Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive41

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Distribution map How-to page

FYI, I've created a little tutorial for how to make those nifty species distribution maps that people sometimes add to taxoboxes: Wikipedia:Distribution maps. Enjoy. Kaldari (talk) 23:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Plumule

I just noticed that plumule is a red link. Should we have an article on it? If not, to what should it redirect? Guettarda (talk) 21:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be an article at seedling, which should cover plumule. Hardyplants (talk) 05:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Unranked taxa

There's a small discussion of unranked taxa at Talk:Flowering plant if anyone wants to weigh in. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

G. species dab pages

Category:Latin name disambiguation pages. I dropped a note on the editor's talk page. If I recall correctly, the last time we discussed these kinds of pages, the general feeling was that they're useless? Is that still the case? --Rkitko ^(talk) 22:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess my first reaction is that they are mostly harmless. I don't have a really strong opinion for or against, but if different editors keep creating them (apparently independently of each other), it makes me somewhat more likely to think it might be easier to tolerate them than fight them. On the flip side, though, the utility is pretty limited and possibility of inaccurate/incomplete information is kind of high. Kingdon (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

That's my impression, too, though many of the dab pages contain mostly or only redlinks. While WP:DAB and WP:MOSDAB do not seem to forbid this explicitly, especially in the case of WP:DABRL, it is messy and as you said will become inaccurate. Our last discussion on this was here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life/Archive23#Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages. Anyone else have a strong opinion? A second editor has expressed concerns on the user's talk page: User talk:Nono64#P. rosea and others. --Rkitko ^(talk) 21:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Are they causing any problem, anywhere? If not, I would say "don't fix what isn't broken". --Una Smith (talk) 23:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

They're neither useless nor harmless but actively harmful and are explicitly against policy. Red links invite people to create an article. Creating a DAB page with all red links is deceptive in that it fools readers into thinking there's an entry where none exists thus lowering the likelihood of an article being created. Say link X is linked in 25 articles and is a dab page with all red links. It may only be clicked on once in a blue moon, and that is the only way a person coming across the link will learn there is actually no article at the title. If those 25 links are all red, every person who reads the article (and who knows what a red link means or course) will be immediately informed that the subject does not yet have an article. The difference is grave. Policy is that we only disambiguate against existing articles, whether that is through DAB pages, or through hatnotes so this is not within policy.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't, shouldn't, and won't link to pages like E. gracilis. I honestly cannot think of any scenario in which someone would create such a link to such a DAB page, excluding cases of severe stupidity. These DAB pages function solely as search engine fodder: plug "E. gracilis" into Google, and you'll be directed to a Wikipedia page that tell you what it might refer to.

I'm not defending these pages. I haven't made my mind up about them, and am slightly leaning towards the idea that these belong on Wiktionary not here. But I think your claim that these are "actively harmful" is overblown. Hesperian 02:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

P.S. the assertion that "policy is that we only disambiguate against existing articles" is also overblown. Wikipedia:Disambiguation is merely an editing guideline, not a policy, and it is extremely wishy-washy on this point. And so it should be, because it is common practise all over Wikipedia to include relevant redlinks in disambiguation pages. Hesperian 02:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hesperian is correct: we often do include redlinks on dab pages, especially when the redlink has incoming links. Having fixed many thousands of incoming links, I can imagine editors creating links to these "G. epithet" dab pages. But that's what such pages are for: to catch and fix such links. The alternative is to encourage creation of duplicate articles and inappropriate redirects. One "G. epithet" page that very clearly is not useless is T. rex (disambiguation); the number of entries on it surprised me. I expect that fixing incoming links to the ambiguous base name T. rex would be a PITA. I am also impressed by how many entries many of these pages have; I had not known how popular some epithets are. That is vaguely interesting in its own right. --Una Smith (talk) 03:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

T. rex, E. coli and C. elegans are the exception. Very few (if any?) other species are usually referred to by their abbreviation without first mentioning the full genus name. If someone were to accidentally link to S. debile when trying to create a link to Stylidium debile, they'll click the link and find the first search term is indeed Stylidium debile. Dab pages like this serve no other purpose than the search engine. I'd be inclined to think they'd be ok on wiktionary, though I know very little of what's acceptable over there. --Rkitko ^(talk) 04:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The search engine has limitations, unfortunately. Else why would we ever bother with categories and page names? Also, remember that an article about Goo epithet does not necessarily include the string G. epithet. For the purpose of correctly expanding G. epithet strings, I think these dab pages will serve pretty well. And these dab pages will catch incoming links and readers who use the Wikipedia search tool; they are much easier on the eye than raw search results. --Una Smith (talk) 04:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting: I scratched my head after reading your post Hesperan, and after checking a whole bunch of what links here to these types of DAB pages I now see that these pages should never have articles which puts a whole different spin on it. I still think we shouldn't have them though. Una, I am not referring to not having red links in DAB pages, but not creating disambiguation pages solely for nonexistent topics. That is a whole different subject than having a DAB page that is actually needed to disambiguate two or more existing articles, which also contains red links to articles that should be created.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:44, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Why are dab pages with all redlinks a problem? They would appear to be the exception here; all the pages I looked at had mostly blue links. And isn't it our goal to have articles (or at least redirects to genus articles) for all species? --Una Smith (talk) 04:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

(Redirects from species to genus, when not monotypic, are forbidden on pain of sudden, immediate and even instantaneous death! Hesperian 04:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC))

Ah, now there's a key question: are these dab pages more or less likely to induce editors to "fix" those redlinks by creating redirects? We already have a problem with redirects being created where a dab page would be more appropriate: for vernacular names shared by two or more taxa. --Una Smith (talk) 05:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As a molecular biologist, I'm accustomed to extremely sloppy nomenclature--we typically refer to everything by the shortest name we can think of, and don't worry much about ambiguity, since we all traditionally study the same few species. I've seen people in the medical sciences do the like almost as often. I'd encourage links from "G.epithet" when there is any use in the scientific literature even by non-botanists, or in the popular literature. Non-specialists will often see them and not know how to expand the genus name. The goal is to be helpful. DGG ( talk ) 05:45, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Did you know....

that the article on Rubiaceae is a 107 word stub? This should be a straightforward 5x expansion and a good candidate for a DYK..only I lack plant books on families etc. Would be great as a team effort to at least destub and 5x expand it. Anyone good on angiosperm taxonomy? Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you mistakenly looked at an old version, as the article is much larger, and hasn't been a stub for several years. However, perhaps someone would like to look into the matter of the duplication of the list of genera in the article and a separate list of genera article. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Still looks like a stub to me. Lists of taxa are generally ignored when determining whether an article is stubby or not. I agree, though, the article list should be combined with List of Rubiaceae genera. --Rkitko ^(talk) 13:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

When counting for DYK, one only counts the slabs of prose - hence 107 words. The genera list doesn't count. There is very little on the family there. When I get a bit more time I will start to expand myself. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

This would be a 5x expansion: another 440 words or so would do the trick. --Una Smith (talk) 03:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

More like 350 :) Guettarda (talk) 04:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Heh, regardless, it is now a little bigger :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Leptosporangiate fern and Pteridopsida

I proposed a merge of Leptosporangiate fern and Pteridopsida and could use more input, both on whether the merge is a good idea and what the resulting page should be called. Discussion is at Talk:Pteridopsida#Proposed merge of Leptosporangiate fern. Kingdon (talk) 13:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done that merge. Next proposed merge (as came up in the discussion for that one): Talk:Fern#Propose merging Monilophyte into Fern. Please comment. Kingdon (talk) 21:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Aloe Rubra -- is it real?

This unsourced article was listed on WP:PROD--I can find no immediate references, on the web or on Biosis, and it's given as " not known to the public until today," which is always a little dubious. Can anyone by any chance identify the picture there? DGG ( talk ) 05:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I suspect it's a hoax. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Plus confusion between a valid species and a cultivated selection or hybrid. Hardyplants (talk) 06:27, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is link to a host of pictures for the hybrids - [1]. Hardyplants (talk) 06:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it is worth, this seems to be the plant the article is talking about. [2] Hardyplants (talk) 06:35, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

This article is practically unsalvageable without reference to reliable sources. As far as I know there is no species known as "Aloe rubra".Melburnian (talk) 10:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you all think that the two photographs are the same taxon? Lavateraguy (talk) 12:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

It appears that it is a cultivated selection of Aloe. Do the pictures represent the same species is a good question. I love succulents but can't grow them, so some one else is going to have to let us know if Aloe vera changes that much, from its juvenile form verses a mature plant? Hardyplants (talk) 16:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Can't find ant readaly available references, there is some "promotional" material from people wanting to sell products and their use of names is very confused. I agree with Melburnain that the articel is unsalvageable, it appears to be a promotional piece for an obscure subject that is given a new name. Hardyplants (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree it's a good question, but I'm not sure. Melburnian (talk) 05:53, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

New species

http://www.kew.org/science/new-discoveries/ details quite a lot of newly identified species. There should be some good DYKs to be found in them if anyone's interested. Smartse (talk) 17:38, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

That's very interesting, thanks. Melburnian (talk) 05:50, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Drosera regia FAC

Hi, all. I just spent a good deal of effort expanding our article on Drosera regia. I've never pulled off a featured article before, so I'd appreciate a copyedit or two and suggestions, if you can spare a moment. Any content areas I missed? Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 01:03, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

A cladogram of closely related species would be nice, if such a thing exists. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:10, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

A good idea. I've added one now; let me know if it's clear enough. I may need to add more of a description to the text to explain it. Rkitko ^(talk) 05:25, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

It's clear enough to me, but then I did graduate work in that area; others may want more explanation...we'll just have to see. Note: rbcL usually does not italicize the "L".

The only other issue that strikes me about the article is the absence of an "Ecology" section. However, the content I'd expect seems largely to be covered under "Distribution" and "Cultivation". --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I wondered about the italicization convention on rbcL. The day job involves bacterial genomics, where it would be all italicized. Is that a convention unique to when you speak of plant genomes or are bacteria the odd ones? I'll have to think more about an ecology section; I'll see if I can dig up more information on it, but I think I put most of what I had into the habitat description. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 08:50, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that the italicization varies by publisher, but it's consistently as I indicated in the botanic and systematic journals I've used. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:44, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted back to the rbcL italicization. All of the recent articles I checked fully italicize, especially when discussing other plastid genes like matK and atpB... I've noticed older papers seem to use the rbcL convention more frequently. Rkitko ^(talk) 19:57, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

A decade ago it was consistently rbcL and matK, but I'm not as familiar with the recent literature. Iirc, the rationale for rbcL was that the gene is rbc (hence the italics) and the L is the large subunit.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:21, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

An interesting discussion. I did run across gene nomenclature, which has some links to plant-related gene nomenclature standards. In bacterial genetics, I've read papers back to the 1970s where the atpB italicization was followed (I've had a good deal of fun tracking down genetics papers from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s to work on potassium's role in pH regulation in E. coli lately... It's amazing to see how the format and length of articles in these journals has changed). Sometimes the capital letter at the end indicates placement in the operon (of course), sometimes it can mean something else, like rocR, the arginine degradation operon regulator in Bacillus subtilis, hence the R. rbc by itself is not a gene; there's rbcL and rbcS, which are sometimes both in the plastid genome and other times the rbcS gene has been moved to the nuclear genome. Genes that are labeled with a common three letter name like rbc usually belong or belonged to the same transcriptional unit or operon. In the cyanobacteria genomes I checked, these genes are right next to each other on the chromosome. And in my searches, I did find quite a few papers from the 1990s that used full italicization. (In Plant Cell 1998, PNAS 1994.) Perhaps these were competing nomenclatural guidelines? --Rkitko ^(talk) 18:24, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Admittedly the papers I followed were in systematics journals. On the one hand, systematists in general are more attuned to nomenclatural issues than your average biologist, but on the other hand, at that time (and evidently still), the systematists who did molecular studies were on the whole (with notable exceptions) less interested in nomenclature of any kind than your average systematist.

rbcL is not a gene, in one sense of the word, because its ultimate transcription/translation product needs the transcription/translation product of rbcS to function.--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:53, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

So should rbcL redirect to RuBisCO? Right now the former has 5 incoming links, and a redirect makes more sense to me than trying to pipe every one. Given that this is one of the most famous plant DNA sequences (see for example DNA barcoding), I'm not too worried about other things called rbcL (if any). Kingdon (talk) 20:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia links are case sensitive after the first letter, I don't see a problem with a redirect from RbcL (you can't really make the first letter of a pagename on WP lowercase). The only possibility of confusion I can think of is with Rubidium chloride (RbCl). Note that this item currently uses the redirect Rbcl, so that page might need to be disambiguated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

There are a few pages with lowercase titles, achieved using {{lowercase}}. --Una Smith (talk) 23:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

That template only changes the display of the pagename, and does not affect the actual pagename. The pagename display isn't relevant for a redirect. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time figuring out the relationship between the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants, which listed D. regia as rare, but the IUCN Red List website doesn't list a single Drosera species status. Anyone familiar with the details of the Red List? Could it have been delisted? Rkitko ^(talk) 23:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Did you examine the Overview? It outlines important changes made since the various 1990-something editions, most notably the requirement that listed species have documentation to substantiate their threatened status. Earlier lists had used an ad hoc listing, where anything proposed by an "expert" was added to the list in the absence of data. While no specific mention is made of particular species, I would not be surprised if this explained the apparent discrepancy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

bestflora-doma.ru external links

Edits from several different IP addresses have been adding external links to pages at bestflora-doma.ru. None of these fit WP:EL (for one thing they aren't in English). All the ones I checked have been reverted, and in most cases {{uw-spam1}} was already on the talk page of each one, but I don't know how to quickly know whether this is a large-scale problem or just a handful of pages. In case it is the former, I thought I'd mention it here. IP addresses involved include at least: 85.26.164.243 (talk · contribs), 217.107.5.22 (talk · contribs) and 83.149.19.119 (talk · contribs) Kingdon (talk) 20:32, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

There was also Max5600 (talk · contribs). A google search for the domain on site:en.wikipedia.org didn't turn up any more. It seems somewhat isolated, but perhaps WP:WPSPAM can help put the domain on a spambot search list for removal in case it continues? --Rkitko ^(talk) 20:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a tool somewhere that finds external links to particular domains from wikipedia, which I expect would be more reliable than Google. I regret that I don't recall offhand where it is. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:09, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Lamiaceae subfamilies

We have articles for some (but not most) subfamilies of the Lamiaceae. According to Wagstaff 1998 the subfamilies Nepetoideae, Lamioideae, Pogostemonoideae and Scutellarioideae are well-supported by their evidence, and as far as I can piece together from that abstract (article is paywalled) and figure 1 of Lindqvist 2002, the subfamilies Ajugoideae and Teucrioideae (sensu Wagstaff 1992) should be combined based on recent results. I'm not sure what's up with Chloanthoideae and Viticoideae (see Systematics of Lamiaceae Subfamily Viticoideae research project), but the definitions from Wagstaff 1992 don't seem to be monophyletic. Is there something newer than 2002 for this stuff (note that [3] has good background information but I didn't see updates after 2000)? And should we combine the articles for Ajugoideae and Teucrioideae or keep them separate? Or even just delete them and add something on subfamilies (perhaps with a level of detail similar to the preceding few sentences) into Lamiaceae? Kingdon (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)