This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Just a reminder: two articles, one plant. Me no botanist, me not know which should be merged into what. So, can one of you idle beggars stirling chaps help? Cheers. --Ibn (talk) 17:10, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
He has incorrectly assumed that Citrus is correct for Kumquat on nomenclatural grounds (see the footnotes) rather than taxonomic grounds. While, as you say, the classification of Citrus and related genera is disputed, there's nothing in the ICBN to preclude the use of Fortunella. So even if we were to decide that the Citrus is the right home for the articles, the content is incorrect, even ignoring the sinking of all kumquats into japonica (a quick google didn't find any support for this) and the malformed taxoboxes. I'd say revert the lot. Lavateraguy (talk) 06:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
One second thoughts, I may have misread him. He may only have meant that if Fortunella and Citrus are combined then Citrus is the correct name for the genus. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
But his addition to articles (e.g. Citrus japonica 'Polyandra') says "They were moved to new genus Fortunella [...] In accordance with the 1994 Tokyo Code of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, the genus name reverted to Citrus." which is, by itself, incorrect, since the obvious meaning is that moving them to Fortunella wasn't allowed. At the least this needs to be corrected. I don't have time now. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:59, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The TAG reference is paywalled, but the abstract suggests that Fortunella is sister to Citrus sensu strictu, which would not be a slam dunk case for merging the genera. (The large number of intergeneric hybrids in the group is a motivation for doing so, but for counterexamples, sinking Pyrinae, and large chunks of Orchidaceae and Cactaceae into single genera would not meet with an enthusiastic response.) The Blumea paper cites 2 other papers and a conference abstract for Citrus sensu lato. Of these the Telopea paper sinks F. margarita in F. japonicaLavateraguy (talk) 06:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I can access the full paper. The Discussion section begins "Based on the phylogenetic analysis with RAPD and SCAR data, Poncirus, Microcitrus and Eremocitrus are distant from Citrus but Fortunella can not be separated from Citrus, as described by Herrero et al. (1996) and Federici et al. (1998)." So putting Fortunella back into Citrus is justified by this reference. (I've improved the citation for this paper in the Citrus japonica 'Polyandra' article, but didn't have time to copy this to the others.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:18, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Fortunella crassifolia is said to be the hybrid between F. japonica and F. margarita. If the latter is sunk in the former, F. crassifolia would follow it. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The new Flora of China sinks all the kumquats into the single species Citrus japonica. So there is support for sinking Fortunella into Citrus, and for a lumping them into a single species. But it seems that the "species" are cultivar groups, not cultivars. Nor can the species names necessarily be used as cultivar names; in fact, unless they were grandfathered in this is contrary to the rules of nomenclature for cultived plants. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I've had a go at rewriting the relevant bits of kumquat. (Someone might want to redo the reference using the cite template.)
I suggest redirecting the various Fortunella species to kumquat, and deleting Palaeologos (talk·contribs)'s cultivar pages. We might want more information of types of kumquat in the article, and there may be material in the "species" pages that could be transferred. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:31, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The 2nd is the young leaves of a Pieris (P. japonica or P. formosa - probably a cultivar such as 'Mountain Fire' or 'Flame of the Forest'. The others are tulip cultivars. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:36, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
The file name is "Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC.jpg". However I don't think this is a Cherry Blossom because the leaf is differnt. Could anyone please tell me the name of this flower? Preferably with the source if available. ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 23:34, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
I was thinking 'crabapple' (malus) when I saw that too. Partly because I've been fooled before. Here's one that looks very similar.[2]First Light (talk) 01:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Recently I corrected the IDs of a few obviously misnamed images (both in the Commons and in various other wikis), but in some cases there is some doubt left for various reasons.
Here some examples:
Scabiosa or Knautia?
Scabiosa or Knautia?
Veronica persica or other Veronica species?
Lamium purpureum or L. maculatum?
Lamium purpureum or L. maculatum?
I suspect that the names on the left side are wrong and those on the right side are correct.
And then there is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_caprifolium. All of the photographs on this page appear to be misidentified, because none of them shows the typical sessile flowers directly attached to a pair of completely connate bracts (as in the drawings from the old books and in Image:Lonicera-caprifolium.JPG, which appears to be the only correctly identified image of Lonicera caprifolium in the Commons). Or am I wrong about File:Daniel Fuchs.CC-BY-SA.Lonicera caprifolium.jpg and the flowers are actually sessile? What do you think? Should I try to correct some or all of these IDs? Or am I completely wrong here and should ask my questions elsewhere? Thanks a lot in advance -- Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 20:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
The bottom petal of Veronica persica is (in Britain) paler, so I'd guess that it's a different species. Of the British species, perhaps Veronica polita, but I haven't positively identified this locally, and anyway I'd want to see the scale, foliage and inflorescence structure for identification. Given the locality it may well be a species that I don't know about. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh, sorry! That happens if I think too much about Knautia and Scabiosa. There is even a category for unidentified Veronica, which will be the best choice. -- Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 14:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I take your point about the 3rd Lonicera. It doesn't look to me like either L. nitida or L. pileata, so that would be it outside my experience. Flora Iberica has Lonicera biflora which looks about right. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I've come across several articles sourced entirely to the wiki website gardenology.org. The only one that I had the wherewithal to research turned out to be an old synonym (Salvia aurea) for Salvia africana-lutea, so I turned it into a redirect. The source article on gardenology.org was itself apparently sourced to the 1917 Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture by Liberty Hyde Bailey. The age of that book may be the reason for the article being incorrect, but it makes me wonder if other articles using that wiki as a source might also be inaccurate. I tagged some of the articles, asking for better sources. Here is a list of articles sourced to gardenology.org for anyone who might be knowledgeable about those genera:[4]. First Light (talk) 21:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Poked around a bit. It's a wiki that anyone can edit. They don't ask anything of you when you register, just a username and email address. Not a reliable source. Guettarda (talk) 00:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh, and here's a key bit:
The site nor Gardenology.org does not review any works or material submitted by third parties. The site reserves the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse or remove any works or material that are available via the site's systems. The site and Plants.am absolve themselves of all editorial responsibility over the works and material on the site.[5]
I've removed all the external linkspam, and rewritten and re-referenced about 20 of the 30 articles that were based on gardenology.org. I'll keep working on the rest, but was hoping someone else could look at the new Wikipedia article (and new redirect) this same editor created - Gardenology.org and Gardenology - to see if they are notable enough to keep. I'm afraid my past history with this editor(s), and current spree, make me not very neutral. First Light (talk) 04:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi First Light, I had noticed that there is a lot of information from an old plant encyclopedia on Gardenology.org and started adding it recently, especially when the article was completely missing from Wikipedia, since it is creative commons. I don't think I've even added texts that weren't from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. I realize it is an older source, but didn't think it was a problem, especially if there was no other material on Wikipedia yet. Should I not add it anymore? It seems better than nothing. --Weedgarden (talk) 03:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
If I read consensus here correctly, gardenology.org is not a reliable source, and should not be used to reference or start articles, and should not be linked from Wikipedia articles as a source for anything. If you're asking about using Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture by Liberty Hyde Bailey as a reliable source, I believe that modern sources would be preferred. But if it is used as a source, it should be referenced just as it is at Pallenis hierochuntica, for example, without a gratuitous link to gardenology.org. What do others here think about using Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture as a reliable source, and Weedgarden's question? First Light (talk) 04:17, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I'll wait to hear what you guys think about using the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture as a reliable and directly sourced text. And so far I've found Gardenology reliable in terms of the plant zones and light requirements at least :) --Weedgarden (talk) 04:51, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Open wikis are generally not accepted here as reliable sources for our purposes. Regarding Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture - certain discrete facts may be referenced from such a source (with care), but to base an article or part of an article on a 1917 encylopedia entry is a bad idea, a lot has happened in the last 93 years. Melburnian (talk) 05:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
A lot certainly has happened in the last 93 years. Many things also have not happened in the last 93 years. The boiling point of water at one atmosphere pressure, for example, has not changed. Neither has the value of pi. Nor, for that matter, has what happened in the War of the Roses. Some facts should, indeed, be "up to date" (such as today's date). Others are more nearly unchanging. Basing an article on an old source is a perfectly good idea, unless the article is about recent opinion. (Care is necessary, of course, with respect to changes in commonly used terminology.) Jay L09 (talk) 07:50, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Old sources should be treated with caution. If you don't know enough to evaluate them you shouldn't be using them. If you do know enough you're probably capable of providing a more modern source. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Adding cat Flora of Pakistan to many articles
An anon IP is adding the cat "Flora of Pakistan" to many articles without explanation or reference.
1) No reference is provided, making it difficult later to determine the source of information.
2) No explanation is given in the Edit Summary.
3) Simply adding a cat doesn't explain whether it is native, invasive, imported, or no longer prevalent.
4) A type of tag that might literally include 100s of countries (and possibly states, etc.) seems unwieldy.
I agree with the problem especially of references, but it's pretty much standard. As for the use of "Flora of..." categories - that's the way things are done. We've discussed alternatives in the past, like using broader categories for more widespread species, but the consensus seems to be to use countries (or subunits of countries, in some cases). Guettarda (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I much appreciate your response. If you had a couple particularly to-the-point Wiki discussion references?
Scientific studies of plants, such as those in the Audubon Guides, often include a map overlaid with range; those seem useful. A statement that a range overlaps with some artificial political territory seems ... arbitrary. Misleading. As an example, to say that wheat grows in Canada or Russia is misleading since it might be construed to suggest to an unfamiliar reader that wheat grows above the Arctic Circle. Equally, to state that a plant grows in Pakistan may create more confusion than help. Does it grow everywhere in Pakistan? I feel I'm as much confused as I am helped by the statement. I wouldn't come to Wikipedia (lacking maps) to learn about the range of a particular plant in Pakistan. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Political boundaries are indeed arbitrary from the point of view of the plant. But they are not so from the point of view of the people who manage, study and appreciate them. One has only to survey the vast number of books and databases entitled Flora of [country], Plants of [country], Wildflowers of [country], Trees of [country], etc, to see this. These categories reflect real-world expectations, and are therefore an appropriate and useful service to our readers. Hesperian23:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I see that you have your minds made up, but respectfully, this is simply a matter of pointless categorization. In a hypothetical article on myself, I would expect to see cats: "People who write English", "People who have used Wikipedia", and "People with two eyes". That "someone" expects to see these worthless categories is not a reason for an encyclopedia to have them. Thanks for your prompt replies. I have informed the editor that they were, in fact, editing according to consensus. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
P.S., Hesperian, your point is well taken that books appear called, "The Flora of ... Somewhere", but this might largely be an artifact of: 1) Writers not being well-traveled, 2) Writers being insular, 3) Writers being paid by a publisher in a particular country, for the sale of books in a particular country, 4) Nationalistic promotion, 5) Unthinking habit. I.e., these books are often named for unencyclopedic reasons. But Cheers, Piano non troppo (talk) 00:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Good authors write for their audience, or their books will stop being published and bought. With flower and plant books, people who buy them are quite often looking for the "Flora of ...." wherever they live or are visiting. Yes, it is arbitrary, since political boundaries are arbitrary, but it is what readers are looking for. We should also be serving the readers in that regard. That said, I've seen nationalism involved in the adding of categories. I personally only add them when the country/area is specifically mentioned in the article, and referenced to a reliable source. I think that should be a guideline, if it isn't already. First Light (talk) 00:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Agree with your points, First Light. But since Wiki is international, tagging that a plant belongs to one country (Pakistan), but not an adjoining one (India) (Or Canada/USA, England/Scotland), has a misleading potential. Also, it happens that there are sometimes nationalistic editors who simply come to Wiki to aggrandize their country, without any special regard for overall quality. (Those who add/change nationalities in bios come to mind). Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 00:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I completely support Category:Flora of Pakistan and similar political region categories as a useful, valid categories reflecting real-world useage. However this particular category has a history of being applied somewhat overzealously in the past, including plant families [7] and genera of cultivated plants [8]. Melburnian (talk) 00:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
There are two commonly-used methods of representing species' ranges - range maps, and maps based on political subdivisions - countries, states, provinces, etc. Ideally our articles should include both representations. (There's another discussion worth having about the "Flora of X" cats, but not right now).
To understand species distributions, you need to understand the underlying data. Species distributions are are almost always based on point data - if a plant was found growing in a given spot, that spot is assumed to lie in its range. But how precisely was that location recorded? If you're lucky, a GPS point. If you're unlucky, a country or region. To make matters worse, these localities are rarely produced through systematic surveys - most of the time they come from herbarium collections. These are presence-only data. Only very rarely (and then almost always for invasive or endangered species) does anyone bother to report absence data.
So how do you report this data? You could map collections and leave it at that. But that's going to produce a severe under-representation of a species' range. It's also going to be misleading, because of collector biases. It also requires you to throw out any reports not supported by collections (after all, you may pass a population of a given species every day on your way to work, but if that species is not represented by a collection, you can't include it). More importantly, the fact that a species was once collected at a given point is no indication that it still grows there - often the only known collection for a species was swallowed up by a growing town a generation or more ago. So you need to generalise a little - to a town, a region, a province. Broadly speaking, the best data for distributions come from floras. And floras often simply report a species as being present in the target area - usually, a country.
Range maps are compiled from the same point data. The simplest range maps simply draw a line around known (or reported) distributions for a species. They may omit areas that the map-maker knows to be unsuitable habitat. Many, especially older ones, are based on a good bit of intuition. Better range maps combine distributions with habitat data. Habitat modelling can produce especially good maps. But the truth is that this is a fairly young field, and suffers from limitations of its own.
We are faced with another set of problems - Wikipedia policy. Even if we tracked down collections, we couldn't make our own range maps. We would need to depend on secondary sources. Most often these are floras. Which tend to report species distributions at the country level... Guettarda (talk) 14:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the education, and for making clear that reliable sources tend to report flora by country, so we should too. First Light (talk) 04:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Although the category is perfectly legitimate, the addition of these categories (and associated edits) of this particular anonymous editor is a form of POV pushing - if I remember right this editor has in the past been against the usage of "Indian Subcontinent" and now even "India" since many of the old works included parts of present day Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The editor, it appears wants India to be specified as India political - which s/he marks as "Republic of India" which apparently also makes it go back on the alphabetical country lists made by Polbot. More interestingly the editor likes to separate border states of India into countries of their own. This anon created Category:Fauna_of_Kashmir - a region which is split between India and Pakistan with a strong separatist movement. This editor has probably been banned as a registered user in the past for using Wikipedia as a battleground. A partial list of the IPs are on User:First_Light/Fauna_vandalism#Nationalist_vandalismShyamal (talk) 01:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Would a similar filtering approach as the megafauna-vandal filter work here, Shyamal? I.E., would a filter for 2.100.0.0/16 IP range, for words like "Republic", "occupied", "Kashmir", or ? be effective? I see that they do add some possibly legitimate categories for India and Pakistan, but the more nationalistic editing might be eliminated. First Light (talk) 02:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Might help, but the motivation seems to be great - and these edits have even been made from at least one other IP range from Dublin (on a holiday perhaps!) Shyamal (talk) 08:38, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
It is rarely seen, but in theory plausible. We already have a rump category tree. The default source for locality information I have hitherto seen is the IUCN Red List, which provides per-country occurrence data and is usually highly reliable. It has been used to tag e.g. most country-endemic taxa that Polbot created.
Geographic categories probably best start with countries ("geopolitical entities" if you will), subdividing as needed (Kashmiri plants could be a subcategory of both Indian and Pakistani plants, and everyone should be content. Just as Hawaiian taxa should be both in both Polynesia and U.S. supercategories). Higer-level categories could be S/C/E/SW/SE... Asia, S America W/E of Andes/Andean chain, Mediterranean etc. Then, continents.
I thought about some structure, and via some trying out on Commons found that a single rule, "endemism", would probably be sufficient. I.e., a page would go in the category where it is natively endemic to. So, at baseline, each taxon has a single geographic category. Significant extralimital introductions may get categories added, but I presume a separate "introduced to" tree would be better (we have many near-global introductions, and they do also not follow established biogeographic patterns otherwise).
So I think such efforts are basically useful and should be rebuilt to a common structure as necessary.
In this case, it would mean racking up all non-Pakistan endemics up to Category:Flora of South Asia (probably). That's sufficently vague for starters to cover even more widely distributed taxa and not seem too much of an error to the reader. We can then correct at leisure, using e.g. the IUCN Red List link (which probably needs to be updated in a good many old Polbot stubs anyway). And experienced editors will in any case check and adjust categories if they do minor edits, so it should lead to a rapid progress and a quite useful bieogeographic category tree. Because that is definitely a desirable feature Wikipedia has not yet implemented.
(Technical note: If this approach is implemented, it would be possible to automatize it. A polbot-like IUCN database query would reveal whether Category:Flora of Pakistan content has only "Pakistan" in their "Countries" field, and only those that do should get a "Flora of Pakistan" category. The others could go to "Flora of South Asia" for the time being. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh, we also have an utter overlap between Category:Biota by country and Category:Wildlife by country. One of the two is redundant at present, and I think "Biota" should go - most users are unfamiliar with the term. There has been a major discussion pertinent to the above issue at the Talk of "Biota by country", but it has ended without resolution about 2 years ago. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
"Unattainable"? Category:Biota by country, which exists since 4 years, clearly suggests otherwise. It may be a bit complicated for gastropods, but for birds such a system is entirely possible, since all living and recently extinct bird species are covered by the IUCN, and establishment/maintenance of the categories could even be completely automatic (though it would require a sophisticated bot, e.g. for Hawaiian or French DOM-TOM taxa). Similarly, for all or almost all European animals, Fauna Europaea provides the necessary data, almost complete, and the few errors - I found many Lepidoptera unexplainably missing from Slovenia but listed for all surrounding countries - do not matter since only country endemics would go in country categories, while all others would go in either "Europe", "Eurasia" or "Palearctic" (Eurasia minus tropical regions plus North Africa). I also presume that North American occurrence data is quite comprehensive.
And "unmanageable"? Once established, the only maintenance required would be cases where a genuinely native population is discovered in another country or biogeographic region (which is not actually very common and in any case usually is reported via a WP:RS) and error correction (which would be easy, since a taxon would have one and only one locality category (plus any "Introduced to..." categories that apply. Every half-year or so, a bot could be run to check every article with a taxobox for "Animals/Plants/Birds/Mammals/... of ..." categories, and list those where more than one is found so that they can be reviewqed and if necessary corrected).
(For marine taxa, it would be slightly more complex, but still be manageable. The trick is to realize that marine areas of endemism are essentially delimited by ocean currents and climate belts. Strictly littoral taxa would use "terrestrial" categories.)
The Category:Biota by country itself is useful, but it clearly suggests nothing about its use. This category does not (explicitly) say if its subcategories are for categorization of separate species or for categorizing of lists. And if it does not suggest this basal thing, it also does not suggest any other details. There is for example no guideline if a species that lives in 111 countries if we should add all of these 111 country related categories to the article, and so on. --Snek01 (talk) 11:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I am currently working on the Carl Linnaeus article to bring it to FA status (although GA will be the first goal). Many improvements have been made already but there is a lot to do still. Basically everything except the Biography section needs an overhaul.
Linnaeus is an important part of this wikiproject and I am wondering if there are anybody here who would like to assist me in bringing it to FA status with me (or just do some editing)? If you are, you're more than welcome to contact me on my talk page or Carl Linnaeus talk page.
There is much progress on the O. glaberima breeding project started by NERICA; see here for a summary and the new things they're about to do. I have seen that some people enjoy writing about plant cultivars, and WP:Plants has a solid record of quality source use, so Wikipedia can probably help the effort by making information on the new O. glaberrima cultivars accessible. List of rice varieties is probably a good place to start. AfricaRice may be a good start for published literature. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but. Their Flora of China is based on the new Flora of China published by Harvard. (But you can go there direct.) The Catalog of Vascular Plants of Madagascar has moved to Tropicos (and appears to have been completed). And so on. I think most (all?) of their materials are mirrors of stuff available elsewhere. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
The FNA (Flora of North America) is not available online elsewhere (though it's also produced in book form). Circéus (talk) 21:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
I now see that [9] points back to EFloras. OTOH, I did find a (draft?) FNA Hydrangaceae treatment, from which I incorrectly generalised, but it seems that this and Poaceae are the two exceptions to pointing back to EFloras. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
So does the 'but' mean only that it would be better to go to/link to the original and not the mirrors? Or does it mean that one must do so? Or? I didn't think it was a reliable source until I recently found that Harvard published the Flora of China, which surprised me. So I'm starting from scratch here :-) First Light (talk) 00:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
EFloras is (mostly?) a secondary source. If a primary source is available, all else being equal the primary source should be preferred. But, IMO, source accessibility matters, so a case can be made for preferring EFloras over the print FNA, especially if you haven't actually looked at the print FNA. YMMV. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Extreme closeup of the white flower on the left
Wide shot of the white flowers
Scabiosa or Knautia?
Scabiosa or Knautia?
Veronica persica or other Veronica species?
Lamium purpureum or L. maculatum?
Lamium purpureum or L. maculatum?
![[3]](http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~kenr/Photos/Malus_flower.jpg){kind=link}
