them; a European flora might quite correctly say a plant is always hairless, by contrast an American one that it is hairless or very hairy, also correctly. To write a global description not a regional one you have to take all the competent descriptions you can avail yourself of (the distribution map on PoWo will help, noting that native populations would tend to show more variety) and what you write needs to encompass them all in an appropriate way. In doing so it won't work to source every statement because otherwise you would have to put a reference against every word you write, the only meaningful way to make a description and source it is to put the multiple relevant sources at the end of the description that were utilised for it, and that is the standard way botanical descriptions are done, as a description with statement of sources used. Unusual details not part of a plant's typical botanical description, such as 'used to make garlands on 1st May in France', or curious/strange matters only referred to in one source, can obviously work sourced at point of statement.

Matters of altitude and habitat are also country-dependent, obviously plants at low altitude in cool places are likely to be found at high altitude in hot countries, habitat likewise may vary by country, so putting such things as altitude you need to specify the country or region, and quoting several would be ideal (e.g. England 0-500 m, Turkey 1000-1500 m).