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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by GrahamColm 10:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Calostoma cinnabarinum

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Calostoma cinnabarinum (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it's a comprehensive review of the literature on this unusual and visually distinctive mushroom, meeting our other featured article criteria along the way. This was my first really significant article development push. I've had some time away from the project for unrelated concerns, but now that I'm back, I figured I'd jump in the deep end with an effort to finish the drive to featured article status. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And I'd like to thank Sasata right off the start for all the time he spent assisting me with this article, especially the thorough GA review that was made with this eventual goal in mind. Thank you! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:47, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Calostoma cinnabarinum, commonly known as stalked puffball-in-aspic and by several other names,.. - gah! comes across as a bit ungainly. If the other names are really pretty uncommon, I'd leave that segment out. If they are notable, it might be worth breaking this out as a separate sentence after the end of this (i.e. removing the clause from where it is and starting a new sentence, "It goes by several common names..."
Broke the sentence, included the two names that have the most currency. Hopefully that works better. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
measuring 14–20 micrometers long by 6–9 µm across. - make 'em the same as each other - either abbreviated or unabbreviated... yep, that'll do just fine. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tweaked by J Milburn in a way that I think fixes this problem and satisfies the MOS expectations. Thanks! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The overall appearance of the fruit bodies has been compared to... - "overall" redundant here.
Removed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
although some populations are more visibly oval and may be slightly smaller - subject change in this bit (from "head" in previous clause). I'd go with something like "although in some populations it is more visibly oval and may be slightly smaller"
Reformatted that a bit. Let me know if that reads better. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Outermost of these is a yellowish... - sounds odd, why not just, "The outermost is a yellowish"
Fixed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
piece of the red membrane become embedded in the remaining gelatinous material --> "pieces"?
Fixed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • link "genus"
Linked. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • naming Scleroderma callostoma, — word missing?
No, just an awkward wording. Does as work better here? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • link "cinnabar", more to the point than dragon's blood?
Both the mercury sulfide and dragon's blood (the plant resin) have been historically called cinnabar. References suggest dragon's blood was the intended reference, so I didn't think it was appropriate to link to the mineral. I don't feel extremely strongly about this, if the link is preferred by others. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • shikimate-derived — I'm not clear if this just means derived from the acid, or that they are also present in the flower?
Derived from the acid. Reordered this whole paragraph, which was the cause of some consternation. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy with the responses to my queries. I've looked at J Milburn's comments below, but there doesn't appear to be anything unfixable, changed to support above Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Images are unproblematic, captions are fine. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:49, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A few thoughts-

  • "commonly known as stalked puffball-in-aspic and by several other names" This doesn't make sense
Reworded. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The surface of these spores is covered with a pattern of small pits that gives them a net-like appearance." Odd phrasing. How about "The spore surface features a pattern of small pits, producing a net-like appearance." or something similar?
Agreed. Changed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm inclined to say that the taxobox is absolutely useless here. I would not be at all opposed to its removal.
The Template:taxobox or the Template:mycomorphbox? I think the former is useful. I'm personally not at all a fan of the latter, but most (all?) of the FA mushroom articles have used it, so I'd rather not axe it without wider consensus. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, the taxobox is definitely useful, I meant the mycomorphbox. I'm sure you've seen that the issue comes up every now and then on the WP:FUNGI talk page; my issue is that it has clearly been created specifically with mushrooms (Boletus, Amanita, Agaricus and so on) in mind, and so is not all that useful here. I certainly don't mind if you'd rather keep it in; I'm just saying I don't think it would be all that bad to do without it! J Milburn (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to axe it, personally. It was a frustration when I was writing the article in the first place. I only had it there because all the other cool kids article were doing it. Removed it in the hopes that no one will be sad about its absence! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Schweinitz assigned Bosc's Lycoperdon heterogeneum to Mitremyces under the name M. lutescens in 1822." I'm a long way from a taxonomic expert, but how/why did he change heterogeneum to lutescens?
No clear answer in the sources. Very little of the name game that this species was subjected to should have happened. It just ... did. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "known as hongo orquídea" Spanish, I assume?
Rearranged this, added. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "a novel polyene pigment from C. cinnabarinum. This newly discovered compound" Why mention that it's newly discovered? If you're keen to stress how recent it is, perhaps mention a year instead?
Because it's not the pigment they expected. That said, reordered the whole paragraph, cutting the "newly discovered" along the way. I think this is clearer now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "boletocrocins" Worth a redlink?
Sure. Links are cheap. Worth a blue link, actually; stub created. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The effect of this chemotaxonomic investigation on Boletales cladistics is not yet clear." It's not clear if the research has had any effect?
Hopefully the rejiggered paragraph makes more sense. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having looked through the taxonomy section, I revisited the lead; "However, C. cinnabarinum has had a complex taxonomic history that at various times confused it with each of those groups, until the advent of molecular phylogenetics." This implies that phylogenetic analysis put to bed taxonomic debates that, until then, had been raging. The taxonomy section, by contrast, suggests that there was a consensus on the matter before the twentieth century had begun.
Some of the problem is that there's way more taxonomic craziness than is in-scope for this article. The binomial name may have been static since 1897 or so, but this thing continued to bounce families and orders with some regularity. Most of that belongs in articles for parent taxa, though. Trying to think how to make this more clear... Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Piece of the red membrane become embedded in the remaining gelatinous material, giving them the appearance of small red seeds." Pieces?
Fixed. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Electron microscopy or atomic force microscopy reveals the pits to be an elaborate net-like structure called a reticulum, with two to three pores per micrometer, each approximately 400 nanometers deep." I think this sentence should probably be split.
I missed this line in my first pass. Split, and hopefully a little easier to read now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The "Similar species" section seems to be suffering from a US-centric POV. A large paragraph and two pictures are given to the not-really-that-similar other species in the US, while the Asian species are not even mentioned by name for the most part, and the distinguishing characteristics, which seem to be subtle, are not really expanded upon.
Some of this is a consequence of bias in the literature. The species is more common in North and Central America, and has been subjected to a lot more study here. Even the sources that discuss the Asian species don't spend much time explicitly talking about their similarities to C. cinnabarinum. That said, I'll go back to the sources and see if I can expand that section over the next few days. At the very least, I should be able to name-drop the Asian species more aggressively. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Its range extends at least as far west as Texas",[43] with" Some hanging speech marks- are you quoting something?
Fixed. Relic from much earlier in the text's development. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "it is ectomycorrhizal as well." Ambiguous. How about "like other members of the suborder, it is ectomycorrhizal"?
I thought this proposed wording was awkward in context, repeating "members" and "suborder" in close proximity. Tweaked in a different way. Let me know if this is good. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I don't think a category for the edibility/non-edibility would be all that appropriate, perhaps consider Category:Medicinal fungi?
Hmm. I'm not sure what the inclusion standards have been for that category. C. cinnabarinum has a history in folk medicine, but there haven't been any pharmacological studies. I'm hesitant to put things in a "medicinal" category without clear evidence they belong there. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've not looked at the sourcing, but the article is overall very strong; the careful taxonomic history is easy to follow, considering its complexity. The "similar species" section is not quite of the quality I'd hope for a FA, because of the balancing, but other than that, it's very close. J Milburn (talk) 17:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I'm going to read back over the source material over the next couple of days and see if I can't expand that for Asian (and, hopefully, South American) relatives. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still working on this. Non-encyclopedia stuff has been hurting my available time, but I should be able to get back into the Asian sources in the next couple days at the latest. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I went back over some of the sources already in use, and was able to look at some Acta Mycologica Sinica articles I did not previously have access to. Hopefully, things look a little more balanced now. It's hard to expand this too much, because the depth of literature that the American species enjoy just isn't available for them. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support assuming the source-check comes back OK. I'm happy with your responses; everything seems to be in order. A very solid article. I'd still prefer to see a little more about the similar species in the east, but I know from experience what an enormous pain that can be, and the details you have currently are sufficient- there isn't the omission that I felt there was previously. J Milburn (talk) 20:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I've really appreciated your input on some of this. I also wish there was more to write about comparisons with the Asian species. I've got descriptions of a few more of the Chinese species, but those sources never actually compare them to anything else, either in text or keys. I considered doing some stare-and-compares with the original species descriptions, but I think that cuts a little too close to OR for my liking. There's actually quite a bit of detailed information available about Australian species of Calostoma, but since cinnabarinum isn't known from there, I didn't think those made sense to include, either. I am continuing to hunt for sources, though. There's at least one more Chinese-language piece that may be useful for a line or two if I can scrape up a copy. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 02:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I seem not be finding information about when during the year it emerges as part of the discussion of its life cycle.--ColonelHenry (talk) 17:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, seasonal occurrence information was absent. I have corrected the oversight. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It seems to be thorough and well organized. My puts are pretty minor:

  • Could the article be favored with a couple more illustrations of the subject species? There appear to be a few here
  • Let me see what I can do. There are no shortage of other images available, but I wasn't quite clear where the line was between "needs more pictures" and "has too many pictures". Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 02:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I only see two pictures of the actual fungus; I suppose I was trying to map the written description to the neighboring picture and was having only limited success. Anyway, I think another picture in the Distribution/habitat/ecology section would help with the interest factor. Thank you. Praemonitus (talk)
  • "Quercus oaks": is there another type of oak?
  • There was one element of this article that left me puzzled. Since the oak is only native to the northern hemisphere, and this fungus is only associated with that tree, why is the fungus found in Brazil? Is it because of transplanted oaks?

With those I'll add my support. Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 00:56, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Squeamish, I think you should include your sources for the synonyms in the "synonyms_ref" parameter of the taxobox, as it's not obvious where these are coming from (there's more syns listed here than are at MycoBank and Index Fungorum, for example). Apart from that, I'm supportive of this candidacy being promoted to FA (but with the usual COI's: GA reviewer, WikiProject Fungi member, general fungus fan...). Sasata (talk) 18:09, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate comment -- given this is (I believe) the nominator's first FAC, I;d like to see a spotcheck of sources for accuracy and avoidance of close paraphrasing. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:21, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Spotchecks

  • Article: In 1811, Louis Bosc did not mention the earlier works when describing it as Lycoperdon heterogeneum, although he also suggested it should be placed in its own genus.[7]
  • Source: "Par M. Bosc [1811]...cette espèce dont l'organisation est si singulière mérite bien de servir de type à un noveau genre. (p. 87)
  • Article: In 1897, Charles Edward Burnap published a new description of C. lutescens, making a clear division between the two similar species[14]
  • Source: "These two dried species were the only material of C. lutescens which I was able to examine, but they indacte that Massee was in error in considering the specicies identical to C. cinnabarinuum, and that, while it is probably the globose spored formn to which Schweintz gave the name of M. luttesens, it is, with very little doubt, the form which Corda describes by that name". (p. 188)
  • Article: Calostoma cinnabarinum was long thought to be saprotrophic, and has been described in this manner in both scholarly[41] and popular[18]
  • Sources: On pages, 6,7,20,48,53,59, and 60 of Miller and Miller, and p. 439 of Roody, but I can't see where it supports the statement "long thought to be saprotrophic".
  • I've removed the subjective word "long"; the statement is supported by p. 48 of Miller (1988): "The Calostomataceaeare found in warm-temperate and tropical biomes. The species all appear to be decomposers of roots, buried wood, and other organic matter of plant origin." Sasata (talk) 17:57, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Article: Two other species of Calostoma also occur in the eastern United States. C. lutescens has a thinner gelatinous layer and a predominately yellow middle layer, or mesoperidium, with the red color confined to the peristome.[11]
  • Source: I can't find this, but the scan is difficult to read - could you guide me on this please?
  • I've changed the link from a full PDF download to a link to the start of the page range specified in the citation, to make it easier for readers to verify the material. C. lutescens is discussed on pp. 190–191, and the source confirms what is written in the sentence. Sasata (talk) 17:57, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Article: In 2007, Andrew Wilson and David Hibbett of Clark University and Eric Hobbie of the University of New Hampshire employed isotopic labeling, DNA sequencing, and morphological analysis to determine that this species is also ectomycorrhizal.[59]
  • Source: "Results of isotopic, molecular, and morphological analyses indicate that C. cinnabarinum is ectomycorrhizal". (From the abstract)
Could you please respond to the points above in bold font. Graham Colm (talk) 10:49, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Many tks Graham -- Squeamish, how are we going with responses? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:40, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Squeamish hasn't been around for a week, so I hope it's ok that I responded to these queries myself. Sasata (talk) 17:57, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. No remaining issues. Graham Colm (talk) 18:54, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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