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Admin move request: Sisymbrium sophia

According to The Plant List, the accepted name of Sisymbrium sophia is Descurainia sophia. Could an admin please move it? Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:00, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Done.--Melburnian (talk) 01:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Watchlist expanded

Anyone know why my watchlist is suddenly expanded out? The little drop arrows on the left are gone and I see all 20 (or whatever) edits to an article and have to scroll through them. I much prefer having the arrow on the left so I only see the article and click it to see the list of recent edits. And my preferences are now all on one page, not the separate tabs. I prefer the tabs. How do I restore these? Thank you. HalfGig talk 02:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This is now all back to normal. I have no idea why. HalfGig talk 12:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

When is a category "too small"?

There's general agreement that categories should be neither "too small" (see WP:SMALLCAT) nor "too large" (see WP:DIFFUSE). The practical problem is that there's no definition of what either size actually is. When I tried to document what seemed to be this project's normal practice at WP:PLANTS/Categorization, I gave as a summary categorize an article at the highest taxonomic rank which yields a "sensible" set of category sizes (say 10-100 entries). My (possibly faulty) recollection is that this range evolved mainly through discussions with Stemonitis and Rkitko, although the summary was my edit. It certainly wasn't just my personal opinion.

There's a discussion at WP:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_November_13#Category:Balthasaria initiated by an editor who has objected to my emptying Category:Balthasaria and nominating it for deletion, as I have done with other categories dozens of times before. I don't want to get involved in this specific discussion, but others may, as the outcome may require our practices to be changed. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think a critical factor, and one that often gets overlooked, is the (potential) size of the parent category. A family of several dozen genera containing only a few species each might be worth dividing into genus categories to avoid having hundreds of species in a single large category; conversely, a family containing 100 species in a small number of genera might not be worth diffusing, even if the genera each contain a larger number of species. To use the Balthasaria case as an example, Category:Pentaphylacaceae and all its subcategories contain a total of 85 articles, which are easily accommodated on a single-page category listing. It is not therefore unwieldy and does not require diffusing into smaller subcategories. If, however, it were to grow (The Plant List suggests that there might be 400–500 species in total), then it might need breaking up, although even then it may be enough to separate out a few larger genera (c. 100 spp. in Adinandra, for instance), rather than necessarily giving each tiny genus its own category. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Please consider this from the point of view of the people creating the pages. We are not inclined to spend an inordinate amount of time browsing through long lists of categories to see what categories are available. Please keep it simple. Me? I generally try whatever seems likely, and if the preview shows it as a red link, I try something else.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 23:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, for higher plants at least, the family is a safe bet. From there, it's simple enough to see if and how the family category is divided into subcategories. It's probably better to take this top-down approach than trying to working bottom-up from redlinks. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:58, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

True, unless they start lumping small families together. I think this talk of lumping small genus categories together is premature. The percentage of species that have their own pages is not high, although growing all the time. I have found fairly large genera with no corresponding species pages at all. Perhaps when we get close to attaining the goal of a page for every species on the planet, then we can reorganize.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 15:35, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• In the days when I spent a lot of time at WP:CFD the position was fairly clear. About 5 members was considered ok, even if there was little prospect of numbers growing, and there is an explicit exception for categories that are part of a "wider scheme", which would very often apply in these cases. WP:SMALLCAT says "Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme, such as subdividing songs in Category:Songs by artist or flags in Category:Flags by country". In these cases even just 1 member is fine, and there are plenty of schemes including such categories. If there are loads of sub-cats with normally distributed contents, it may make little sense to worry about individual sub-cat sizes, but is often better to look at the average size of a sub-cat, accepting some will have few members. Wanting a minimum of 10 is against the grain of CFD discussions, as the comments at the one linked above show. What was too large was not really defined; obviously some cats run into the '000s, but are then difficult to use. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem with large categories is the need to browse through them to find the one item you are looking for. This is not a problem if the items are alphabetized, which the Wikipedia computer does automatically.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 21:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Monocot dispute

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 November 14#Monocot, about whether Monocot should continue to redirect to Monocotyledon, or should be made into a disambiguation page between that topic and Monocots. I may have misunderstood the technical aspects of the division between them. Expert attention is definitely required here. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:58, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

As I said over there, I don't see why we have two articles, one titled Monocotyledon and one Monocots in the first place. If they were merged, the problem of redirection would disappear. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:22, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

You have two because the one titled Monocotyledons was about the old concept, not the clade, even if you already know they came out the same with molecular and.morphological data and an extensive analysis. I tried to get help at the WikiProject and got told smugly that since you already knew what was what there was no need to help someone like me who just wanted to get information. The clade has a solid informal name that is used all over, including in Wikipedia article information boxes, then if you click on the link you get caught into an article about the no longer monocots and dicots. Encyclopedias are not for readers who know everything already, they are sources of information. But, if an IP tries to make something Useful they just get told they are stupid and should leave everything as is, because experts already know. What a fucking waste of time to have even started to try to understand the Wikipedia article. Especially since you already know what is what. 166.137.118.89 (talk) 19:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

An encyclopedia for people who already know the material that is in it? Wow, now there's a novel concept I have nothing polite to say about. As for the monocot situation, what is needed is not one page describing the olod concepts and another describing the new concepts. You need an article explaining what the difference is.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 02:05, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I had not realized before that an IP (presumably the one involved in the above discussion) had turned the previously existing "Monocots" redirect into an article. It might have been better to ask for help here first. No one has ever said that we should not include information in the encyclopedia because "experts already know"; we should structure the delivery of information so that it is most effective in reaching readers who are searching for it. A disambiguation page for these concepts would confuse everyone who isn't an expert, and who won't know which page will provide the information they seek. A single article containing all of the information, including the transition from old labels to new, would indeed provide that benefit. bd2412 T 03:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I asked for help. I was ignored because, after all, Peter already knows that, so it isn't needed to explain anything. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 03:54, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I was ignored until my efforts were criticized by someone who appears to have far less understanding of the topic than I do, that is. I see why it is hard to retain editors. Wonder how you get any to begin with. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 04:07, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

97.122.179.132: well, over here at WP:PLANTS we weren't involved in the earlier discussion, so please now concentrate on the issue. The argument against two articles is that articles are about topics, not words or terms. Whether you call them Monocotyledonae, monocotyledons or monocots, the taxon is substantially the same, and a single article with all the information is surely most helpful to readers. If you don't agree, please explain why not. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Put me with Peter and joseph here. The topic ultimately hasn't changed, only its definition. Circéus (talk) 12:36, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Peter, you were the original discussion. The article should either be at monocots or the monocotyledon article should immediately and clearly state what monocots are in relation to monocotyledons. Although they fall out taxonomically the same, the Wikipedia article is about monocots and dicots, and Wikipedia says the monocotyledons ARE one of these groups,, but the dicots WERE. The article says the groups exist, the other says they don't, the information boxes says the clade is the monocots, some articles says it is the monocot clade, then they all take you to the article monocotyledons about a concept that either exists or doesn't but also doesn't explain what monocots is. It seems that monocots is what botanists decided to use as the clade name, so the article should be there, or the monocotyledons article should explicitly and immediately tell the reader what is going on. None of this happens. In order to make sense of the Wikipedia articles, after trying to discuss it here and at monocotyledons, I had to go to Missouri Botanical Garden and get a textbook. These are popular articles. It seemed making them so a reader could understand was a good idea. None of you could bother to make it readable, but everyone seems to be going insane when I try after everyone ignored me when I was trying to understand it. You are all married to the title monocotyledons for the article, but don't care that the article is useless to the reader. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 13:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

And you also don't care that a reader can't understand what the monocots are and why this is the one APG clade that doesn't have an article. When someone is not a botanist and not a taxonomist and can't understand this showing off that you know this doesn't clear anything up. Encyclopedia articles are not mere holding places, they are supposed to inform. If an average reader can't understand the concept from reading your article, telling him that you know it is just sneering. But it is misdirected sneering. You should be bragging about what you can explain, and the bragging should be your articles, not your behind the scenes discussions. There is no way to get the correct information from Wikipedia's articles, whatever knowledge you all have, you have failed to convey it to the reader. So stop jumping on me, and write an article at monocots, fix the information box target, and all the misdirects to monocot like I was doing before all the shouting at me that guarantees I am glad it sucks. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 13:50, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

And yes the topic has changed. The monocotyledons topic is monocots and dicots. I don't see dicots in the Angiosperm information box. 166.137.118.91 (talk) 15:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I am very sorry to see someone get offended here, and I certainly hope to see the issues addressed. The traditional difference between monocots and dicots has for many years been one of the first things taught in plant identification sources. I know 12-year-old children familiar with the concept, and it continues being useful on a practical level today. All the molecular and cladistic advances have changed some of the details, primarily among relict basal groups, but the old distinction is still useful and unchanged in most cases. Whatever information we present must be understandable to the general reader.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 15:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I did get it that everyone loves monocots and dicots. That seems to be what has led to the current mess, and my inability to find an article about the monocots clade. And the rage against the IP for trying to write an article about the clade. It is too bad that the love of the concept kills the modern day taxonomy. It doesn't have to be that way. Or maybe it does, because every plant editor seems unwilling to clearly define the monocots in the monocotyledons article while simultaneously ignoring any problems readers have who want to learn about the monocots clade and also thinking that any attempt to define the clade is an attack upon the old concept. If it has to be defended so vigorously when it is not being attacked, something is wrong, and too bad for readers trying to grasp why cladograms saying monocots lead to an article about monocots sensu monocots and dicots with worthless comments about the clade and no explanation for why this single clade merits thousands of modern scholarly articles but nothing in Wikipedia. I wish there was a way to say, "Stop telling me how much you love monocots and dicots, that is not what this is about," but I already tried and failed. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 07:56, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

My frustration (and I'm sorry if it showed too much) is that I still really don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course we're not opposed to "modern day taxonomy" – all the plant taxoboxes use the modern APG III system. Of course the article about the monocots, whatever it's called, must explain the modern understanding of the group. What I don't understand – and clearly others don't either – is why you think there should be two articles about one topic. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:21, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't. Everyone here is obsessed with that. I think there should be an article on the monocots. There isn't. I tired to discuss that and failed, so I tried to make one at monocots because the monocotyledons article is incomprehensible. (Hard to understand why anyone loves that article.) Days of insanity and attacks later, I realize an article called monocots must fail because, and I guess here, after all, all of you are guessing my motives rather than working on articles or a solution, most of you are older and wedded to monocots and dicots. I just wanted to learn about APG clades. I could not become less interested in monocots and dicots after this experience, so, since that is the entire focus, outside of a few useless comments in the monocotyledons article, and since no one here cared about the articles enough to discuss them, I just picked one method of getting an article, a great textbook, a solidly referenced website, and writing it myself. Please get over attacking my attempts at fixing a problem none of you cared about. And you still don't care more about the problem than this stupid love of monocots and dicots and insistance there can be only one article when that article still does not exist. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 09:38, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I can't stand this anymore. I read an article in Science News about APG, and it made botany sound exciting. I read about how these scientists grouped orders in clades, and I started reading some Wikipedia articles about the different clades. The monocots were mentioned in the Science News article, and how excited the botanists were about this huge clade of plants. I tried to learn some more from Wikipedia, but all I got was confusion. When I tried to fix it ("Anyone can edit"), I got ignored, then bullied. Obviously botany is a closed group of practitioners, and I cannot believe that two weeks ago I was excited about it. Take this topic and shove it. I would rather read about anything than botany. 97.122.179.132 (talk) 09:48, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Copywrite issues regarding usage of official classifications

See the talk page at List of Narcissus horticultural divisions. Can using something like the widely cited RHS classification system be considered a copywrite violation? --Michael Goodyear (talk) 05:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

As I noted there, I think that the system can't be copyright, but the precise descriptions of the divisions probably are, unfortunately. This also causes problems elsewhere, e.g. in discussing the new RHS hardiness scale. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:12, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

This is listed at Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2014-11-05 and is seems likely to be deleted as an article if not amended. I'd suggest, at a minimum, to remove the descriptions under each heading or subheading where the text matches the text of the RHS who clearly claim copyright in the current version of the source document.--Melburnian (talk) 23:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

It has been amended which should fix the problem, and we had an expert look at it. I note the Spanish version did the same. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 23:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Panax vietnamensis

I'm wondering if anyone has some expertise on this species, a.k.a. Vietnamese ginseng. Recent edits to the article by 27.2.203.130 seem less than NPOV, to say the least, and at best needing cleanup. In particular it's the species authority that seems to be contentious. The authors, as listed prior to these recent edits, were as per WCSP and GRIN. There has been controversy about the authority, as mentioned here for example. But the Vietnamese Wikipedia species article (which the contributor cites), while alluding to the authority controversy, does list the taxobox authority as per WCSP and GRIN. The authority does seem settled even if not accepted by all.

I don't have any particular knowledge of the species myself and have read some of the Vietnamese Wikipedia article with the caveat of Google translation. I wanted to seek any expertise prior to any further reverts/cleanup. The species is an interesting one: endemic, endangered and has been investigated for some promising medicinal properties. Thanks, Declangi (talk) 09:39, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Re the authority, in Wikipedia we should follow reliable secondary sources. These are clear. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:37, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

[ec] I don't know the species or the region, but I might be able to comment on the nomenclature. Most of the facts surrounding the authority seems to be widely accepted. The name Panax vietnamensis was first (validly) published in a work by Ha and Grushvitzky in the Russian Botanicheskii Zhurnal in 1985; a 1973 publication by Đào Kim Long that included the name "Panax articulatus" did not satisfy the criteria of the Code in some way. (The en.wiki article, as it stands, claims that "Panax vietnamensis" was used in 1973, but that appears to be untrue; the article you linked to gives the 1973 name as "Panax articulatus". Neither IPNI nor The Plant List include "P. articulatus", and both ascribe P. vietnamensis to Ha & Grushv.) The only question is whether the 1985 paper mentions the earlier work, and ascribes the description of the taxon to it. If so, then "K.L. Dao ex Ha & Grushv." would be acceptable. If not, then the authority must be "Ha & Grushv.", even if the description is obviously based on the earlier work.

“ In determining the correct author citation, only internal evidence in the publication as a whole (as defined in Art. 37.5) where the name was validly published is to be accepted, including ascription of the name, statements in the introduction, title, or acknowledgements, and typographical or stylistic distinctions in the text. ” — ICN, Art. 46

To be sure, we would need to see the 1985 paper in full, and I have not been able to find a copy online. My understanding, based on reading the Code and a little experience, is that the part before the "ex" is optional, anyway; that is, citation as "P. vietnamensis Ha & Grushv." would not be incorrect even if those authors explicitly ascribe the name to an earlier invalid publication. Certainly, the current wording in the article is not appropriate for Wikipedia, as it is too polemical – stating what "must" be the case, rather than describing what reliable sources say. The majority of sources ascribe authorship to "Ha & Grushv.", and I think that our article should, too. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:44, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

None of the material added by the IP had reliable sources to the required standard of WP:RS, and the "medical" section was woefully short of WP:MEDRS. I've restored an earlier version and removed the "medical" material. There does need to be sourced material describing the ethnobotanical use of the plant. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Correct that the part before the "ex" is optional. I have seen secondary sources make serious mistakes, so in general I would consult more than one secondary source if possible. You can call them primary secondary sources and secondary secondary sources if you wish. Also, I skimmed the article in question and got the impression that much of it was written by someone to whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks to all of you. Peter, for your quick excision of this and other questionable material from the article. Stemonitis, for your detailed nomenclature analysis. Joseph, agreed that the article could use some cleanup. But at least it's now on a more neutral footing. Declangi (talk) 00:20, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Nuytsia floribunda or Nuytsia (genus)

plant in monotypic genus, but there is a journal. Question is what should be at what....discuss at species talk pageCas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

The burning bush

Dear WikiProject!
By the article Rubus ulmifolius subsp. sanctus this plant is the Moses's burning bush from the Bible. However, I heard a bush, which is in the Sinai peninsula, the berries of this bush are phosphorescent in the desert heat. Which is this phosphorescent bush? Doncsecz^talk 18:57, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Are you sure it was the berries that glow? Back in 1913 it was thought that there are no bioluminescent flowering plants (see this and the following page). Another plant called burning bush that grows in that area and emits volatile oils in hot weather is Dictamnus; the air above it can catch fire in special circumstances. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

The footnotes of my Bible (from 1998) refers to the berries (but the name of this bush not mentioned). Doncsecz^talk 19:55, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Identifying plants from pre-scientific literature, whether the Bible or classical Greek and Roman sources, is fraught with difficulty. Choices made by early translators are usually highly disputed. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I concur. The ancients did not leave herbarium specimens, so it is impossible to determine what plants they were discussing. Indeed, some of them were probably fictitious, made up to fit the stories. Look at the animals that the ancients mentioned: dragons, centaurs, unicorns, griffins, 3-headed dogs, etc.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 09:46, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The article does not say that it is Moses's burning bush. It says that a particular specimen is revered as such. That is a different, and potentially verifiable, claim. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:14, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Very good. Important distinction.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 21:34, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The article also claims that the longevity and location of the particular specimen known as the 'burning bush' has resulted in the species' scientific name, though the sources used are not botanical ones and only refer to "Rubus sanctus"; would it be better to try and clarify that information or just remove it, seeing as the sources seem a bit deficient? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

It's quitting time now, but tomorrow I can investigate and see if I can come up with some better sources.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 00:05, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Schreber's description of Rubus sanctus where he might perhaps have explained the reason for the name does not seem to be online. Perhaps someone has access to Icones et Descriptiones Plantarum Minus Cognitarum from 1766 in a library? (The Tropicos listing is here; IPNI has a typo in the name which I have reported to them.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:33, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I always assumed that by "burning bush" they meant "a bush that is burning," i.e., on fire.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 17:57, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Kaffir lime rename proposal

I've done some minor work on this article today. While there is good, even solid, evidence the origin of the name of this lime cultivar has nothing to do with Kaffir (ethnic slur), I propose we rename it to Makrut lime, which seems the next most common name. Makrut lime currently redirects to this article. HalfGig talk 22:43, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The article says it is actually Citrus hystrix, so it could be moved there, without resorting to second most common name due the racist name in many areas.--75.166.218.16 (talk) 23:39, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Help needed at Brachychiton rupestris

Melburnian and I are buffing this article up for GA/FA status - but would like some help in describing the floral anatomy in lay terms. I am still getting my head around flower parts! We haven't added much detail yet and the original paper (a monograph on Brachychiton by Gordon Guymer) is where the source material is. We have the paper and can email. Wondered what was easier - someone botanical to read and add or us to try and someone else correct. All input greatly appreciated. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:53, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Metrosideros excelsa → Pohutukawa

I have started a WP:Requested Move at Talk:Metrosideros_excelsa that may be of interest to editors here. Stuartyeates (talk)

Archive this/ Plantdrew (talk) 23:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Flora of Mesoamerica

May I suggest the need for a "Flora of Mesoamerica" category? I have run across hundreds of species and genera with ranges that straddle the border between Mexico and Guatemala, yet under the rules as understand them, such genera need to get kicked up to the "Flora of North America" category. A Mesoamerican category encompassing Mexico and Central America would be very useful. Incidentally, I poked around the category listings. The "Flora of Central America" category is listed as a subcategory of the "Flora of North America" category, yet the definition of the term "Central America" says that it is "a portion of South America that includes ..." Which is it? North America or South America? I was taught in school that Central America is part of North America, although I learned many years later that Panama was historically South American. It was for centuries part of Nueva Grenada/Colombia until it became independent in 1905. The other parts of Central America were part of Nueva España/México in colonial times. But I digress. I certainly think we could gain by having a "Flora of Mesoamerica" category.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 16:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I find the usage of "North America" in discussing plant distributions in Wikipedia confusing/confused. I expect "North America" to refer to the North American continent, "South America" to the South American continent, not a unit determined by a political boundary. So "Central America" (Guatemala to Panama) is, for me, clearly part of North America. The TDWG geographical codes for botanical recording, used by WCSP, etc., refer to "Northern America" (from 70 Subarctic America to 79 Mexico inclusive) and "Southern America" (80 Central America to 85 Southern South America inclusive). A problem is that databases like WCSP use the abbreviation "N. America" which (presumably) means the TDWG's "Northern America" not the continent of North America, or the politically defined "North America" which is where the gringos live. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. The "Category:Flora of Central America" page does say "South America" not "Southern America." People on both continents use "Latin America" to mean everything from Mexico to Argentina. Indeed, there are hundreds of species with ranges going from southern Mexico into Colombia and beyond. None of the political boundaries in the region is an ecological boundary. Same is true of the US/Mexican border. The term "Neotropics" is very useful in formal botanical writings, but this is a term unknown to many laypeople.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 17:54, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we need more categories. We have plenty. If the distribution of a species could accurately be described by inclusion in the regional Category:Flora of Central America (i.e. the range extends to nearly all country subcategories in that region), then place it there. If it also happens to extend into one or two other nearby countries outside of Central America, then use those individual country categories in addition to the regional one. (Note that Category:Flora of Mexico is also subdivided into regions.) This way, ideally, flora articles will never have more than a handful of distribution categories. Since you're dealing with Central American flora that happen to also exist in Mexico, you could just use two: Category:Flora of Central America and Category:Flora of Mexico (or one or two regional Mexican categories if it's just southern Mexico). Rkitko ^(talk) 22:53, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

No. I think it's relevant to point out that even the guys who designed the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions didn't manage to justify maintaining that as a separate region and eliminated it (I'm temtped to say "with extreme prejudice") in the second edition. It was just way too much trouble for everyone involved, and I think if people who design systems specifically for plants find that term too much trouble, that's a damn good reason to stay away from it! Circéus (talk) 02:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

We discussed some time ago at great length the issue of putting a page in more than one geographic category. Consensus was that this should done with specific pages but not with generic pages. A genus with two populations, one in Chiapas, the other in Guatemala, must go the the Flora of North America category, according to what I was told.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 03:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Although I agree with Circéus, in practice what any of us think is irrelevant, since NotWith runs around adding categories completely uninterested in what any other editors think. (Currently he or she seems to be working on animal articles, but doubtless will be back to plants.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I approve of the defeatist attitude implicit in this last comment. If an editor is making unhelpful edits, then they should be encouraged (later, forced, if necessary) to stop. The fact that the edits are to categories shouldn't mean that we treat them any differently to edits to the prose content of articles. I think the members of the project could agree a strict (perhaps even over-strict initially) set of rules for the categorisation of plant distributions, based on existing good practice among phytogeographers. Any editor who undermines that system could then be made aware of the consensus view, and if they still can't abide by that, then they can be subjected to sanctions. There is evidently a need for good geographical categorisation of plant articles, and the actions of one or a few maverick editors shouldn't be able to change that. I suggest we find a wording that we can all agree on, and stick to that. It almost doesn't matter what the rules are that we come up with, as long as we agree on something. The system could always be amended at a later date. To get the ball rolling, I will suggest the following:

Where the subject of an article is present in four or more subunits of a phytogeographical entity, it should be classified only in the parent unit, and not in any of the daughter units. Thus, a plant growing in Spain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands would be categorised only in Category:Flora of Europe; a plant growing in four of more states of Mexico, as well as parts of the south-western United States would be categorised in Category:Flora of Mexico, Category:Flora of Arizona and Category:Flora of California only. A plant found in France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria would appear in all five national categories, because they comprise three subunits of Europe and two subunits of Africa.

I think having a hard-and-fast limit (e.g. up to 3 subunits, as in my proposed text) is a good idea at this point, rather then woollier wording such as "a significant number of subunits", because it removes the scope for alternative interpretations. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Are you proposing that this same criterion be applied equally to generic and specific pages?Joseph Laferriere (talk) 10:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure; I'm undecided on the value of classifying higher ranks geographically. I can see some cases where that would make sense – perhaps only narrow endemics such as Grubbiaceae – but I'm not sure I would want it applied to all families, many of which have very broad distributions. Perhaps it would still work, though. Any taxon at any rank present in four or more top-level phytogeographical entities (biomes? ecozones? continents?) would be left uncategorised, unless the distribution is broad enough to warrant inclusion in Category:Cosmopolitan species. That last category might not be a good idea, and it's hardly used at the moment. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Merging Sterculiaceae and Sterculioideae?

These articles should be merged I suspect....but with the subfamily the target/consensus name....? I will add a merge template on them and folks can discuss there.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

No. The old Sterculiaceae is not coterminous with the modern Sterculioideae - see the green (Sterculiaceae) and cyan (Byttneriaceae) here for an overview of how the relevant taxa have been divided in the past. What are more or less equivalent are Sterculioideae and Sterculieae. Lavateraguy (talk) 23:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015

Hi there; this is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2015 WikiCup will begin on January 1st. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. At the time of writing, more than fifty users have signed up to take part in the competition; interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! Miyagawa (talk) 21:51, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Parnassia

Could a knowledgeable person please have a look at the recent change to Parnassia where the APG classification differs from that used by a USDA site and Flora of Missouri? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I reverted the change the IP editor made. The USDA PLANTS site is notoriously outdated and whatever relationship Parnassia ends up having, it will not be in the Saxifragaceae. The APG website notes that currently it's not clear whether Parnassia and Lepuropetalum are sister to the remaining Celastraceae, but if they are, it's likely that Parnassiaceae will be resurrected. For now, though, it appears that they remain in Celastraceae. Rkitko ^(talk) 22:57, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Kew Glossary

Does anyone know what happened to the Kew online Glossary? At first I thought it was just a temporary technical glitch, but it seems to have become a permanent deletion from their website, resulting in numerous deadlinks on WP. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to have gone. I suspect Kew is keen on selling the paper copy. (Having paid for it myself, I'm less bothered about its disappearance online!) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:10, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

It looks as if the internet archive captured a fair bit of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20131205103627/http://www.kew.org/Glossary/index.htm. Rkitko ^(talk) 17:05, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I am happy to pay for it but that is not much help in directing our readers' attention to it for further information. Fortunately there are a number of other sources, many of which I have listed in the two glossary pages on this project. All the same taking it down seems to run contrary to the current emphasis on open sourcing in science, of which we are a part. Or - who owns knowledge? --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:22, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Citation error messages

The error checking in the various cite/citation templates has been dramatically tightened recently. The result is that many articles, including plant articles, now have the references section sprinkled with red error messages. Some problems I've noticed where I've managed to work out the cause of the "error" include the following. (In every case the second example used to be ok.) I've noted them here in case it may be helpful to others.

• Open-ended dates, such as the APweb's recommended citation as "Stevens (2001 onwards)", are not accepted. Along with other plant editors I've been using such dates for APweb, the online Flora of North America, the online Flora of China, etc. where the precise date of the version consulted isn't easily determined (if it can be at all). It's still not clear to me how best to fix such "errors".
• Additional information in dates isn't allowed. So something like "(1896, reprinted 1980)" will generate an error message. Such "dates" are not uncommon when old botanical works are cited. You have to use something like |date=1980 |origyear=first published 1896:

{{cite book |last=Smith |title=Ancient work |date=1980 |origyear=first published 1896}} → Smith (1980) [first published 1896]. Ancient work.

{{cite book |last=Smith |title=Ancient work |date=1896, reprinted 1980}} → Smith (1896, reprinted 1980). Ancient work. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• Web citations can no longer use |contribution= or |chapter= or similar parameters. Basically you have to use |title= for the contribution/web page and |work= for the web site:

{{cite web |title=''Hyacinthus orientalis'' |work=The Plant List |url=http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/kew-278658}} → "Hyacinthus orientalis". The Plant List.

{{cite web |contribution=''Hyacinthus orientalis'' |title=The Plant List |contribution-url=http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/kew-278658}} → "The Plant List". {{cite web}}: |contribution= ignored (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)

Citations of online databases like WCSP, TPL, Tropicos, APNI, etc. often seem to be falling foul of this "error".

• Conference citations can't have |title= without |conference=:

{{cite conference |first1=Adrienne S. |last1=Markey |first2=Byron B. |last2=Lamont |year=1996 |title=Why do some banksias have green nectar? |conference=International Symposium on the Biology of Proteaceae}} → Markey, Adrienne S.; Lamont, Byron B. (1996). Why do some banksias have green nectar?. International Symposium on the Biology of Proteaceae.

{{cite conference |first1=Adrienne S. |last1=Markey |first2=Byron B. |last2=Lamont |year=1996 |title=Why do some banksias have green nectar? |booktitle=Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Biology of Proteaceae}} → Markey, Adrienne S.; Lamont, Byron B. (1996). "Why do some banksias have green nectar?". Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Biology of Proteaceae. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

A significant number of the FA Banksia articles seem to generate this "error" message. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:45, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

damn.....sigh...time to go check....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:40, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

It don't like wikilinks in titles neither guv'nor....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:43, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The reason that happened Cas, was because in this {{Cite book … template they have made the url= parameter link URL value strictly only to provide the link for the title= parameter (and work= ?) value text and the chapter-url=/section-url=/contribution–url= parameter link URL strictly only to provide the link for the chapter=/section=/contribution= parameter value text. Thus the url= parameter link URL value is no longer allowed to default to link to that chapter=/section=/contribution= parameter text if the chapter-url=/section-url=/contribution–url= parameter is absent. Therefore it links the URL only with the title= parameter value text which previously did not have the link URL associated with it and so conflicts with the hitherto perfectly fine wikilink. Same troubles have been made with many plant articles i have extensively edited and really carefully cited sources in. In the {{Cite web … template they have completely sunk the chapter=/section=/contribution= parameter. Superficial, simplistic, touristic, takes, lacking enough understanding of citations, have no place in citation template editing. No wonder, non-superficial, many scholars, scientists and biological–informatics professional computer coders don’t bother with engaging to any depth with WP any more. --Macropneuma 00:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Cas, Fixed that one of your articles’ examples (—was due to flow on effects of changes in {{Cite book template coding, in this case particularly the strict treatment of parameters url= vs. contribution-url=). --Macropneuma 01:13, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

sigh - I scanned through the articles today - I didn't see many of those red parameters. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:44, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

@Casliber: one issue I think Macropneuma is talking about doesn't show up as a red "error" message. If a chapter/section/contribution parameter and a title parameter are present, there's no red message but the |url= link now attaches to the title. So in the following example it's now the title that gets linked, whereas before it was the chapter (to check on changes use {{cite compare|mode=XXX in place of {{cite XXX):

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter=Chapter|date=2014|last=Smith|title=Title|url=http://www.somebook.com/chapter}}
Live	Smith (2014). "Chapter". Title.
Sandbox	Smith (2014). "Chapter". Title.

This isn't, I suppose, too serious, because the correct link is still there, but it's annoying if, as Macropneuma says, you've carefully crafted citations to link the chapter/contribution/section in a way that used to work. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

It's very annoying, tending to reduce the elegance of the citations and likely to cause a reader not to bother to look at them, I think. For those that I've looked at, converting url= to chapter-url= has been hard to automate. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:07, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

WHY DEY DO DIS?! This is going to break a lot of things. :/ -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 03:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Why is a question you'd have to ask those concerned at Help talk:Citation Style 1, which seems to be the main forum at present. Personally I think there is a laudable desire to ensure good quality citations by error-checking them, but that it has been implemented without sufficient attention to the messy reality of real citations and without acceptance of the need to retain consistency of behaviour.

The number of pages with broken citations can be seen at Category:CS1_errors; for example about 50,000 for date formats when I looked. Some can be fixed by a bot (and there are/will be bots running), but others depend on knowing the intention and when the citation was created so can only be fixed by an editor. Some, such as date formats no longer accepted, may require converting the citation from a template to plain text, which seems a step backwards to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I noticed the date errors earlier when I was writing new articles, but didn't know |url= was also affected. I've checked my reference-heavy articles and so far, nothing has broken visibly (with red warnings). Aside of course, from the |url= fields now linking solely to the title for books rather than chapter/article when specified. I can live with that, I guess. Still it's a bit unnecessarily arcane imo.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 12:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Are you saying they made these changes retroactively, creating errors in pages that had no errors under the old system? Usually when an outfit changes rules like that, they include a grandfather clause exempting things already in existence. (or is the term "grandfathering" an Americanism? It stems from some US states attempting to deny certain people the right to vote by passing laws saying "If your grandfather could not vote, you cannot vote." This was an attempt by states to circumvent Federal civil rights legislation. It did not work; the courts voided all these grandfather laws.)Joseph Laferriere (talk) 13:07, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Templates are expanded each time a page needs refreshing, so when you look at any page, new or old, the text produced by templates in the wikisource will be as per the latest version of the template, not the version of the template that was in existence when it was added to the page. So, yes, all the recent changes are retroactive. Some citations which worked previously now produce errors. For example, there's a red error message in the last reference at the previous version of Banksia brownii (a featured article) which wasn't there before the recent template changes – it would never have got through an FA review! (I've corrected the "error" in the latest version.)

I actually find the transfer of the link from the chapter/contribution to the title more annoying since this happens silently and so is hard to locate and correct. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

In one case for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, I've just removed the year entirely since the title was given as "Angiosperm Phylogeny Website Version 7 May 2006" and I thought it a misrepresentation to also have 2001 after another editor removed the "onwards" to get rid of the error message. The date as it appears on the main page is not always transcribed to wikipedia, but I thought it a good idea to have that, so that there is a record of when the page was accessed. What do others think about removing the year from "Stevens, P. F. (2001)" if the version date is used? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Example: {{Cite web | url= http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/APweb/orders/austrobaileyalesweb.htm#Austrobaileyaceae | last1= Stevens | first1= Peter F. | orig-year= 2001 onwards | date= Sep 2013 | title= Angiosperm Phylogeny Website – Austrobaileyaceae | version= Version 13, 28 Sep 2013 with updates | accessdate= 7 Dec 2014 }} —--Macropneuma 21:02, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Refer to the now current version 13 described you can see by scrolling to the bottom of the versions descriptions here. It’s simply that they haven’t yet updated the example of how to cite APweb, from version 12 to the current version 13. --Macropneuma 21:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh. A pity we can't fix that for them. So to reword: Do people think it is better to have at Fabaceae, a citation

• "Stevens, P. F. "Fabaceae". Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 7 May 2006. Retrieved 28 April 2008." or to have
• "Stevens, P. F. (2001). "Fabaceae". Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 7 May 2006. Retrieved 28 April 2008.", i.e. with an incorrect date, such as is happening when "onwards" is removed en masse from many pages (putting aside the matter of updating the accessdate and version number while making this correction)?

Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Simply removing "onwards", leaving "2001", gives a completely wrong date, so this is the worst 'correction'.

Citing a particular version of a continuously updated website also seems problematic to me unless you archive the version so that the url points to that version. Otherwise the url points to the latest version which may or may not be the version stated in the citation, which is surely misleading.

Personally I prefer Stevens' own version "2001 onwards", so currently I convert the template to plain text. If you want to use the template, then perhaps just remove the date altogether? The accessdate parameter gives the really important information. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes I notice many pages I have worked on now littered in red ink. I will need to rethink the way I cite many standard authorities. Stevens is an obvious example. Many sites including Stevens suggest 'how to cite us', some even mentioning WP, but often that does not work in the current CS era. One just has to experiment till the red ink goes away. I tend to use the date on the version that I used when I cited it. Of course all this CS problem would go away if the citation templates were updated to include such examples. adding ref=harv, and ref={{harvid}} would be a big help too. Many of the examples here are still not offered in the citation dialogue box and have to be added after inserting. I generally get around the chapter issue by placing the book in ==Bibliography== with ref=harv, and citing it as {{sfn|author|year|loc=[url chapter title]}} etc. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:45, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what's going on, but someone has just gone through List of sequenced plastomes‎ and replaced cite templates by vcite templates. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Study Request

Hello Wikipedians of WikiProject Plants!

We’d like to invite you to participate in a study that aims to explore how WikiProject members coordinate activities of distributed group members to complete project goals. We are specifically seeking to talk to people who have been active in at least one WikiProject in their time in Wikipedia. Compensation will be provided to each participant in the form of a $10 Amazon gift card.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the coordination practices of Wikipedians active within WikiProjects, and to explore the potential for tool-mediated coordination to improve those practices. Interviews will be semi-structured, and should last between 45-60 minutes. If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment for the online chat session. During the appointment you will be asked some basic questions about your experience interacting in WikiProjects, how that process has worked for you in the past and what ideas you might have to improve the future.

You must be over 18 years old, speak English, and you must currently be or have been at one time an active member of a WikiProject. The interview can be conducted over an audio chatting channel such as Skype or Google Hangouts, or via an instant messaging client. If you have questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Michael Gilbert at (206) 354-3741 or by email at mdg@uw.edu.

We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email.

Thank you! PanicSA (talk) 03:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The relevant research page can be found at meta:Research:Means_and_methods_of_coordination_in_WikiProjects Md gilbert (talk) 00:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Saussurea lappa

Saussurea lappa could use a looking over by a plant-interested editor. MicroPaLeo (talk) 08:58, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

It appears to be a copyvio (unless it has been legitimately copied, but even then the source should have been cited). The 2nd paragraph and the first half of the 3rd paragraph is found elsewhere with an apparent date of March 2000, and the list of constituents in the 3rd paragraph occurs in a forum posting (otherwise in Cyrillic script) from 2011. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:25, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I have been categorizing Pakistani villages. I was in too much pain to even read it. I might make a taxonomic box and write asentence or two when I recover, but what is done with the copyrighted text?.MicroPaLeo (talk) 18:08, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Just delete it. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:01, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The text or the article? (I was of adding the db-copyvio rapid deletion template.) Lavateraguy (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

It's a synonym of Saussurea costus, according to The Plant List.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 22:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The Plant List has a homonymous Sassurea lappa. According to TPL "Saussurea lappa (Decne.) Sch.Bip. is a synonym of Saussurea costus (Falc.) Lipsch." However, "Saussurea lappa (Decne.) C.B.Clarke is a synonym of Aucklandia lappa DC." If I search Google for "Saussurea lappa", I get many hits for a plant used in South Asian medicine. I haven't yet found confirmation, but I strongly suspect that C.B.Clarke's (1876 publication) of Saussurea lappa is the widely cited medicinal plant, and Sch.Bip.'s (1846 publication) is perhaps a different entity (probably synonymous with S. costus). Plantdrew (talk) 04:52, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

They're all the same, IMO, just a question of which combination to follow. IPNI lists Saussurea lappa (Decne.) C.B.Clarke and Saussurea lappa (Decne.) Sch.Bip. as isonyms. GRIN also identifies Saussurea lappa (Decne.) C. B. Clarke as a junior synonym of Aucklandia costus Falc., which in turn it lists as a homotypic synonym of Saussurea costus (Falc.) Lipsch.

I do not know whether we should use Saussurea or Aucklandia however, or whether to use lappa or costus at that. Both Flora of China (genus status explained in link) and Tropicos seem to favor a separate (monospecific) genus Aucklandia (albeit confusingly so, since the former recognizes Aucklandia lappa, the latter Aucklandia costus, but not both), while others like CITES Appendix, the University of Melbourne's Sorting Saussurea names, and the aforementioned TPL and GRIN prefer Saussurea costus. They do undoubtedly refer to the same medicinal plant though. As searching for S. costus (or both names together) gives you the same results of the plant known as "costus" widely used in ancient traditional medicine (not only in S. Asia, but including Europe, the Middle East, and China) and being imported from India/the Himalayas. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 07:50, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Most written about plant species, now with possibilities

Ok I've stuck with plants because the people in this WikiProject have been so responsive. I have attempted to detect "redirects with possibilities". It's not a proper audit of the category just yet (Sorry, Plantdrew). I was just hoping it might grow the list a bit. It hasn't. Only 4 of the first 1000 missing links were ones the script found to be "with possibilities" (that is, with the same article for both the genus and species while not being monotypic). Of those four, 2 were false positives, and none of them were simply species redirecting to their genus (the main thing I expected to find).

Cananga odorata (ylang-ylang) is the first reasonable find in the "possibility" camp. Wikipedia makes it look like it's monophyletic, but it shares a genus with Cananga brandisiana (Pierre) I. M. Turner, or at least it does according to Catalogue of Life and NCBI classifications. Several other taxonomy lists don't mention this sister species[1]. Seems like something worth looking into and discussing though, and perhaps mentioning in the article if it's worthwhile.

Aethusa cynapium (Fool's parsley) is similarly monotypic according to Wikipedia and several other authorities[2], but according to the catalogue Aethusa has 18 species. Sicana and Aeginetia also may or may not be monotypic.

Some lists are padded with synonyms. I think that you've found one of them - several of the names there are synonyms of well known plants in other genera. Euro+Med only recognises 1 species, but there could be others outside its scope. ThePlantList only recognises the one species, and has a similar list of names classified as synonyms. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:09, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The script got some slightly helpful false positives: Aegle marmelos and Euryale ferox both belong to monotypic plant genera, but my script flagged them as having "possibilities". Why did it think Aegle and Euryale contained more than one species? Because they definitely do. There are several Aegle moths and a few Euryale echinoderms. I forgot to force the searches to be in the plant kingdom. The false positive is helpful though, as it points out that Aegle (genus) and Euryale (genus) should be changed into disambig pages. I might search for conflicting kingdom issues more explicitly next time (or another time).

I still have some bugs to sort out with how the script handles redirects and synonyms and kingdoms and finds the genus from a species, and it probably has some false negatives (missing items)... but for now here's an updated and extended list of top 20 most written about plant binomial names that we don't have articles/redirects for:

1. Aegle marmelos, Aegle - bengal quince (Rutaceae, Sapindales) Aegle (genus) (fixed)
2. Dolichos biflorus (synonym) = Macrotyloma uniflorum, Macrotyloma - horse gram (Fabaceae, Fabales)
3. Pseudotsuga taxifolia (synonym) = Douglas fir (not found) – see below for comments
4. Scirpus lacustris (synonym) = Schoenoplectus lacustris, Schoenoplectus (Cyperaceae, Poales)
5. Larrea divaricata, Larrea (Zygophyllaceae, Zygophyllales)
6. Hordeum spontaneum, Hordeum (Poaceae, Poales)
7. Begonia semperflorens (synonym) = Begonia cucullata, Begonia - clubed begonia (Begoniaceae, Cucurbitales)
8. Cananga odorata, Cananga - cananga (Annonaceae, Magnoliales) -- monotypic? or shares genus with Cananga brandisiana ?
9. Digitaria decumbens (synonym) = [[ ]] (not found)

   == Digitaria eriantha subsp. pentzii (fide TPL)

10. Phaseolus multiflorus (synonym) = Phaseolus coccineus, Phaseolus - runner bean (Fabaceae, Fabales)
11. Pisum arvense (synonym) = [[ ]] (not found)

    == Pisum sativum (fodder/green manure varieties) Lavateraguy (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

12. Pteris aquilina (synonym) = [[ ]] (not found)

    == Pteridium aquilinum Lavateraguy (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

13. Fontinalis antipyretica, Fontinalis - antifever fontinalis moss (Fontinalaceae, Isobryales)
14. Rhus vernicifera (synonym) = Toxicodendron vernicifluum, Toxicodendron (Anacardiaceae, Sapindales)
15. Spartina townsendii, Spartina (Poaceae, Poales)

    == Spartina × townsendii, which redirects to the tetraploid Spartina anglica Lavateraguy (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

16. Chrysanthemum maximum (provisionally_accepted_name).

    == Leucanthemum maximum Lavateraguy (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

17. Lolium rigidum, Lolium (Poaceae, Poales)
18. Stipa comata, Stipa (Poaceae, Poales)
19. Haplopappus gracilis (synonym) = Xanthisma gracile (provisionally_accepted_name).
20. Brachiaria mutica, Brachiaria (Poaceae, Poales)

more: The top 1000

edit: note, each of these 20 binomial names are found in at least 702 books or volumes (published between 1950 and 2008), and as far as scientific names in books go, they are all in the top 0.2% most common.

—Pengo 05:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Funny, I have ylang ylang growing in my garden.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:26, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, Ian Turner is active since the 1990s, last I checked at the National University of Singapore. So this Cananga species isn't an old name...it's possible that our article is older than the species description. (We've been around a long time now!) There are plenty of cases where one author, who's probably the only one who has really looked at variation in the field recognizes a species as distinct, while everyone else, working mostly from herbarium material, does not. That doesn't mean the lone dissenter is right, but systematics is a conservative field, and tropical plant systematics heavily weighted towards people working in large herbaria and away from people who are field biologists working out of smaller, local herbaria, located in the tropics. Guettarda (talk) 05:55, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Fantastic work. I'm about to head to bed and will have minimal internet access for the next few days, but I'll see what I can do with these when I'm back on-line. Plantdrew (talk) 06:33, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Cananga looks a bit messy. IPNI has 16 species names for the genus, (at least) one of which applies to Canaga Aubl. nom. rej.. TPL has 5 names, 4 accepted, and Aublet's unresolved. But of the 4 accepted names, one looks very like an orthographic variant, and elsewhere brandisiana and latifolia are treated as synonyms. It looks to me as if the differences of opinion are over whether odorata and brandisiana are congeneric, rather than over whether they are distinct.

Turner's article is present in archive.org Lavateraguy (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

PS: Neotropical species in Cananga probably related to Cananga Aubl. and are now placed in Guatteria. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:07, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I propose working on an article on Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum in my sandbox rather than Hordeum spontaneum. Any comments as to which would be the better name to use? Or should I just call it "Wild barley"? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Hordeum spontaneum is what WCSP uses, with H. v. subsp. spontaneum as a synonym. Definitely not the English name, please!

P.S. nice work on Sterculia urens. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Pseudotsuga taxifolia

This is a synonym of Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii, which is discussed at Douglas fir, an article about the species as a whole. There isn't currently a list of synonyms at this article. It's a little difficult to provide in the taxobox, since P. menziesii itself has only one synonym according to WCSP, whereas P. m. var. menziesii has a very long list as does P. m. var. glauca. I wonder if it would be better to split the article into two (although I guess there will then be another interminable argument about whether to use the scientific or English names). Any views? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a mess, as the Rocky Mountain subspecies has its own article. Using common names always creates more problems than it is worth. I know gymnosperms well, but I am not a plant taxonomist. I could write a good article or contribute to one, but only after the discussion about taxonomy and names, which I could not participate in. Major tree, though, shame. MicroPaLeo (talk) 19:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's a mess, and yes, using common names almost always creates more problems than it solves. Maybe the answer is to have three articles: a brief one on the species, and one each on the vars? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Each variety merits its own article, the species article would be a good place to wax taxonomic on the naming and lumping and splitting, as most of the synonyms were applied to the species or incorrectly to one of the varieties due to priorities. MicroPaLeo (talk) 19:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Category:Orchids of Austria and other European flora categories at CfD

This CfD -- Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 26#Category:Orchids of Austria -- proposes upmerging the "Orchids of COUNTRY" categories to Category:Orchids of Europe and may be of interest to some editors here. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 23:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Most written about plants we don't have

I've generated a list of plant binomial names which appear most commonly in books but don't have entries in Wikipedia.

1. Nicotiana glutinosa (Solanaceae, Solanales) -- tobacco. Nicotiana
2. Scirpus lacustris (synonym) = Schoenoplectus lacustris (Cyperaceae, Poales) - Scirpus
3. Larrea divaricata (Zygophyllaceae, Zygophyllales) - Larrea
4. Begonia semperflorens (synonym) = Begonia cucullata - clubed begonia (Begoniaceae, Cucurbitales) - Begonia
5. Nicotiana plumbaginifolia - Tex-Mex tobacco (Solanaceae, Solanales) - Nicotiana
6. Pelargonium zonale - Horseshoe geranium (Geraniaceae, Geraniales) - Pelargonium
7. Cola nitida - Großer Kolabaum (Malvaceae, Malvales) - Cola (plant)
8. Sterculia urens (Malvaceae, Malvales) - Sterculia – please see below

Data sources are Google ngram's English corpus and the Catalogue of Life.

—Pengo 23:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Um... Google's ngrams need interpreting with care. My impression, for example, is that most references to Pelargonium zonale are not to the species but to Pelargonium Zonal Group a.k.a. Pelargonium × hortorum. I'm not sure that we need a separate article in addition to the pretty full account at Pelargonium#Zonal_Pelargoniums (Pelargonium × hortorum). The true Pelargonium zonale could certainly have an article, but not because of Google ngrams. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:38, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably but N. glutinosa and C. nitida were useful to call attention to. MicroPaLeo (talk) 10:47, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, don't misunderstand me: all were well worth calling attention to. We need to make sure that readers can find likely common search terms. It's just that sometimes it's hard to see quite how to do it best. Given that most readers who search for "Pelargonium zonale" should probably end up at the section I referred to, an article on the true species, even a stub, with a hatnote directing to the cultivar group would be a step forward. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:18, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, please don't take the results as gospel, it's just to help find species that have been missed. It's heavily skewed towards organisms used in research more than anything else. However note that the search was not fuzzy at all and required the correct capitalization (e.g. "Pelargonium zonale" had to be written like that). The search includes all books since 1950, so it includes obsolete uses when there have been changes to the taxonomy. (Perhaps why Pelargonium zonale mentions have fallen since the 70s?). A quick search on google books will give you an idea how the species name has been used though. From a quick scan, it looks to me like most mentions are referring Pelargonium zonale as if it is the actual species they mean though. It seems to have been popular as a model organism? Whatever the case, something to help people work out what it means (and what it meant) would be good. —Pengo 12:21, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I was looking to add language links to the new article, but pl:Pelargonium zonale on Polish Wiki redirects to a page explicitly about Pelargonium × hortorum, and I'm not sure about the other languages, but it looks like a mix (no pun intended). Might be worth trying to separate out the two concepts on Wikidata (Q3898877) too? —Pengo 22:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this list together Pengo. There are some other commonly written about plants without articles that don't show up on the above list because they exist as redirects on Wikipedia. I've been putting these in Category:Plants redirects with possibilities. Some of the most notable are Panax ginseng, Corchorus olitorius, Corchorus capsularis, Helleborus orientalis (done), and Zizania palustris. Plantdrew (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Very nice! Yes, I've only listed actual red links. I was considering automating a check for redirects, but then I'd also want to check for a monotypic genus, and I thought I'd just share the simple list as is before attempting to do something more complicated. —Pengo 21:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

If you could do an automatic check for binomials redirecting to genera, it would be wonderful. I think we've got a pretty good portion of the plant species redirecting to monotypic genera already placed in Category:Redirects to monotypic taxa. And any that aren't yet in that category should be, so as long as you can exclude the current members of the categories ("to monotypic" and "with possibilities") it would be very useful to have a list of binomials redirecting to genera. I suppose some fossil species redirecting to genera would turn up as well, but I don't think there would be too many of these. I'd be quite happy to work on categorizing the uncategorized monotypic redirects if I had a list of them. Plantdrew (talk) 22:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Sterculia urens

An article has been created under this name, but according to The Plant List, based on Tropicos, it's a synonym of Firmiana simplex on which there was already an article. Is there any reason why the newly created article can't be replaced by a redirect? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't look like the same species to me. F. simplex has the common name "Chinese parasol tree" whereas S urens is native to India and does not have that common name, see this page. In creating the article, I was only responding to the request above. I am happy to leave someone else to make taxonomic decisions. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:16, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

What often happens is that two species names are created by botanists in different countries with, naturally, different distributions and common names, but it then turns out that they are the same species. I'm inclined to accept Tropicos/TPL, but it would be good to find other sources if available. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:26, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

When I studied this some years ago I concluded that Sterculia urens was an accepted species, based on a Laos checklist. Flora of Pakistan (EFloras) says Sterculia urens sensu Qureshi & Saeed = Firmiana simplex (Linn.) W.F. Wight, which implies that the name has been misapplied to Firmiana simplex, rather than representing the same species. TPL is inconsistent - it also recognises Kavalama urens for which Sterculia urens is the basionym - based on Tropicos, but Tropicos is silent on the status of Kavalama urens.

The Flora of Pakistan would seem to qualify as a reliable source that Sterculia urens and Firmiana simplex are different species. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:40, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Kinda disturbing that they're in different genera. What we need is a monograph of the Sterculiaceae...oh, wait, that family doesn't exist any more. I'd say make sure that the opinions (for and against) are documented in both articles. Guettarda (talk) 16:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Firmiana is a segregate of Sterculia, which has been intermittently recognised, so the fact that they're in different genera is neither here nor there. Sterculia platanifolia is the common synonym of Firmiana simplex in Sterculia, but there are others (see, for example, Flora of China). The only opinion we've seen for them being synonyms is Tropicos, and that looks like a mistranscription (losing the sensu) from Flora of Pakistan. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I get that. But the point is that I would feel a lot more comfortable if the issue was between Firmiana simplex and Firmiana urens rather than F. simplex and S. urens. The fact that no one is calling it F. urens suggests that either no one has done anything on the species recently, or that it's passively accepted as a synonym. Guettarda (talk) 17:08, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Firmiana simplex comes from it being originally described as Hibiscus simplex (a rather drastic error by Linnaeus). It was then redescribed as Sterculia platanifolia by his son, and renamed Firmiana platanifolia when segregated. The name Firmiana simplex was introduced when it was realized that Hibiscus simplex and Sterculia platanifolia represented the same species, and the former had priority. The fact that no-one is calling it F. urens is equally compatible with it not being a synonym, but a different plant that no-one thinks is a Firmiana. What it looks like to me is that neither Sterculia urens nor Firmiana simplex is native to the Peshewar area, and the authors of a flora of that area misidentified cultivated or naturalised plants of Firmiana simplex as Sterculia urens, said misidentification subsequently being reported in Flora of Pakistan. But one can't be certain without reference to the source documents.

IIRC, the key characters separating Firmiana and Sterculia are fruit characters - Flora of China says Fruit leathery, rarely woody, dehiscent when mature (Sterculia) vs Fruit membranous, dehiscent before maturity and foliaceous (Firmiana). What I recall is that Firmiana has the seeds attached to the sutures, but Sterculia has then attached to the carpel walls. Good photographs of Sterculia urens fruits don't seem to be available, but they are described as being orange to red when mature - this doesn't match the green ageing brown of the fruits of Firmiana simplex.

That one local flora misapplied the name Sterculia urens doesn't strike me as WP:NOTABLE Lavateraguy (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Can I just say, Lavateraguy, those first three sentencesare a great description of naming and renaming, misidentification and priority. I'd love if more articles would complement their lists of synonyms with prose similar to this in their taxonomy sections. —Pengo 01:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

A monograph of Sterculioideae would do the trick, but that doesn't exist either - there's Guymer's monograph on Brachychiton and monographs on several genera by Kostermanns. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

You're a Malv guy, aren't you? Get to work writing that monograph! ;) Guettarda (talk) 17:09, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I haven't yet managed to complete The World Checklist of Malvaceae, never mind anything else. (And the top thing on my plate is to rework my writings on Malva (including Lavatera)). Lavateraguy (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok, here's my take on where we are:

• The descriptions of Fermiana simplex in the Flora of China and the Flora of Pakistan appear to be of the same species, given the different level of detail in the two sources.
• The description of Sterculia urens in the source used for the article, namely India Biodiversity Portal does not appear to be of the same species as F. simplex in the Flora of China and the Flora of Pakistan. For example the fruit is described as "aggregate of 4-6 follicles, red, densely pubescent, mixed with stinging hairs" (hence presumably the specific epithet urens) whereas F. simplex is said to have "Follicle membranous ... abaxially puberulent or nearly glabrous".

So it does seem that the Tropicos and hence TPL identification of the two species as synonymous is, as Lavateraguy noted, based on a misreading of the Flora of Pakistan, which does not say that the two species are synonymous but that Qureshi & Saeed misidentified F. simplex as S. urens. Hence we should have two articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Brachychiton rupestris is at FAC...

and things are a bit slow. All comments from plant editors gratefully appreciated :) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:53, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

ID needed: Espeletia

Can anyone confirm the plant on the LHS of the image is Espeletia, perhaps E. schultzii? Thanks. Samsara 01:01, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

• Sminthopsis84 ...? Hafspajen (talk) 02:31, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

It certainly looks like Espeletia. I'm travelling at the moment, so don't have access to more detailed information that could help determine the species. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 04:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Leaf shape article

Please comment at Talk:Leaf shape#Leaf/Leaf shape overlap and rationalisation re moving the page to a title like "Glossary of leaf shape terms" as per MOS:GLOSSARIES. This would deal with regular requests to replace the current format by continuous prose. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:31, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Mandrake, Arecaceae moves

FYI, there are requested move discussions currently underway at Talk:Arecaceae and Talk:Mandrake (plant). Plantdrew (talk) 02:52, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

"Underground trees"

A discussion is ongoing at Talk:Tree about whether to include the concept of "underground trees" in the article. Input would be appreciated. Thanks. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 12:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The 1000 most commonly encountered epithets in the plant kingdom

I've made this list of the most common specific epithets of plant species, which I've posted on Wiktionary. Wiktionary, a sister site of Wikipedia, is quietly becoming one of the best references for learning the meaning of the Latin words in scientific names.

If you're a botany enthusiast, you might be interested in learning what the most common ones mean, or seeing how many of the top 20 you know.

There's a small crew of Wiktionary editors who work on Latin entries, but if you want to help out it would be great. You'll likely find a missing etymology you can figure out, or—if you're familiar with Latin—there's still many new entries to create further down the list. Wiktionary takes a fair bit more technical knowledge than Wikipedia to edit, but there are still easy ways to improve entires too, like adding images to species, listing synonyms when you find them, or tidying up categories. If you've edited Wiktionary before, consider giving it another go.

If the list is all too much and you want to stick to Wikipedia, there's still many entries to create stubs, redirects or articles for in the list of missing plants, discussed above. After the initial activity and discussion, it seems to have slowed down.

I started making lists of specific epithets for Wiktionary in 2006. However, this new one far better reflects the Latin terms people are most likely to come across, and is much cleaner and better suited for editors. —Pengo 03:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

How did you find the most common? Are you saying that Wiktionary editors translate the Latin rather than using an authorative reference (Stearn, floras, etc.)? Why? I don't see references on the list or the individual entries, so maybe this is the case. MicroPaLeo (talk) 05:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary's policy regarding references and citations is very, very different from Wikipedia's. Wikipedia prefers secondary sources as references, and has policies against original research. Wiktionary prefers to have original uses of the word in context to support the definitions, and de facto relies on original research from those citations to identify and distinguish distinct definitions and usages. That's not to say that entries for words and their definitions don't start their life from an authoritative source, but the goal is to (eventually) rely on direct historical quotations in context to support the definitions, and not to rely on what any source claims is the meaning or the usage. In the case of Latin, the principal focus has been Classical Latin and Late Latin, using Lewis and Short as well as the Oxford Latin Dictionary, Herberg's dictionary, Facciolati, Souter, Niedermeyer, and other authoritative texts, most of which provide citations from the early literature. Stearn would not be considered so authoritative by Wiktionary standards, because no quotations demonstrating word usage are included. See the entries for the Latin words albus "white", duodecim "twelve", and biceps "two-headed" for examples of what Wiktionary wants as support for definitions when it comes to Latin words.

For Latin words, the ideal would be a citation in Latin from a text in Latin. For botanical Latin terms, this would mean a text such as a diagnosis or Latin-language flora. For scientific epithets and taxon names that are not part of the Latin language proper, and do not exist as words in their own right in that language, but will appear in the midst of English, French, Russian, Japanese (etc.) publications invariant in their form and without associated grammar, e.g. darwinii, the elements will be treated as Translingual rather than Latin, and support is given in the form of a published name. This aspect of Wiktionary's linguistic coverage needs more work. Again, this is very, very different from Wikipedia's standards because the project's content and goals are very different. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:53, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, very informative, readable and well done in response to my poorly worded questions. I tried to find the information at Wiktionary, but could not. They do seem to be missing the point of Botanical Latin, though. It is not Classical Latin, but the list, by attaching epithets to Classical to Late Latin definitions implies that the meanings and usages in Botanical Latin are their Latin roots. Probably for the most common epithets a diagnosis might work. I think for Wiktionary to be of value in this, it should not rewrite languages, or should at least understand what the language is and not mistake a living specialty language for its older roots. I do think the post is a plea for contributors, but I also think it is a shame Wiktionary cannot have more value in this area. 06:24, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary does not rewrite langauges. That's the whole point of including specific published quotations to demonstrate the usage and meanings of words. The evidence is laid bare to support any and all definitions. Botanical Latin is not a language in its own right. It does not have a completely independent vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. "Specialty languages", such as Medical Latin, Botanical Latin, Legal Latin, and the like are not actually languages, but rather are collections of specialist terms, and is more properly called jargon or specialized vocabulary. Where these terms are handled depends upon the context in which sources show they appear. Much of what we call "legal Latin" occurs only in English legal texts, so it is treated as English jargon with a (law) tag to indicate the context. Botanical Latin is a specialized group of words, some of which are from Classical Latin, some from Late Latin, many from Medieval and Renaissance Latin, and more from modern sources (Neo-Latin). Where the words exist in the Latin language as a whole, and appear as words with full Latin grammar in Latin texts, they are treated as Latin words. Those epithets that are simply adoptions of Chinese, German, etc., and which are given a Latinoid form, but which do not inflect or occur outside of taxonomic names, are treated as a separate category "Translingual", which Wiktionary uses for those words that are not part of a complete written and spoken language, and which appear in a consistent form without regard to language. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:10, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

We will probably just have to disagree here, as the discussion is not really part of Wikipedia. MicroPaLeo (talk) 15:15, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Fide IPNI, "sativas" is not an epithet. (The list is inconsistent, in listing "sativas" and not "indicas".) Lavateraguy (talk) 07:03, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy: The inconsistency is from the source data (Catalogue of Life). None of the words are generated by me. The list does already includes an indicator to help point out the problem: The double dagger (‡) after "sativas" is there to indicate it only exists in synonyms (checking on CoL, Lathyrus sativas, is listed as synonym for Lathyrus sativus). I guess someone wrote it down wrong at some point in history. Also the number after it "(43)" is there to indicate that the particular variation is not so commonly seen in the wild. So far I've made little attempt to automatically analyse the Latin grammar itself beyond grouping terms which share a stem. I might try that some day, but probably not soon. —Pengo 09:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@MicroPaLeo: Re: "How did you find the most common?" It's based on Google Ngrams English (All) Corpus. I searched it for all "2-grams" of all of the species and synonyms listed by Catalogue of Life (CoL). Basically it's based on how often that bunch of similar epithets appear in known plant binomial names within books. [More specifically, the rank of each listing (line) is total of each species containing that specific epithet (and ones with the same stem) multiplied by the number of publications which that epithet was found since 1950]. The "Most written about plant species" list above is from the same source data, and was generated along the way while I was making the epithet list. If you're really interested, I've written some more details here, although the plants list is slightly simplified in that I didn't count simply existing in the CoL as one "publication", as I did with the more general list of epithets. —Pengo 09:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@MicroPaLeo: Re: rewriting languages: For a long time Wiktionary simply didn't include many taxonomic terms seemingly for fear of messing up the classical Latin definitions. As the goal is "all words in all languages," it's a pretty poor reason not to include definitions and etymologies. From what I've seen, purely taxonomic terms are generally pretty well tagged with something like "(as a specific epithet)" when they're only used that way, or a usage note is added to the entry. Going the other way, if you're worried about pure botanical Latin being messed up by vulgar Latin, I can't say I've ever really noticed times where there is a disconnect? I'm not trained in either type of Latin though so I'd appreciate any examples? Naively I would think that simply marking a sense with "(botany)" or similar context tag should solve the problem, as it has, for example, with wikt:officinalis (and has included this tag since the entry's creation in 2008). Though if there are many cases other cases that have been missed though, I do emphatically plea to add the botanical definition as its own sense (or as a "translingual" term if appropriate) —Pengo 09:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

It's a dictionary. It is confused that some words come from the Latin, yet I have seen Old French used (not for epithets), so I assume you differentiate Classical from New Latin, and I did catch New Latin in one, which is okay, broadly, especially for all but the most recent over Botanical Latin, but then you have "(botany)" at other times. A dictionary isn't all things, it is a specific, very narrow type of reference work. These should all link to definitions in New Latin, at least, not Classical. If you have specifics for (botany), include them for all, but that link does not make sense as a word origins link or usage link, maybe. As it is, this is one of the things that make crowd sourced references, wikis, so bad, unexplained inconsistencies, that often turn out to be from lack of knowledge (New Latin isn't Classical, and It isn't Botanical, either). By not starting with firmly grounded knowledge of what language you are dealing with, your definitions, including word origins, will be wrong. But I do see this list is not part of the dictionary, and you are using it to get helpers. MicroPaLeo (talk) 13:22, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Re: "A dictionary isn't all things, it is a specific, very narrow type of reference work": I think you're making some unwarranted assumptions about what Wiktionary is and isn't. See wikt:listen and wikt:parrot for examples of extensive well-worked Wiktionary entries (roughly analogous to what Wikipedia might call FA), and be sure to "show" quotations, translations, etc. in each section. Also notice that, in a ddition to a "talk" page, each has a "Citations" page, and be sure to examine those as well. Wiktionary includes far more information with each full entry than a standard monolingual dictionary would. Wiktionary includes a wealth of information that cannot (and should not) be included in an encyclopedic resource like Wikipedia, which is one of the reasons that projects are separate. The limitation at Wiktionary is that we're trying to achieve this level of detail for all words in all languages, and that takes time. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:20, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

The examples don't show Wiktionary is a field guide, encyclopedia, or anything but a dictionary, even if it covers more languages. I am not seeing your point. MicroPaLeo (talk) 04:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Can you provide an example of where there is any confusion? Anything that isn't tagged as New Latin, (botany), translingual, or "used as a specific epithet" etc? Currently it's up to you to show where this unsolvable problem lies. —Pengo 05:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. MicroPaLeo (talk) 05:23, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok, buddy. Nice out. Thanks for voicing your "concerns". —Pengo 08:43, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

It's an aside, since this is wikipedia, but: if Stearn is tossed out as a citation, then you'll never pick up accurate definitions of terms as they are used in Botanical Latin. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:06, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Erigeron karvinskianus

Anyone know why the Global Compositae Checklist, and hence TPL, regards Erigeron karvinskianus as an illegitimate name (see here), although it is accepted by a wide range of sources (see here)? The original description by de Candolle is online here. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:11, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I poked around a bit but could not find any reason for this. "Illegitimate" can mean either "later homonym," i.e. someone else has used the name earlier, "rejected name" meaning that an international committee has decreed that some other name is to be used instead, or "superfluous name" meaning that the author listed as a synonyms some other name that could have been used instead. Sometimes people confuse "illegitimate" with "invalid," which is a distinct problem. In this case, I do not see any of those problems with this particular name.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 13:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I couldn't see any reason either. E.g. no-one seems to have cited any possible earlier homonym. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Naming conventions in taxoboxes

This topic came up recently between a couple of us and merits some discussion. Technically the full identifier for a plant taxon includes three components;

• Official name, including binomials, e.g. Amaryllidaceae, Ipheion uniflorum
• Naming authority, usually in the form of standardised abbreviation, e.g. Lindley, L.
• Publication, again usually as standardised abbreviation, e.g. Sp. Pl. 1: 302. (1753)

For example, see;

• IPNI: Lilium candidum L. Sp. Pl. 1: 302. 1753 [1 May 1753]]
• eMonocot: Allium thunbergii G.Don Mem. Wern. Nat. Hist. Soc. 6: 84 (1827)]

I had started doing this in taxoboxes adding name, publication, year in the authority line of the taxobox, e.g. (Lilium) L. Sp. Pl. 1: 302. (1753)

Then I noticed them being removed with the comment - not usual. I checked the taxobox page where all the examples give the year in brackets but not the full bibliography.

So the question is - shouldn't a 'full citation' be 'best practice'. Further bibliography details including a page link where available can be placed in a reference at the end of the full citation. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 22:30, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

In my view, no, definitely not. What is needed to support the authority for a name is a reference to a secondary source, which shows the accepted name and authority. There's absolutely no need for the bibliographic details to be put in a taxobox – they are cluttered enough as it is. Sometimes it's useful to quote from the primary source, e.g. in a Taxonomy section if the author explains the reason for the choice of specific epithet. But then a normal reference with proper citation details, including title, etc. should be given. Abbreviations like "Mem. Wern. Nat. Hist. Soc." are meaningless unless you look them up in IPNI – but any professional who wants the full bibliographic citation will do that anyway. Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, not a botany text. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:01, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Peter on this -- the full citation is unnecessary and a bit far into the weeds for a general encyclopedia. Botanists are often lazy and don't include the full citation unless doing some specific taxonomic rearranging like making new combinations that requires the full citation. Generally, where unambiguous, a binomial is equivalent to the full citation and to the binomial with author abbreviation. Where ambiguous, in most circumstances where the same name was used by different authors, all that's necessary in addition to the binomial is the author abbreviation. The full citation with all the bibliographic details is only useful in taxonomic literature. A taxonomy section can describe what publication it was published in, by whom, and when, but volume and page number aren't necessary unless notable. Wikipedia isn't a database like IPNI. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 23:17, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

To quote Art. 46.1 "In publications, particularly those dealing with taxonomy and nomenclature, it may be desirable, even when no bibliographic reference to the protologue is made, to cite the author(s) of the name concerned." I think this is where we stand with regards to the taxoboxes; trying to stuff the protologue in there is just too cluttered. I do generally cite the first publication of the name, as well as any synonyms, when writing a full-blown taxonomy section, but in our normal citation format as Peter says. Of note: there have been some recent upheavals at Wikispecies which may make it easier to work there in the long run. Choess (talk) 05:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

What sort of upheavals? Are we talkin community things or technical things? Circéus (talk) 11:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Lots of drama surrounding User:Stho002 led to a heated community discussion, with blocks after he began a userpage edit war. Because of all this, it looks as though User:Stho002 might have finally quit the project. If he is truly gone, I might even go back to occasionally working there. I saw a lot of long-time valued contributors quit because of User:Stho002. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I searched the user name and WikiSpecies. This is why I and too many others don't bother with the list serve. Sorry you had to deal with him. WikiSpecies seems to be different in many cases ways from Wikipedia. It seems that the publication is not major enough for inclusion in the box, although possibly Lineaus or Nature might be. But I think the important thing is that, in spite of its importance in taxonomy, it is not generally of importance to a general work, even a technical one like a flower encyclopedia or field guide. When it is important to mention it belongs in a discussion about the taxonomy, not the taxon, and the boxes are really guides to the taxon. Hard to make this clear, but I have had it explained to me very well. I also think, for Wikipedia, we overdo the number of parent taxa in the boxes. Plants need genus and species, family, order, APG III clade. Tribes or subfamiles matter only in some families, but I have seen plant boxes with APG taxonomies and old and meaningless tribes. MicroPaLeo (talk) 16:46, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure where it's documented, but I think there's a guideline somewhere that minor ranks should only appear in taxoboxes when they are the immediate parent/child of the taxon in question; e.g., a genus taxobox would show tribe, but a species taxobox shouldn't have any ranks between family and genus (although the species taxobox might show a subgenus). There are certainly a lot of pages where this guideline isn't followed, and there are perhaps some cases where including minor ranks would be desirable (legume subfamilies maybe?). Plantdrew (talk) 17:15, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Part of the problem, I think is that Wikipedia often tries to be everything for everyone, and that's just inappropriately ambitious. The situation was not helped by the issues at Wikispecies. The ideal would be that Wikispecies would maintain the classification hierarchy because they include all ranks for all parent taxa up to Kingdom. Wikipedia should not need, therefore, to include all of that information in a taxobox. If Wikispecies is working correctly, then a link to Wikispecies in the taxobox would allow a user access to all of that information. Likewise, Wikispecies pages should include all the significant nomenclatural literature pertaining to the correct names, synonyms, circumscription, etc., so that information would not need to appear in a taxobox either. A taxobox ought to be a summary, not a treatise in its own right. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:17, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

There are regularly suggestions that the classification hierarchy should be obtained from Wikidata or Wikispecies. If there were a single universally agreed hierarchy, this would be fine. But there isn't. The advantage of Wikipedia articles is that they provide space to discuss alternatives in depth. So I don't think devolving responsibility for classification is a good idea.

On the general point about ranks, I agree that taxoboxes should rarely show higher ranks other than the principal ones. We did agree this in the past, but I don't think it found its way into the project page. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Documentation for the position on display of minor ranks is at Template:Taxobox#Classification so it covers all uses of the template. It might be a good idea to mirror that advice at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template, but the template documentation should be enough. Rkitko ^(talk) 15:16, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

To put Wikispecies in context with this thread, one of the most recent threads there (Wikispecies:Village_Pump#The_Reference_Section) had Stho002 arguing that full citation of the original description should not (necessarily) be displayed on taxon pages. Stho002's position was opposed by everybody else. In my opinion, citation of the original description ought to be critical information for Wikispecies. On Wikipedia, it is appropriate and usually desirable to cite the original description in a taxonomy section, but including the citation isn't of critical importantance. Plantdrew (talk) 17:28, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the answer to my original question is that the concensus seems to be against adding anything further than what is in the Taxobox template page, namely standardised author abbreviation and (date), with the full citation placed in references. With regards to the latter, I would encourage people to place a link there to the actual page text, most of which can be found in BHL.

With regards to what ranks should be included in the box, as with an earlier question about monotypic taxa (above) what I am seeing is that it is not possible to make blanket statements given the wide diversity of circumstances. Common sense and utility should prevail on a case by case basis, but I would encourage uniformity within a higher taxon (for instance we don't want every genus in a family treated differently). I tend to err on the side of over inclusion for the utility value of navigation within the higher taxon. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Monotypic taxa

This topic has come up again. I discovered it when I wrote a page on a 'missing' higher taxon, that was monotypic, and was told it was a policy to merge these with the lower taxon as per WP:MONOTYPICFLORA, which had not been mentioned last time I discussed this.

This policy (strictly speaking, a guideline) was written by Hesperian on March 24 2010, and judging by the talk page, was not discussed or debated. I think it is a useful guidance in principle but should not be and is not a blanket proscription of having separate pages. There are arguments for the latter where the issue to be discussed are different. For instance if like me, one's major interests are in taxonomy and phylogeny the minutiae of the construction and reconstruction of higher taxa are not really appropriate on a genus page, whether monotypic or not. I propose the guideline be revisited to clarify this. If there is support for allowing this, I will draft a revision, since I see many instances where the issue could arise. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:34, 7 January 2015 (UTC).

Some discussion ocurred here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)/Archive 1#Monotypic genera. I support the concept that we shouldn't have two articles one of which only says: "Foo is a RANK of plants containing a single SUBRANK Bar". In many cases of monotypy, that's really all that can possibly be said about one of the ranks.

However, if there are previous circumscriptions of a (presently monotypic) higher rank that were not monotypic it seems rather strange to me to shove discussion of those circumscriptions into an article on a lower rank. "Duplicate" articles on monotypic taxa can be useful if there really is something worthwhile to discuss about the taxonomic history of the "redundant" rank. For a similar situation, see the entries in Category:Historically recognized angiosperm families. People are likely to search for information on some of these families, it wouldn't be very helpful to somebody looking up Flacourtiaceae to just get redirect to Salicaceae. Plantdrew (talk) 17:48, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

<slightly defensive tone> In 2010 I was a prolific editor of plant articles and heavily involved in community discussions here and at the naming conventions page. I was intimately acquainted with the views of this community on plant article naming, and thus well-qualified to write down a record of them. My edits to the policy page went unchallenged at the time and for the next four years. So I resent, a little bit, what appears to be an implication that I acted too boldly then.</slightly defensive tone>

Moving on: Mgoodyear is absolutely right in saying it is "a useful guidance in principle but should not be and is not a blanket proscription". That's all it ever was. I myself have written articles on monotypic higher taxa where "the minutiae of the construction and reconstruction of higher taxa" was of interest, thus breaking 'my own' guidelines. Hesperian 00:05, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Nothing to be defensive about here. You did a huge amount of work on this, and I would have done the same. Put forward an idea and if if nobody shoots it down, craft a guidance. All I was saying was that nobody started a discussion of the pros and cons at the time, which I have now tried to do here. My view would be that there is no point in a page that merely says, Somethingiae is a taxon that contains one genus - see Somethingus. In that case they can be merged. On the other hand if there is a complicated historical literature on the construction and reconstruction of higher taxa, that discussion is out of place in a genus page, and deserves separate handling. I hope I have made the distinction a little clearer. That's the way policies and laws evolve - draft something - see how it works, and if necessary revise it. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

As others have noted, there may be good reasons to have exceptions to the general policy. It needs to be shown in each case, though, that there is scope for two or more articles. My concern is that most of the sections at WP:WikiProject_Plants/Template, other than Taxonomy, would be duplicated across the articles if they were to be made complete.

The discussion between myself and Mgoodyear began over Agapanthus and Agapanthoideae. Now Agapanthus can readily be expanded into a complete article (it's probably already better than "Start" which is its current rating). What would be left to put into Agapanthoideae? Why is it useful to have a separate article on this subfamily? In this case the relevant taxonomy can be discussed at the genus level and with a different focus at the family level (Amaryllidaceae). I really don't see the point of two articles, one of which will end up as a stub or at best a single section article. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:04, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that duplicating the template would be pointless, at most a 'lead' type statement is all that is needed, with a 'main' type redirection. It is mainly the literature around the nature of the higher taxon itself that is relevant. Maybe Agapanthus was not a good example, I just put it there for now as a place holder while I systematically review all the higher taxon pages within that family, as part of a revision of the Amaryllidaceae page. In doing so I always check both higher and lower taxon pages. I will return to it soon. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:29, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think this question has now been up for long enough that we can turn talk into policy or there is no point in having this page. So I will draft a change for discussion before implementing.

The current wording is (additions bolded):
"When a taxon contains only a single subordinate member, both the higher taxon and subordinate member are usually treated in a single article. In such cases, the article title is chosen from among the "principal ranks" specified by the Code of Nomenclature".
To which I propose we add:
Where there is sufficient material available specifically addressing the higher taxon, such as the history of its construction and reconstruction, and relationship to other higher taxa, a separate page may be justifiable. Unnecessary duplication between the higher taxon page and its monotypic subordinate taxon page should be avoided.
--Michael Goodyear (talk) 18:13, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think it's a bit more complicated than that; in particular I think it depends on the rank of the taxon and how many ranks are monotypic. Thus I find it hard to see that a monotypic genus and its sole species would justify two articles, whereas a family that once included many genera and is now reduced to a single genus seems a more obvious case for two articles. I'd like it to be clear that the default remains a single article, and that the case for two has to be made. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:14, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that WP tries not to be too dictatorial by saying never or must, hence the original text was described as a guidance. As far as 'default' goes, the current text says 'usually'. Do you think it should be worded more strongly? I might be naive in believing in common sense. I didn't want to make it too complicated by listing every possible combination of taxa. That would be self defeating. However I agree the default would be a single article page, with the exceptions being that there is substantial information relevant only to the higher taxon. I have tweaked the wording of both the original and amendment to make this a little clearer. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 23:28, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the "minutiae of construction" and similar would very possibly not be appropriate in the lower taxon article, but the theory that it would pass Wikipedia's notability standards, and is necessary to have a separate article has yet to be shown. I'm reluctant to change our current careful wording (that many including me have used and accepted over time) and seemingly give blanket cover to non-notable minutiae becoming articles; and also inviting disagreements whether an article is really a taxon article deserving a taxobox. It would be very easy to demonstrate a need for changing the policy wording by simply writing the two separate articles in your sandbox for the upper and lower taxa, and inviting others to see and comment on whether there is a need and whether the separate material meets WP:N. I would sure like to see you put together at least one real example before we change an established guideline. To my eye, the current "usually" wording seems the perfect balance of common sense. --Tom Hulse (talk) 00:26, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

With regards to my original question what I am seeing here as with a later question about taxoboxes, is that it is not possible to make blanket statements given the wide diversity of circumstances. Common sense and utility should prevail on a case by case basis.

And as for applying WP Notability, I would suggest that is not necessarily an appropriate standard for this project, or we would have to delete most of the pages in the project. We should, and do, lean more to the 'encyclopaedic' meaning of the project. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:03, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup listing

I signed this project up for a cleanup listing report. The report catalogs articles with various maintenance templates: citation needed, clarification needed, presence of weasel words, etc. The report can be viewed here [3] (be warned, the file is large and can be slow to load). Plantdrew (talk) 20:23, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

What does "taro" mean?

Can anyone help to sort out the taro page, specifically someone with good knowledge of what that common name actually refers to? The page says that "taro" is "a common name for the corms and tubers of several plants in the Araceae family". I wonder if the taxobox should be removed because there are other pages about the taxa. The leaves and stems are also eaten, e.g., as patrode. The taxonomy seems to offer no help, since it continues to be quite fraught, with different sources lumping Colocasia antiquorum as a synonym of C. esculenta or accepting the two names as separate species. Perhaps we can, however, sort out whether "taro" is just the tubers of Colocasia esculenta [perhaps var. esculenta] or is it the whole plant, or is it just the tubers of several species, or is it the whole plants of several species? Does anyone know? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:20, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The common name is for the leaves and corms, usually, and I think this article intended to be about that, then moved beyond.The name is used for a number of species, but primarily (99%+), it refers to the leaves and corms of cultivars of C. esculenta. I removed the taxobox, and the section about the species should be rewritten to reflect it is about the plant as a food species, and cultivars should be covered. For taro in Polynesia and Hawaii specifically, separate and interesting articles could be written from a cultural perspective, especially to include the UH GMO controversy. MicroPaLeo (talk) 15:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Trade and use of saffron FAR

I have nominated Trade and use of saffron for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yet more over-fine geographical categorization

We managed to get some agreement that "Flora of ..." categories would be as high level as possible, and that they shouldn't be added for every US state or every country in which a plant occurs. So now we have editors adding very finely split up "Natural history of ..." categories, as per this edit. Sigh... Trying to maintain some sensible system of categorization increasingly seems to me a futile exercise. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

This is, imho, a losing battle. We discussed this some time ago, and since then I have followed the consensus that we reached, and I have tried to revise existing pages accordingly. But such revisions often got angry reversals from people who wanted it the other way. You can create whatever guidelines you want, but the challenge is how to enforce this.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 03:12, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Regretfully I agree with you. I spent time both on sorting out categories and on documenting this project's consensus but now think that it is a lost cause. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I believe the word is "triage." Pick the battles you can win, and which will make a difference.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 18:26, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Or, since the offending editors rarely respond to questions, concerns, and challenges to their extensive and rapid category creations, bring them to WP:ANI. Other editors have been banned from editing or creating categories in the past; perhaps that's the only solution here. Rkitko ^(talk) 00:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I would support banning people only as a last resort, to be used only if someone has malicious intentJoseph Laferriere (talk) 03:11, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Disruption suffices for a partial ban, in my opinion. Look2See1 (talk · contribs) has a long history of this sort of disruptive editing contrary to well-established guidance and against the consensus of his/her fellow editors, e.g., User_talk:Look2See1/Archive_1#Fauna_by_state_categories, User_talk:Look2See1/Archive_1#Categorizing pages & wiki-info guide links, User_talk:Look2See1/Archive_2#Category:Invasive_plant_species_in_the_United_States, User_talk:Look2See1/Archive_2#Wildflowers_of_the_Great_Smoky_Mountains, and so on. While apparently cooperative, s/he is unable or unwilling to change his/her behavior. The examples I cite are from 2010 but have continued until the present. I think it is time to thank Look2See1 for his/her effort, but request that s/he no longer add "Flora of …" categories to articles. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I have two further comments. First, I was doing that sort of thing myself for a while, thinking that this was the proper way to use the categories. Then some good people here on this list explained my erroneous impression, whereupon I not only changed what I had been doing but also tried to clean up existing websites where others had done this. So people need to have it explained to them. Second, the fact that numerous people are doing this illustrates that there is a need for this sort of thing. People want a list of the plants native to a certain region. As I recall, it was Peter who suggested pages listing all the plants in a certain region. This might work in theory but is a bit impractical. One page listing all the 5000 species in California and another page listing the 4000 species in Oregon then another listing the 1000 species on the Isle of Man, and so on around the planet.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 12:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

If you review the links I provided to Look2See1's talk page, you will see many attempts to explain how to add categories constructively. Those of us who have tried for more than four years have failed. But, perhaps you will succeed, Joseph Laferriere. A list article may be used to list species found in a specific region. Moreover, lists may be subdivided by family, non-native species can be identified with an asterisk, are easily illustrated and don't clutter individual species articles with "Flora of …" categories. They may help readers find external biogeographical resources.[4][5][6] Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I understand this. What I am saying is that it would take a prohibitive amount of work to set this up.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 19:05, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

@Rkitko: User:NotWith is another editor who has completely ignored all attempts to discuss categorization, and continues to create useless categories. Admins complain as well as non-admins (see User talk:NotWith). Yet nothing is done about either of these two editors. Do you really think that taking them to ANI would achieve anything? I'm afraid I don't. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Peter - Editors at ANI are fickle. A compelling and concise case must be made as to why the category edits are disruptive and that every other attempt has been made to discuss, reason, and come to consensus with the editors in question. The issue at hand, I think, would be thought of as marginal at best and some contributors at ANI would just dismiss it as a non-issue since we could just nominate all these categories for deletion. I haven't had the time recently to write a complaint for ANI but it might be worth it. At best, the editors are convinced that their edits are against consensus and they rededicate themselves to other categories or work that's in line with what's expected from flora categories. At worst, either nothing is done or they are topic banned. It's not the most satisfying process but unless someone brings it up where an uninvolved admin can help, the status quo is the only expected outcome. Rkitko ^(talk) 00:01, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

While reserving judgment on the individual cases above, I'm afraid I tend to feel that the current category scheme is something of an attractive nuisance. The guidelines for whether a plant should be in a more or a less exclusive geographical category are inherently rather fuzzy, and it's much easier for someone to see a "Flora of X" category on an article and conclude that other plants growing in "X" should have the same category than for them to actually read the category documentation and realize what we're trying to do with the category scheme. Since the software doesn't allow for union and intersection operations on categories (there are third-party tools that do this, I think), I feel the list approach is probably preferable for small geographic subunits (states, provinces) which typically have widely overlapping floras. Setting up a series of lists does represent a very large initial investment of time and energy, but once completed, they do have some important advantages. They should be fairly stable over time (whereas categories only attach to articles that have already been created), and it's possible to explicitly cite the source that places a particular taxon in a particular location. That last is also lacking in categories (although in theory the article they're attached too should include a well-sourced range). Choess (talk) 01:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

"Well-sourced range" information does not exist for many geographic regions.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 03:19, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

If we don't have a source to say that "Taxon X occurs in Y", we shouldn't be placing it in either "Category:Flora of Y" or "List of Flora of Y". Choess (talk) 03:29, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Choess That is certainly good in theory, but fraught with practical difficulties. Range information is notoriously subject to problems and ambiguities. Names change, specimens are either misidentified or filed under synonyms, and many publications give wide generalizations. The phrase "Native to Europe" may mean "found in every nation from Portugal to the Urals" or it might mean "endemic to Spitsbergen." Indeed, half the time when I see the word "endemic" on a Wikipage, it is misused (e.g. "This species is endemic to Italy and also native to Lithuania.").Joseph Laferriere (talk) 12:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I stumbled on this rather detailed discussion looking for some kind of basic, general style guidelines about how geographical plant categories should be assigned. Is there an authoritative point of reference on this issue? In my experience, the frustrations voiced above may have to do with the fact that things which seem to be obvious to botanists are not at all obvious to the rest of us (e.g. that overspecialization is unhelpful, that "endemic" means that it is not present anywhere else, that "Malaysia" is already included in "Melesia" which is included in "Indomalesia", etc., etc.). Creating a page to educate non-specialists about these concerns (or making it easier to find if it already exists) would I think be very helpful. Dowcet (talk) 09:00, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

One reason it is a losing battle, is that this is how naturalists sort plants, partly because of funding for scientific interests. So, as many discussions as there are about not categorizing based on geography, editors will continue to do so because that is how books and journal articles do it. MicroPaLeo (talk) 04:24, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

weasel words

I wish to comment on something said to me off-list. Someone wrote to me complaining that I had violated Wikipedia policy by using what this person called "weasel words." For example

1) "This genus has only one known species."

2) "This species is native to Thailand and also reportedly found in Labrador."

I firmly stand by my use of terms like these. In the first case, there might be a second species growing only in one mountain valley in Kyrgyzstan, a plant that no botanist has yet found but which does nevertheless exist. In the second instance, the article saying that it grows in Labrador might be correct, or may have made some sort of error. I sitting here at my computer have no way to determine whether or not the report is correct. First rule in science is that you never claim to be certain about anything about which you cannot be certain. If I leave out the Labrador citation entirely, I am implying that the species grows only in Thailand, information which may be incorrect.

On a more philosophical note, the minute that you start saying "This has been proved" or "This source is authoritative" is the minute that you have stopped doing science. You stop asking questions, and you stop gathering new information. The only truly authoritative source is Mother Nature, and she writes in codes that not even the good folks at Bletchley Park can decipher. The best that we can do is to say "According to the best information currently available ..." That is the weaseliest of all weasel phrases, one that should be included in every scientific paper published.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 12:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Joseph, I can only assume that you are referring to the comment I made at Sminthopsis84's talk page? Maybe my comment wasn't clear. I wasn't making a statement of my own belief, rather it was a lighthearted reference to the overzealous actions of others, in particular one editor who objected to my use of "reported" on the grounds I was using "weasel words". PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanx for the clarification. It has been on my mind since you said it, and I felt that this was an important point that needed to be made in a wider forum. I see many pages with statements such as "This genus contains 318 species" or "Recent molecular studies have proved that this is in fact a separate genus." Geez. People should not make statements that might be outdated by next Tuesday.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 13:22, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Amen Joseph Laferriere (–the ironic joke side of this Amen i intend as a joke on false certitudes, meanwhile the other side of this Amen also, meaning: indeed, well put).--Macropneuma 22:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

One great thing about what we do here is presenting uncertainty (i.e. contrasting what we do and do not know, and what we hypothesise and why, about subject x) - I often hope that kids read it and get a grasp of what is and is not known rather than interpreting science pages as if they were tablets come down from Mt Sinai or something. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia articles created from databases wrongly say that the number of species (or whatever) listed in the database is the number of species in the genus. This is even worse than those who fail to say "number of known species," as few biological databases claim to have correct species counts. (For the very reason you say "known," and because most are works in progress.) MicroPaLeo (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all for your kind comments. Another thing I have seen way too many times is someone saying "This genus contains 9 species," this followed by a list of 14 species.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 23:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Come to think of it, one question in the oral test for my master's degree at the University of California was "How many plant species are there in California?" I replied that I did not know, but the professors urged me to guess. Eventually I relented and timidly offered the guess of 5000. The profs laughed. Later I looked this up in Munz's Flora of California, which listed 5012. Meanwhile, the next question was "Why can we never be certain exactly how many species there are?Joseph Laferriere (talk) 23:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer to state the source and date in the text when giving a count or saying that species are "accepted". Thus I would write "As of M DDDD, the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families accepts 43 species:^[1]". However, I have noticed others (I think including you, Joseph) removing such explicit statements from the text. I think this form of words reinforces the notion that the number of species is an opinion of the source, not a brute fact. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:33, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: there's a difference between saying "the species has been reported from Labrador" and "the species reportedly occurs in Labrador". The first is neutral; the second implies doubt. So there is a case to avoid "reportedly". Peter coxhead (talk) 11:37, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead For a long time, I was putting in dated statements such as you suggest, but eventually decided that this was verbose, adding to the length of the article without adding much substance. To cover the subject completely this way, it would be necessary to say something like "As of M DDDD, the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families accepts 43 species, but IPNI accepts only 41, while The Plant List regards there as being 47 species and the Global Inventory of Global Resources maintains that there are 52 species ..." At some point, one must ask how much information is contained in such a discussion that is useful to any human on the planet, and whether this justifies taking up so much space on the page. I prefer more succinct phrasing. Along the same lines, I think "Photsynthetic organs of the plant species are utilized as nutritional resources by the larvae of certain insects in the order Lepidoptera" should be edited to say "caterpillars eat the leaves of these things."Joseph Laferriere (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Joseph: I can't agree with you. The point is that most of these articles contain one list of species, not multiple lists or merged lists from different sources. When this is the case, we should in my view be crystal clear as to the source. The date it was consulted is also important since some (WCSP in particular) are continually updated rather than having distinct versions. Note that if you number the species in the list (as you do) then you are effectively claiming there is a particular total, which is highly likely to be attested by only one source. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:04, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

My point is that the details of the disagreements are useless information to nearly all readers, confusing rather than helpful. The primarily purpose of those generic pages is to help readers find links to the specific pages. Explaining the differences between the various classifications, for example saying that recent changes are reflective of molecular studies, fine. I personally have no access to such information, so I leave that to others.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 21:44, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, a more important point is that if you give a list of counts like that (source A says 38 species, source B says 42 species, etc.), all those numbers have one thing in common: they are all wrong. People keep splitting, lumping, and discovering new species all the time, rendering any such count obsolete very quickly. Providing a numbered list has the advantage of showing the reader how many there are at the moment according to one classification system, plus the other advantage that if someone adds a new species, the count at the end of the list changes automatically. Note that I have also developed the custom of adding a "formerly included" category at the bottom. I try to list all the species that have been moved to other genera, with a link to where each one has been moved to, but sometimes one genus will have thousands of such names. So I just give links to the other genera. Thus instead of providing the reader with some abtract discussion over which source gives which wrong number, I give links helping the reader find the information s/he is looking for.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 22:11, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I suspect we're not going to agree, but if you write "As of DATE, SOURCE accepts N species" it can't be wrong, and that's why I prefer it. Whether there should be other statements of this form depends on the reliability of the source(s), their relative dates, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:59, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

The way round that is to write that the genus contains around 40 to 50 recognised species, and then cite the various sources. (Not including IPNI, which is a nomenclatural database, not a taxonomic one.) Lavateraguy (talk) 19:41, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree Lavaterguy. Let's also keep in mind that weasel words are not necessarily weasel words if they are simply attributed with standard inline references to avoid the low-relevance clutter of dates and source names. For instance, just about any sentence that starts "It is said..." will be weasel no matter what inline ref you provide, but "There is currently only one recognized extant species in the genus Sequoia" looks like weasel words (someone might add the "who" or "weasel" tag to "recognized"), but is certainly not with a simple inline reference to a reliable source on a non-controversial topic. It would really be a disservice to our readers to clutter up this last sentence with proofs of date & sources right in the article text. I do agree we want to avoid obviously unprovable "facts" like " "This genus contains 318 species". Our goal is not to find the truth of species numbers, only to find the fair (but concise) summary of all the most reliable sources. --Tom Hulse (talk) 22:45, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

About numbers in general I agree, but the context of the discussion with Joseph Laferriere was lists of species. Since we rarely want to give multiple lists from different sources, and they should almost never be merged because of the problems this creates with overlaps, then I believe that source should be explicitly mentioned (I don't give numbers). So I would set out the introduction to the list of species as at Roscoea§Species and not as at Chrysopogon. In my view the list at Chrysopogon implies to the 'ordinary' reader that there are 48 species, whereas this is just the view of WCSP according to the reference. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

That seems reasonable, although I don't know if the date is necessary for most species that are somewhat stable. What do you think of the way I did it at Brugmansia? You seem to prefer the big databases (which I guess do benefit more from a date), but it seems like I've seen way too many unforced errors there from the sheer volume; I like secondary-source books much more when they're available. Any thoughts about the difference between database lists vs. real secondary sources with commentary (usually books)? --Tom Hulse (talk) 00:53, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there are many genera in which the species are "somewhat stable"; it certainly doesn't seem to be the case for genera in which I've edited. :-) Even in Roscoea, a small genus with a fairly stable set of species for years, no sooner had a major monograph appeared in 2007 than a new species was published in 2008. Also although IPNI maintains the earlier spelling R. cautleoides, WCSP changed its spelling some time around 2010/2011 to R. cautleyoides. (As a result, Tropicos has both names without being clear that they refer to the same species.) So I really do like to put the date in the article.

@Tom Hulse: re Brugmansia, the MOS specifically says avoid terms like "currently"; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Current and WP:RELTIME. It recommends, among other approaches, using {{as of}}, which is what I do.
The choice of secondary sources is a difficult one. I agree that in principle secondary sources like monographs are better. However, they are often out-of-date. APG III which we use here is still only six years old, no time at all in the lifecycle of monographs. Constructing phylogenies using whole or large portion nuclear genome sequences rather than a few plastid genes goes on apace, with consequent changes to taxonomic boundaries. I suspect that apparent stability in a genus just means few active researchers. So regularly updated sources like APweb for higher taxa and WCSP for species for those families it covers are often the best sources, although I always try to access primary sources too. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:54, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

There comes a point at which there are two options: a) "There is no consensus on this matter, so we cannot provide an authoritative list of species on which everyone can agree. Please check back with us in the year 2050 when we expect that all such questions shall have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction." or b) "Authors disagree on which species should be included in this genus, but given the information available at present, here is a list of species that various authorities have suggested should be included." Option a is deferring the question to a later generation; it is more likely that the good people of 2050 will have raised new questions that we have not yet envisioned in our quaint little era. Option b avoids any assertion of the authoritative nature of the list that follows, but it does at least offer the reader with links to pages on which s/he may find more information about particular species. Every good scientist knows that statements such as option b are implied within the statement "We are doing science." Note that I said "every good scientist," emphasis on the word "good." There are many people around paid to call themselves scientists, well-trained in the methods of doing particular details of how one narrow subfield operates, yet blissfully unaware of the philosophical underpinnings of science. Every statement we make about science represents our best efforts given the information that we have available, while acknowledging that our successors are likely to have information that we do not have ourselves.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 12:49, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Common names and capitalization

Is it necessary to have common names with different capitalizations as redirects to the scientific names of plants? I thought that if you entered "Vine maple" or "Vine Maple," and you only had the one redirect, "Vine maple," you would still get taken to the scientific name of the plant, but it seems most of the maple articles have all variations of spelling for common names. What should I be doing? MicroPaLeo (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

It used to be necessary to create all variant capitalizations, and indeed it was recommended, but changes to the way the search box behaves (in the last year?) mean that it's no longer necessary. NOTE: this advice is wrong – see below! As an example, enter "annual clary" in the search box (no caps). As "Annual clary" doesn't exist, it will take you to "Annual Clary" which is a redirect to "Salvia viridis". So in my view you no longer need to create variant capitalizations. However, you do need to enter variants with/without hyphens. Thus "alpine meadow-grass" works in the search box, but "alpine meadowgrass" doesn't (as of now), but probably should do. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:48, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search function and external search engines are case insensitive, but wikilinks are case sensitive. For the most part, creating redirects for variant capitalizations is unncessary (although it doesn't hurt). In situations where somebody is likely to create a wikilink to a variant capitalization it's good to have the redirect created. The most prominent case of this is for plants that grow in the British Isles; the "official" common names of these are capitalized, and people often create links to the capitalized form when writing about plants in the British Isles (see for example the links in Barrington Hill Meadows). However, Peter has been working through the BSBI common names lately, so the necessity of creating any new capitalized common name redirects will soon be a moot point. Plantdrew (talk) 19:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I am familiar with the British ones, but these are all American mid-continent species, so my thought was just lower case. I did see that my sandbox preview showed the links as red when the case did not match, but the search worked. I will watch for hyphens. Thanks. MicroPaLeo (talk) 20:32, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew:, the search terms do become case sensitive in Wikipedia searches when a page or redirect is created for alternative capitalisations. I notice the discussion of Red oak vs Red Oak having different targets at @Peter coxhead:'s userpage. I have never been a fan of disambiguation by capitalisation. --Melburnian (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's not quite the case that searches are "case insensitive": they basically find the "nearest match", so if you search for "red oak", you get "Red oak" because this exists. If it didn't, you'd get "Red Oak". However, in my comments above, I'd forgotten that wikilinks are case sensitive, and have to be since Wikipedia allows different articles with different capitalizations of the title. So actually for plants where people are likely to create capitalized wikilinks (British, Irish and Australian sources mainly use capitals for plant species names so editors from these countries did so too before policy here changed), you should still create alternative redirects.

@Plantdrew: At present I haven't been creating new redirects, only marking those that exist with {{R to scientific name}}. Actually it's very rare for there to be an article on a plant found in the British Isles at the scientific name and there not to be a redirect at the capitalized English name. It's mostly the uncapitalized English names that are absent, and I'm afraid I have no interest in the work involved in creating them. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:10, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

International Bulb Society

And speaking of disappearing resource entities (see Kew Glossary above), whatever happened to the International Bulb Society, a long established resource. With all the links to their various resources including scientific publications, it has left a large gap in Wikipedia. According to the Internet Archive they vanished from cyberspace around December 22 2014. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's very irritating and, as you say, has left many dead URLs. I certainly never thought it necessary to archive their webpages. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 18:02, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

It now says 'under construction' - we live in hope--Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Input requested

Please comment at Template_talk:Infobox cultivar#Parameter values if you use or are interested in "cultivarboxes". Peter coxhead (talk) 17:39, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Wonderful work, Peter. I've added another section about a related difficult matter, how we might be able to smoothly handle alternative taxonomies when one involves the ICNCP, and the other the ICN, such as Begonia × tuberhybrida which is often treated as a cultivar group Begonia Tuberhybrida Group. Input requested. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 05:36, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Fast input requested

Talk:Cucurbita#Alternative medicine section. Our chief editor on Signpost:Featured content posted an issue about a Featured article, Curcubita, that needs to be resolved ASAP, preferably before we go live. I think providing some possible reliable sources could solve some of these issues. Please, as soon as possible. Hafspajen (talk) 17:12, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Mandrake

We have a situation at Talk:Mandragora officinarum#Requested_move_2015 concerning organization and scope of articles concerning Mandragora (genus), so some additional input would be welcome. No such user (talk) 19:13, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Created Article Stub that Could Use Some Work

Eggert's Sunflower --Iankap99 (talk) 22:36, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Ridiculous crop-production maps

Could someone with knowledge of procedures at commons.wikimedia.org please advise what is the best way to proceed to clean up some misleading maps that were uploaded in 2010, and have been used on a few wikipedias. The person who uploaded them has not been active since 2010, it has been pointed out (here) that three of them are ridiculous, and I think that all of them are probably vandalism and should be deleted. There are 72 files in all, listed here. I'm not sure where a discussion of a proposed mass deletion like this is supposed to take place. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:12, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

A map by the same user which has been questioned at Talk:Okra. What I've noticed, but not commented, about that map is the lack of production shown for the US, which may only be a minor producer, but surely a bigger producer than Britain. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I doubt that Kola is produced in Turkey and California, and Blueberry production in Chile seems to be missing. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:04, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

The Bambara groundnut map bears no resemblance to reality. It is possibly informed by a report that once showed that large areas of Australia might be able to produce the crop, but it shows little resemblance to the maps in that report. This looks like random data to me, perhaps slightly cleaned up afterwards to remove some obviously unlikely patches. The tomato map disagrees grossly with this, notably by the blank areas in India and Egypt. I think all the maps are spoofs. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that the source data is here (but the format may be somewhat inaccessible).

The maps contain a mixture of plausible distributions, with missing areas, and implausible additional areas. That could be a result of errors in creating one map using a second as the base. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I can't get the data into a readable format either. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:19, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I must admit, I have always found the content of these maps surprising, but lacked the knowledge to properly assess their veracity. It seems now that they are entirely unreliable; there may be some truth in them, but we can never know where. I think we are all agreed that they should not be used on articles, and that's something that we can start on immediately. It would be easier to do that if there were replacement images to be used instead (otherwise, well-meaning editors may resist the removal), but they may not be easy to produce. In any case, the original question was how to delete them from the Commons. It seems that the appropriate page is Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request. There will have to be a discussion, during which all the evidence for the maps' failings can be presented. If the user who produced them is no longer active, then there may not be much resistance. Let's hope this can all be cleared up cleanly. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The inline link above doesn't work, but Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Mass_deletion_request does. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use the link there because it tries to create a page that is protected against re-creation. That means that only an admin on Commons could work with it. I guess the hoi polloi such as myself will have to nominate each of the pages individually. Sigh. (maybe later.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Apologies for the incorrect link. I find that when I complete the box from "Commons:Deletion requests/" to "Commons:Deletion requests/Files of User:AndrewMT", the resulting page is not protected, and could be created. --Stemonitis (talk) 05:47, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, thanks, that explains it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:19, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Strandzha Nature Park

has a bunch of species redlinks in it if anyone's keen to make some stubs....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

However, note that the sourcing of this article is poor – mostly to the Park's own website, which is not a reliable source of botanically accurate information. Some of the redlinked species names are not accepted by The Plant List (Saponaria stranjensis, for example, is considered to be a subspecies of Saponaria sicula). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, "Galium bulgaricum" is Galium paschale and "Anthemis jordanovii" is Anthemis cretica subsp. tenuiloba. "Lepidotrichum uechtrizianum" is accepted as Aurinia uechtritziana, and Verbascum bugulifolium, Veronica turrilliana, Pyrus bulgarica and Oenanthe millefolia are all accepted by TPL as given. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Recent edits to Angiosperm Phylogeny Group

I am in danger of getting into an edit war over the addition of the section Angiosperm Phylogeny Group#Caveats and limits of APG, which I think is about the system(s), not the group, and also expresses unsourced opinions. The only relevant reference added so far was a blog by a homeopathy practitioner. I'd be grateful if someone else could decide whether I am being reasonable in my objections. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Your objections are absolutely justified. I removed the section and warned the user about edit warring, encouraging them to discuss the material they would like to add on the talk page. I'll post my thoughts there. Rkitko ^(talk) 17:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

looking for english term

• 
  Corydalis cava in Germany
• 
  Glebionis coronaria in Israel
• 
  Lupines on Table Mountain, California
• 
  Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve
• 
  Hyacinthoides non-scripta in England
• 
  Arrowleaf Balsamroot and Lupine, Fox Creek Range, Nevada
• 
  "flowering desert", Namaqualand

Hello, i'm looking for the best english term for different pictures like the ones above, showing naturally occuring masses of flowering plants, which dominate larger areas or even landscapes for a certain (usually short) time. In german i know the term "Blühaspekt" (~flowering aspect) and some others, but there is not the "one and only" term. Translation tools suggest that in English also various terms are used to describe such phenomena (eg. natural flower carpets). Now i want to create a new Commons category for this and therefore need a clear and correct english term (possibly scientific, if existing); it can also be a longer descriptive wording, but it should be unambiguous.

Please notice that i am not looking for flower beds (in gardening, including floral clocks), flower fields (commercial flower/seed/bulb production in agriculture or horticulture), field flowers (wildflowers/weeds growing in fields), flower meadows (meadow in the sense of mown grasslands; although the Commons category is currently pretty mixed-up), or flower carpets (decorative elements either made of natural or artificial flowers, or textile carpets with flower motifs).

At the moment we have only Category:Landscapes with flowers, but this is a very unspecific broad name, and it quickly becomes unusable due to too many random images put into it (like pictures of mountains with only one or two flowers in the foreground, or pictures of rapeseed fields etc). Your help and ideas are really welcome! Holger1959 (talk) 09:26, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Drift is in the right semantic area. (Unfortunately Drift is a name for a group of ground cover roses, with the result that googling for flower drift brings up those, rather than drifts of wild - or naturalised - flowers.) Lavateraguy (talk) 09:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

But I don't think that it would be used for heather or gorse, even though those flower en masse in suitable habitats. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that although "Flower drifts" would work, it's not really quite right; "drifts" can also be used for cultivated plants in borders, for example. I'm not sure there is a general English term for what you want. It would be a useful category though, and it's easy to add more examples of the kind of landscape covered by your examples, although as the density of plants diminishes, I'm not sure where to draw the line. Also heather moorland is dominated by the flowers for a limited period, but the plants dominate permanently.

• Trilliums
  Trilliums
• 
  Snowdrops
• 
  Anemone nemorosa
• 
  Buttercups
• 
  Even dandelions!
• 
  Heather, but permanently dominant as a plant
• 
  Sufficient Erythronium grandiflorum here?
• 
  But Anacamptis morio doesn't dominate here even though this would be described as an "orchid meadow"

Probing the semantic field, Eriophorum visually dominates when in fruit, rather than when in flower. And the same sort of landscape dominance can be achieved by the autumn colour of bracken or some deciduous trees. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:29, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure quite what you are looking for, but we do use the word "carpeted" in English, as in "The wood is carpeted in bluebells". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It seems that Wikipedia is already using the category flower carpets for what is also known more specifically as carpet bedding. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the first comments! seems complicated. maybe i should make it more clear. i'm specifically looking for a Category:___ name for images of:

a) dominant aspects of flowers/flowering plants in bloom (not of autumn leaves, fruits, grasses etc), and

b) naturally occuring flowers, i.e. in non-agricultural areas – not meadows/pastures with buttercups/dandelions, not anthropogenic heaths (cultural landscapes only existing when grazed/burned), not planted gardens etc. [other/better categories exist already]

I never read the "Flower drifts" term before, sounds interesting, but image searches in fact show a lot of unrelated images, so it might be too ambigous. Even the large amount of geograph.org.uk photos on Commons include only a few using this term (like for drifts of daisies).

"Category:Flower carpets (nature)" may work, but i don't know if "flower carpets" or "carpeted" is also used in AE, and if it is clear enough. (what will be assumed to belong to such a category?)

Could you think of a describing term which can be used as category name, and which both BE and AE people understand? i think "Category:Masses/Large amounts of flowering plants in bloom in nature" or similar is a bit long, but it could work well (though i am not sure it is correct English).

Holger1959 (talk) 09:08, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

You could have "Wildflower meadows", "Wildflower expanses", "Wildflower landscapes" or simply "Wildflowers". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:12, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It isn't clear to me why this category should exclude 'carpets' of flowers in human-modified landscapes (e.g. heaths). I suspect that such a definition, with the associated difficulties of image placement (many seemingly "natural" landscapes have been modified to some extent), is perhaps contributing to the difficulty in coining a suitable category name. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:09, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

The problem with terms like "Wildflower landscapes", etc. is that they don't indicate that the kinds of landscape in question are dominated by one species/taxon, which seems to be what is intended. In the UK, at least, if I talk about a "bluebell wood", a "snowdrop wood", an "orchid meadow" or a "buttercup field" there is a clear sense of "domination" by the first noun, at least for some period of time. But I don't think there is an over-arching term. (But then we don't have an English term for Schadenfreude, so perhaps we could adopt Blühaspekt.) Peter coxhead (talk) 17:07, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Anyone have access to the Melbourne Code, Appendix III?

If so, please see Talk:Zephyranthes atamasco, where the issue is whether the article should be changed to Z. atamasca, and support for this name is said to be in the Melbourne Code, Appendix IIIA, which doesn't seem to be online.

No, I don't believe it is online or available for purchase on paper yet. The fact that it is mentioned in the GRIN entry might mean that the volume is about to appear, and the mention will apparently be on page 333 (which is beyond the volume issued so far). This has been a fraught case, but those databases, the plant list, tropicos, IPNI have been out of date for a while. I have not the slightest doubt that the reason for the difficulty is that article 60 of the code had changed, and that article has caused such a lot of problems that it was more than once referred to the editorial committee rather than have the congress try to hash it out, which would have required some weeks with hundreds of people present.

This is the type species of the genus, and is mentioned in Appendix III E2 of the Vienna code and also in ING's entry for the genus. The original epithet comes from Amaryllis atamasca or Amaryllis atamasco. Proposals and Disposals gives a neat summary: the first mention in the code was in 1935, on page 132. Later mentions are 1952: 93; 1956: 228 (sp. atamasco); 1961: 244 (sp. atamasco, typ. cons.); 1966: 271; 1972: 288; 1978: 314; 1983: 328 (sp. atamasca); 1988: 178; 1994: 203; 2000: 259; 2006: 285; 2012: 333

So to summarized, since the 1983 code, the spelling has been atamasca.

I would further comment that when John Wiersema puts an explanatory comment into GRIN, I would be very surprised if it were ever wrong. GRIN may be a bit behind in the mundane updates, but the nomenclatural opinions are spot-on. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:59, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, great work, Sminthopsis84! I've queried the use of the spelling atamasco with IPNI; we'll see what view is taken there, but here I'm sure we should move the article to Zephyranthes atamasca. Can some admin please fix this? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:20, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure why Appendix III needs to be referred to. Article 62.4 spells it out: "Generic names ending in -anthes....are treated as feminine". Plantdrew (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Ah, that's not the issue. If atamasco is a noun in apposition, then no agreement by gender is required. "Atamosco" was originally a genus name, not an epithet (sources suggest it was a vernacular name).

Linnaeus wrote "Atamasca" with a capital "A" in Species Plantarum (see here), showing that it was intended as a noun in apposition, not an adjective. (Sources suggest that it was a vernacular name.) He later changed the spelling (second edition, here); also Adanson later used the spelling Atamosco as a genus name. When Herbert transferred the species to Zephyranthes (the type species) he used the spelling atamasco. Both the genus Zephryanthes and the type species with the spelling Z. atamasca are explicitly conserved in the ICN, as GRIN notes and as Sminthopsis84 helpfully explained above. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good summary, I think, Peter. We have moved away from de Candolle's style where elegant Latin is used by scholarly people, to a style that owes more to Otto Kuntze, where rules are followed exactly, but this case has been particularly problematic because Linnaeus wanted to correct the spelling, but he was too late, the juggernaut of botanical nomenclature was already in motion. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:05, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Stemonitis has now moved the article; I've written up the taxonomy as I understand it at Zephryanthes atamasca § Taxonomy. More could be said, but this is probably enough for the general reader. Taxonomic experts please check! Peter coxhead (talk) 13:13, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Out of mild curiosity, if this is the type species of Zephyranthes, why doesn't Atamosco Adans. (1763) have priority over Zephyranthes Herb. (1821)? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It would, but Zephyranthes is conserved. [7] --Stemonitis (talk) 11:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Stemonitis's link is to the Vienna Code; you can (supposedly) see that the Melbourne Code says the same by going here and putting in "Zephryanthes" and choosing "Code Appendices" before using "Submit".

There is a remaining question, which is whether the fact that Zephyranthes atamasca is a conserved type necessarily means that it is a conserved name? This is one for Code lawyers; I have queried the issue with IPNI. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:50, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Additional information about Hydnocarpus wightiana

Hi; Last spring, I was searching about Hydnocarpus wightiana and found some additional info about the plant (some alternative names, and uses against both a sort of beetle and a skin infection). I typed them on Talk:Hydnocarpus wightiana. As I don’t know much about botanic nor about the English Wikipedia standards, I didn’t add anything on the article though. Are these new pieces of content relevant and how would we add them on the article if so? Thanks! Nclm (talk) 18:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Should be "wrightianus," not "-a." Masculine generic name requires a masculine specific epithet. Otherwise, I do not see much problem.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 19:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Unless this is one of the cases where "botanical tradition" differs from what would seem to make sense. It is often argued that trees with genus names ending with -us are to be treated as feminine (Quercus petraea, Fagus sylvatica, etc.). This seems like a silly rule to me, but it is certainly a widely held botanical tradition. The IUCN, for instance, uses feminine endings for all the Hydnocarpus species it includes, and there are plenty of other sources that do the same. I couldn't say whether -us or -a is the best suffix to use in our article; it could be either. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. The relevant adjectival epithets for accepted names in the genus given in the Plant List here are all masculine -us, but many of the synonyms listed have -a. In terms of the ICN it seems to rest on whether "Hydnocarpus" can be regarded as a classical name for a tree. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, The Plant List has a mixture of -a and -us, but the small sample of accepted names only include -us. I'd have to check the code to be sure, but I think that compounds of -carpus are masculine. I'd have to check a classical Latin dictionary to be sure, but I think that the feminine nature of Populus, Fagus etc comes from classical Latin. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:51, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

It does seem that, whatever the code says, H. wightiana is much more frequently referred to as "wightiana" than "wightianus". It doesn't follow that the same would be true for all the other species ("odoratus" might be more common than "odorata", for instance). Might this be an instance where we overrule WP:NC in order to promote consistency between/within articles, and treat the genus as masculine in line with the more purely nomenclatural sources? We can't very well treat it as variably masculine and feminine in a list of species. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Re-reading the relevant part of the Code, -carpus genera are explicitly given as an example of genera that are masculine regardless of the author's original intention. In this case, Gaertner erected it as a feminine genus (containing "Hydnocarpus venenata"), but that choice of gender is to be overturned. I can see why there was confusion in the field, and it does appear that the ICN and WP:NC are in conflict. The correct name under the code is masculine, while the most frequent name in otherwise reliable sources is feminine. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:24, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

However, there are many other cases where the most frequently used name is wrong in apparently reliable sources. As an example, Rhodochiton atrosanguineum and Rhodochiton atrosanguineus are about equally common in Google ngrams for this century, horticultural sources mostly use the neuter, and the neuter was used both in WCSP and on the RHS website until I pointed out the error earlier this year and it was corrected (actually, Stemonitis, it was you who first reminded me that -ων is a masculine ending in Greek). When reliable sources are clearly wrong, frequency of use should not matter to us. Note also that WCSP (and hence TPL) only give accepted names in the masculine. So we should use the masculine. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:33, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The only WCSP (via TPL) accepted Hydnocarpus I see is wightianus (which does help with the original question). However, TPL's Hydnocarpus list is machine generated garbage and is not necessarily reliable. Any genus on TPL that is a mix of "unresolved" names sourced to WCSP and "accepted" names sourced to Tropicos hasn't been checked by humans, and this pattern (unresolved WCSP/accepted Tropicos) should be a big red flag for reliability.

TPL often defaults to "accepted" for Tropicos records as long as Tropicos doesn't have an explicit source for synonymy (obscure and poorly sourced names on Tropicos that are almost certainly synonyms may end up as "accepted" on TPL). In the case of Hydnocarpus, the accepted Tropicos names do seem to be legit. On Tropicos, they're sourced to Flora of China, and the TPL algorithm interprets FoC as a "good" source (the TPL algorithm has something stronger than "accept by default" in this case); of course, TPL also interprets Flora of North America as a "good" source, which led to a problem with Berberis and Mahonia listings when FNA and FoC disagreed. Plantdrew (talk) 17:32, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess that youall want to move the article (redirect from orthographic variant?) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I had forgotten about the "female tree" rule when I made my previous remarks. I think Linnaeus had been overindulging in good Swedish Yultide wassail when he came up with that one. Two points: 1) The so-called "authoritative sources" such as TPL and WCSPF and Tropicos are riddled with thousands of errors on this sort of thing. The computers have not read the ICN and they understand the various computer languages but generally not Latin. 2) We refer to these as "scientific names," which implies that we are using the names that scientists would use. Every botanist on the planet recognizes the ICN as the arbiter on what the rules are concerning the spelling and acceptance of these names. Spelling "Hydnocarpus" as "Hidnokarrpuss" would be equivalent to saying that 2 + 2 = 37. It is wrong regardless of how many publications have used the misspelling. Now we here on Wikipedia can record variations of spelling and mistakes that have found their way into print, we should not to be afraid to point out which of the options is regarded by scientists as correct and which ones are considered errors.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I looked up a few tree genus names in -us in Lewis and Short and they are feminine, so it seems that it's not Linnaeus in particular that is to blame. How this is to be reconciled with the widespread statement that 2nd declension nouns are masculine (-us) or neuter (-um) so far escapes me, but the Greek second declension has masculine (-os), feminine (-os) and neuter (-on) nouns. (The Wikipedia article on Latin declension says "The second declension is a large group of nouns consisting of mostly masculine nouns like equus, equī ("horse") and puer, puerī ("boy") and neuter nouns like castellum, castellī ("fort"). There are several small groups of feminine exceptions, including names of gemstones, plants, trees, and some towns and cities.") Lavateraguy (talk) 22:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The feminine tree rule is a modern invention, unknown to the ancients. Pliny the Elder would have said "Quercus albus" instead of "Quercus alba." Botanical Latin is not Classical Latin, but Latin altered to fit more recent concepts, in this case 18th Centuries concepts of gender. Whether or not Linnaeus invented the idea I'm not sure, but he adopted it and others followed his lead.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 23:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The existence of Classical, Medieval and Botanical Latin confuses things (Vulgar Latin abandoned most of the case endings, so it's not relevant), as works on Latin Grammar tend to not be specific as to which version they apply to. However I find a Grammar of Classical Latin which states that trees in -us are feminine. Can you offer a reliable source to the contrary? Lavateraguy (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm responding to a request for comment from a Latinist's perspective. I'm not really a linguistic expert; my specialty is names and things relating to them. But that's pretty much what this is about, and it helps that I actually know a lot of tree names, and was able to look them up in one of my Latin dictionaries (I'm using Cassell's right now). But I also have a little perspective from a purely linguistic standpoint. Just because a particular declension is usually associated with masculine or feminine nouns doesn't mean that there's a rule. Most first declension nouns are feminine, but there are some important and notable exceptions (I always remember nauta, pirata, agricola, Agrippa, and Poplicola). Most second declension nouns are masculine or neuter (don't forget those neuters!), but there are feminine ones. Tellus is the only non-tree I can remember, Venus being third declension (and another example of a general rule with exceptions; all third declension nouns ending in -us are neuter except for Venus, which is necessarily feminine).

This gives us an important clue, however. The gender of a word isn't determined by its declension, but by the thing it refers to. It's true that there's often a correspondence, but the actual gender of a particular thing trumps the general rule when it comes to declensions. Earth, for example, is feminine whether you refer to it as terra or tellus. Rivers are nearly always masculine (and personified by river gods), but there are a few exceptions (Styx, Lethe, Tyche, and Neda being the ones I recall). Streams are feminine, however. And every tree I can think of of that the Romans would have known perfectly well is feminine, except for maple, which for some reason is neuter. Some of them, by the way, are fourth declension nouns, which means that they look like second declension nouns in the nominative, but the genitive also ends in -us. Quercus is an example of that. Most fourth declension nouns are feminine. A few trees can be either second or fourth declension, but they're always feminine.

Here's a list I've been making as I typed my response:

• 1st declension feminine: acacia, armeniaca, betula, castanea, olea or oliva, palma, picea, rosa, tilia
• 2nd declension feminine: aesculus, alnus, amygdalus, arbutus, buxus, cedrus, cerasus, citrus, corylus, fagus, fraxinus, juniperus, laurus, malus, morus, ornus, persicus, pirus, platanus, pomus, populus, prinus, prunus, sambucus, sorbus or sorvus, taxus, ulmus
• 2nd declension neuter: cinnamomum or cinnamum, viburnum
• 3rd declension neuter: acer, siler
• 3rd declension feminine: abies, ilex, juglans, larix, salix
• 4th declension feminine: quercus
• 1st or 3rd declension feminine: myrica or myrice
• 2nd or 4th declension feminine: cornus, cupressus, ficus, myrtus, pinus

Notes: Cassell's makes citrus masculine; Bantam's says it's feminine.

So the answer seems to be that in Latin, no matter what the era, trees are nearly always feminine; one type came up neuter, and none masculine. There could be some more neuter trees, or even some masculine ones, that I didn't think of. But feminine seems to be the rule. P Aculeius (talk) 02:58, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

See wikt:Category:Latin feminine nouns in the second declension and wikt:Category:la:Trees.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:14, 20 December 2014 (UTC) and 03:16, 20 December 2014 (UTC) and 03:43, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

See wikt:robur ("a kind of hard oak", neuter) and "siler" ("willow", neuter, synonym of "salix" [feminine]).

—Wavelength (talk) 03:45, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Perfectly right about siler, which Cassell's describes as the brook-willow. Seems to belong to the same class as acer. But robur simply means "hard wood," with a note saying that it applies particularly to oak. I suspect that the species name quercus robur is modern. If you take it as an adjective, which I think may be the case, it's feminine because quercus is feminine, irrespective of whether it would be neuter as a stand-alone noun. There's a related adjective, roboreus -a -um which shows that, whatever gender of the thing from which the adjective is derived, it has to agree with the noun it describes. P Aculeius (talk) 04:32, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Whatever the history is here, the point remains that scientific names have grammatical gender. This is a linguistic phenomenon common to most European languages, and does not have to be logical (In French, the moon is feminine and the sun is masculine, while in German exactly the opposite is true). So if you see a list of the species in a given genus, some of the epithets having masculine endings and others having feminine, that is a clue that something is wrong.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 12:52, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

That's perfectly true. But bear in mind that botanists aren't all fluent in Latin and Greek, and may not be aware that nearly all trees are feminine, even if their names are second declension nouns (or look like them). Grammatical gender seems to be one reason why so many taxonomic names are changed from time to time. Adjectives don't have a natural gender, but take their endings based on the gender of the noun or pronoun described; in the case of first and second declension adjectives, they take first declension endings if feminine, second if masculine or neuter. Irrespective of the declension used by the genus, the species has to belong to the same gender. And trees, with very few exceptions, are feminine, even though the majority belong to the second declension; so the adjectives used as species names have to be feminine, too. In the case of first and second declension adjectives, that means taking first declension endings. P Aculeius (talk) 14:00, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks like I forgot an important exception. Plants with species names in the genitive (i.e. "of Smith, of Linnaeus, of Larson") will have genitive forms appropriate to the person whose name is being used. A way to remember this is to think of genitives as adjectives describing the person referred to. Looks like "Smith" is treated as an i-stem noun, so smithii rather than smithi, no matter what kind of tree Smithius discovered. This only applies to genitives; if the name's not in the genitive, it still has to agree with the genus, so ficus forsythia rather than forsythius, but ficus forsythii if it's not the Forsyth fig, but Forsyth's fig. P Aculeius (talk) 14:17, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Triple posting here... some of the confusion seems to come from sources on botanical names written by authors who don't have a background in Latin. In Plant Systematics by Michael George Simpson, the author speaks of names that have masculine endings but are treated as feminine in Latin. But the endings aren't masculine at all, and the names aren't "treated as" feminine. The ending doesn't determine the gender, and second declension nouns other than obvious neuters may be either masculine or feminine (and apparently a few are also neuter). I found this helpful explanation of feminine second declension nouns at thelatinlibrary.com:

"The following nouns of the second declension are feminine:

1) Most cities, countries, and islands: Corinthus, Aegyptus, Rhodus, etc.

2) Most trees and plants: fagus, beech, ficus, fig tree, etc.

3) The following: alvus, belly carbasus, linen; humus, ground; and a few others.

And the following are neuter: virus, poison; pelagus, sea; vulgus, crowd, rabble. (These have no plural, except pelagus)."

Of course, novel coinages can't be expected to follow normal rules; if somebody makes up a generic name for a type of tree, they could treat it as masculine or neuter on a whim (or out of ignorance). And then later botanists could try to correct that (or hypercorrect it, if the original name was meant to be feminine, and they're trying to treat it as masculine because it "looks" masculine). Hence some of the confusion. Perhaps the best way to deal with the situation is to know that most plants are feminine, irrespective of their declension, because the declension doesn't determine the gender of a noun. P Aculeius (talk) 14:52, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Very certainly not all botanists have studied Latin. I saw one author state in the protologue that he was naming a species after his wife, yet he used the masculine "-ii" ending. That is how these mistakes originate, and very often the errors get copied by secondary sources. But the names are still covered by the ICN whether the botanists are fluent in Latin or not. Subsequent botanists who do know Latin will find these errors and correct them. Indeed, the ICN has provisions for correcting the errors. The question before us at Wikipedia is whether we follow the misuse of the grammatical endings or follow the provisions of the ICN.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The simple answer is that there's no easy answer! On the one hand, Wikipedia is supposed to be accessible to everyone, so common usage is entitled to some deference. But that would mean listing plants under their common names (even when there's considerable variation), which isn't how plant articles are usually titled. At the same time, Wikipedia articles can be as detailed and comprehensive as the authors can make them, which is part of what makes Wikipedia so useful; while coverage in some areas is lacking or dubious, countless matters that wouldn't be covered in depth by most encyclopedias are very well covered. While most authors I know strive for accuracy, it's hard to tell what that means when a widely-recognized authority appears to have endorsed a mistake. Does the ICN create truth or have the power to make new exceptions to Latin grammar? Of course not. It's there to help standardize taxonomy. But that's still important, as most writers feel obliged to follow its recommendations, even if they don't make sense.

My suggestion would be to use the correct grammar first, whatever the current ICN designation is, and list alternative forms (synonyms, common names) in the lead paragraph. If there's a conflict between good grammar and current ICN usage, place a footnote after the ICN designation and explain the difference. Since most Wikipedia articles use Arabic numerals for sources, I usually use either the {{efn}} or the {{efn-lr}} template for footnotes. The first format gives you "[note 1]", and the second uses small Roman numerals. Place the explanatory note after a pipe in the template, and place a notes or footnotes section before the citations or references, with {{notelist}} or {{notelist-lr}} in it. I'd write something like, "Because the genus Blahnus is grammatically feminine, the synonym Blahnus blasia is technically correct. However, the current ICN designation is Blahnus blasius." Or something along those lines. P Aculeius (talk) 18:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

My WWW search (not necessarily a Google search) for "International Code of Nomenclature" Latin errors mistakes found some web pages which might be useful for this discussion. I started to select some for mention here, but then I decided to leave that for other editors.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

This looks important: from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, Chapter VII, Orthography and Gender of Names:

Ex. 3. Compound generic names in which the termination of the last word is altered: Stenocarpus R. Br., Dipterocarpus C. F. Gaertn., and all other compounds ending in the Greek masculine -carpos (or -carpus), e.g. Hymenocarpos Savi, are masculine; those in -carpa or -carpaea, however, are feminine, e.g. Callicarpa L. and Polycarpaea Lam.; and those in -carpon, -carpum, or -carpium are neuter, e.g. Polycarpon L., Ormocarpum P. Beauv., and Pisocarpium Link.

I believe this answers the question on this specific issue. Greek -carpos (Latinized -carpus) is masculine. So if it ends in -carpus, rather than -carpa/carpaea or carpon/carpium, it's masculine, and the species name should be too, unless it falls under the genitive exception or another exception I ran into, apposition (where the species name doesn't describe the type of thing, but is itself a specific thing; the example cited was Panthera leo, where leo (masculine) is a specific thing, not "just" a description of a particular panthera (feminine). P Aculeius (talk) 22:53, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The question was asked "Does the ICN create truth or have the power to make new exceptions to Latin grammar?" What do you mean "exceptions?" The rules in the ICN concerning gender agreement is explaining Latin grammar, i.e. Botanical Latin Grammar, not making exceptions to it. Adjectives must have the same gender as nouns, in Latin just as in French, Spanish, or German. If I say "una rosa rojo" in Spanish, I have made a grammatical error. It should be "una rosa roja." It is exactly the same thing in Latin. The ICN needs to present rules on determining what gender the nouns are.Joseph Laferriere (talk) 23:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure where this is going. All I was saying is that the ICN can't simply declare that feminine nouns must be treated as masculine because they look masculine. Or rather, it could declare it all it wants, but that wouldn't make it alright for anybody to do it, even if people chose to accept the ICN's authority and ignore the rules of grammar. But that's not what's happening here, because the question is whether a genus ending in -carpus is masculine or feminine. We've established that the names of most plants are feminine in Latin (the examples I used were trees, but the rule seems to pertain to plants in general), even if they belong to the second declension (as most do). The fact that they end in -us is irrelevant. However, -carpus is from Greek, and the form tells us the gender; if the same plant were feminine, it would end in -carpa, and if it were neuter it would end in -carpum.

Superficially this resembles the usual pattern of Latin nouns of the first and second declension, and indeed it would be the case with adjectives, which have no natural gender. But you cannot determine the gender of a first or second declension noun merely from its ending, because there are important exceptions (such as plants, countries, names for earth). The Greek element -carpus, however, is diagnostic, and tells us that the plant is masculine, and requires a masculine adjective, if the species name is to be based on an adjective. So, notwithstanding the fact that most trees are feminine in Latin, Hydnocarpus is masculine.

There are three ways the name could be formed: feminine Hydnocarpa wightiana; masculine Hydnocarpus wightianus; or with a genetive ending, Hydnocarpus wightii, in which the species name doesn't depend on the gender of the genus. Note that Robert Wight shows all three forms in the abbreviated list of plants named after him (as well as one instance of neuter wightianum). Since the genus isn't likely to change just for consistency with a species name, that leaves the latter two options. According to the rules of botanical nomenclature, one of those has to be the correct form of the name, even if the ICN currently recognizes a form that's gramatically incorrect. And that's where you'd put the explanatory note in the lead paragraph. I'd suggest moving the article to Hydnocarpus wightianus and then explaining that wightiana is commonly used despite the fact that Hydnocarpus is masculine, and that the confusion probably arose because most other trees ending in -us are feminine. P Aculeius (talk) 01:41, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

To summarise

• In spite of the school boy Latin belief that 2nd declension nouns ending in -us as masculine, nearly all plant genera which are adopted from Latin plant names are feminine.
• Plant genera which are compound words in which the last element is a masculine noun ending in -us are masculine; however due to hypercorrection based on the previous point they have often been erroneously treated as feminine.
• Botanical Latin does not differ from Classical Latin here.

Euonymus (masc.) looks like an exception, but it turns out to be a compound (borrowed from the Greek - see wikt:Euonymus.

My thanks to the Latinists for their assistance. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I've moved the article. Someone who knows the categories can add the appropriate one. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:08, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm another Latinist referred from Wikipedia:WikiProject Latin. The topic of declensions and genders of Latin plant names has been exhausted, but I'll add another fact and some speculation: the Latin word for "tree", arbor, is third-declension feminine. A close association between this word and tree names could be a reason why so many of them are feminine. (In some cases adjectives modifying nouns of a particular gender in Latin or Greek can be adopted on their own as a noun, retaining the gender of the noun they formerly modified, but I don't know of any tree names that are adjectives.) At the very least, association with this noun might help reinforce feminine gender for nouns of a declension that is usually masculine. — Eru·tuon 05:00, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's so much the word arbor as it is the fact that trees and plants were (usually) considered feminine by the Latins (and perhaps other peoples of Italy). Or, put another way, the word arbor is feminine for the same reason that most names of trees are, but it's not the reason itself. As for adjectives, I believe that what we were talking about wasn't the use of adjectives for tree names by the Romans, but the use of adjectives to differentiate species in botanical names. For example, the Romans may not have had separate words for the red blah and the white blah, but we refer to them as Blahnus rubra and Blahnus alba. In this case, rubra and alba are adjectives describing a type of tree belonging to the genus Blahnus. So while Blahnus rubra would be considered a compound noun, the compound consists of a noun and an adjective. The same would be true for Fuller's blah, Blahnus nattae, in which the species name describes a particular tree, but not for the Wally blah, Blahnus wallius, in which the species name is a noun, and doesn't have to agree with the gender of the generic name. I believe this is referred to as "apposition." P Aculeius (talk) 23:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I should clarify: my mention of adjectives was not a misunderstanding of the original question (why the adjective wightiana is feminine rather than masculine), but rather a speculation that the names of trees (pirus, quercus) might be feminine because they were originally adjectives modifying arbor, as, for example, Ancient Greek ὀξεῖα "acute (accent)" is a nominalized adjective, feminine because it derives by abbreviation from the adjective-noun phrase ὀξεῖα προσῳδία, in which it modifies a feminine noun. (I can't think of any Latin examples at the moment.) However, as I said, I don't know that pirus, quercus, or any of the other tree names were once adjectives, so it's just empty speculation. — Eru·tuon 02:13, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I didn't see this brought up anywhere in the discussion, but it might prove useful for understanding. Latin names of trees are considered feminine in part because dryads (tree spirits) were feminine in Greek and Roman mythology. Since the spirits of the trees were feminine, so were the names of the trees, Even in Classical Latin, most of these were treated as feminine, as you can verify from the Oxford Latin Dictionary (I've double-checked fagus, quercus, and ulmus just now to be certain).

So the feminine gender of trees whose name ends in -us is not purely a feature of Botanical Latin; the gender was also present in the Classical language, and was reinforced by mythological connections. It is not all that unusual for a feminine noun in Latin to end in -us, or for a masculine noun to end in -a (e.g. agricola, lanista, nauta, poeta, etc.). There were certainly exceptions to the norm, as in any language. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:40, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I would say it is unusual, but not extraordinary, and tends to take place in isolated classes (trees is one). Likewise masculine nouns in -a occur in special classes (Greek loan words; compounds with -cola "inhabitant"). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:42, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

A comment turned up on my talk page suggesting that something be added about gender to botanical name (in which case nouns in apposition should also be explicated). Lavateraguy (talk) 11:01, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Adding Planting tips?

Hi. As shown to the title, should we add a section of every plants a Planting tips/information? This is to inform people about how to plant them and possibly even add what are its companion plants and attracted beneficial insects etc. Thanks :) Typhoon2013 (talk) 08:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

We can add (appropriately sourced) information about how such plants are used in various gardens, and any ecological interactions, but we cannot give advice. (See WP:NOTHOWTO.) --Stemonitis (talk) 09:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

We normally provide that information under Cultivation, but not as tips. It is not 'advice' if properly sourced and verified, but terms like 'should' should be avoided! Michael Goodyear (talk) 12:24, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Inconsistency

Wikipedia retains the genus Anagallis, sunk by a recentish paper in Lysimachia, but the articles for some species are placed under Lysimachia. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:15, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm... I have a couple of comments. The first, and much more pedantic one is that just because names have been made available, that does not mean that they have to be used. There are now combinations for these species in Lysimachia, just as there are already combinations in Anagallis (and elsewhere; Asterolinon, Pelletiera and Trientalis also turn out to be derived from within Lysimachia s.l.). If, however, we continue to consider these genera separate, then the previous combinations continue to be correct. My second point is that Wikipedia is under no obligation to be completely up to date. In his 2010 third edition (i.e. after the Willdenowia paper came out), Stace remarked that "It is likely that Lysimachia, Anagallis and Glaux require reorganisatin, but more data are needed before this can be undertaken". If authoritative sources like that are not ready to take the plunge, then we should also be in no hurry to do so. Certainly the inconsistency is a problem, and I think that, for now, moving the few articles back to Anagallis might be the best option. (They were each moved from an Anagallis title in the last couple of years.) That wouldn't preclude moves later when reliable secondary sources had at least started to switch to the newer system. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:17, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with moving the articles back to Anagallis - we don't know whether the future consensus will be to enlarge or dismember Lysimachia, so in the meantime stick with the status quo. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Near-empty taxon categories

Having Fumana on my watchlist, I noticed that User:Stemonitis removed and deleted the (then-empty) Category:Fumana (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Sounds reasonable and by the book on the surface. However, I'd say that taxon categories, at least multiple-taxa ones, might as well be exempted from CSD:C1 – the genus has a dozen red-linked species. Why wasting time on deleting a category that will have to be recreated one day? Anyway, not a big deal, but I'd like to hear some thoughts; maybe it would make sense to eventually amend CSD:C1 to explicitly exempt such "systemic" categories. No such user (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, not strictly by the book, but reasonable enough, I thought. Categories are not for the future, they are there to categorise the articles we have now. In that regard, a category for a single article is not generally helpful, because it takes up the same amount of space on the parent category's page. The bigger and less obvious problem is the example it might be seen to set. Every so often, an overzealous categoriser appears on the scene and starts dividing useful categories into many, many tiny ones. I fear that the presence of other tiny categories might falsely lead such editors to believe that to be helpful behaviour. (I actually think that there would be no problem in having all our Cistaceae articles in a single category – a list of 49 pages is not unwieldy – but it's probably too late for that, and it's not worth arguing for.) Categories are for grouping articles together, not separating them, a point which is often overlooked. --Stemonitis (talk) 17:16, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Stemonitis; there's been far too much over-categorization by taxon, with an apparent belief on the part of some editors that every taxon at every rank should have its own category. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Over-categorization

Meanwhile our old "friend" Look2See1 carries on blithely over-categorizing plant articles using a personal set of geographical categories. See Dichelostemma capitatum for one of the latest efforts. Is there really any point in trying to categorize correctly? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:34, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions has no particular standing as policy, but it does have a broad consensus among those who edit botanical articles here. As such, anyone wilfully not complying with it – and especially if they don't engage with the community when complaints are made – is making themselves open to sanction. In the specific case of Look2See1, the problem has been pointed out to the editor before; I don't think it's a stretch to call their edits "disruptive" given that they go against consensus. I would suggest a stern wording, with a threat of blocking, which will certainly not be an idle threat. It may also be a good idea to make WP:PLANTS/WGSRPD (what an abbreviation!) more prominent on the project page. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:45, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

@Stemonitis: so are you going to block this user if a warning is disregarded (as it has been so far)? Action has been discussed repeatedly but never implemented sufficiently forcefully to make any difference. Further, because Look2See1 is so prolific in adding categories, undoing all the harm done would be huge task. Would anyone want to tackle it? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I was going to wait a little while (hours rather than days) to confirm that no-one had any truck with WP:PLANTS/WGSRPD – it has been discussed a few times, but there has never been any vote or anything, so I thought it as well to make sure (and I haven't reread the past discussions in enough detail to confirm that everyone agrees with it). After that, I will happily warn anyone contravening it and, if the disruptive editing doesn't stop, I would be prepared to block, yes. Undoing the overcategorisation may be a harder task, but there may be ways of ameliorating it. We presumably know which categories conform and which don't, so it should be possible to request a bot task to remove/replace (as appropriate) all the non-WGSRPD categories. It will need some thought, but I expect we could eliminate much of the donkey work that way. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:07, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Plant categorization is described in a number of places, so I've added some "see also" links at the top of WP:PLANTS#Categorization. I've also added a bullet point linking to WP:PLANTS/WGSRPD. If there's no consensus for using this scheme, then the WGSRPD link and bullet point can be removed. There's perhaps a case for a single page on categorization, which could then be made a tab to the project page, as has recently very usefully been done for the template. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:34, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm less confident we can now maintain the WGSRPD categories broadly given the recent closing of the first flora by country CfD, which resulted in a merger of all the "Orchids by country" in Europe to "Orchids of Europe" -- see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 26#Category:Orchids of Austria. If this is used as precedent for other discussions, we may have trouble gaining consensus with the wider community for anything but continent-level categories.

On a related note, if we as a project haven't fully discussed the WGSRPD's implementation here, let's do it now. User:Declangi has been doing great work on these categories recently. Let's create a subsection of this discussion for a recorded !vote among the project members to at least record (and discuss) our preferences for flora distribution categories. Rkitko ^(talk) 16:25, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• Rkitko: I'm sorry I missed this CfD discussion, the outcome was disappointing and lacked consensus. You put the case well, but it seems to have been met with a "many categories invite over-categorization" blanket response from proponents.
• Regarding WGSRPD implementation, it may be unclear to those not on this project whether it is project policy or not. So a vote might be in order. WIth some 400,000 plant species per Kew (~60,000 so far covered in Wikpedia?), a detailed scheme for their geography is warranted, both now and for the future. I don't know if a domain such as fauna has a widely-accepted scheme like WGSRPD to follow, so analogous upmerges don't seem entirely relevant. As some on the CfD said, Wikipedia should follow the science, not lead.
• Regarding Look2See1, the issues are not confined to over-categorization of species articles. The user also adds many parent categories to individual category pages thereby creating a very tangled hierarchy. And often buried within such changes is the re-addition of a parent category that was previously removed, a stealth revert of sorts. It happens a lot, the user can be very persistent. If only that energy could be somehow rechanneled...

Thanks Declangi (talk) 11:40, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support using WGSRPD categories for distribution (are we voting now? Just trying to get the ball rolling here). Also support having "Endemic flora of ..." as subcategories of the WGSRPD categories. Plantdrew (talk) 19:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support per my comments above. Declangi (talk) 03:59, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Saffron FAR

I have nominated Saffron for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that quite a bit of work is needed to disentangle the page from Crocus sativus which as a species page within the purview of this project should not be deleted. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:16, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

African Plants - External links

I have an issue that needs some discussion here. I have been adding a larger number of external links to 'African Plants - a photo guide', which is a photo database / plant identification tool based at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum and Research Institute Frankfurt and which I am curating with a colleague. I have seen these links to the African Plants species pages as a good way to add additional information useful for the reader, mainly photos, but also the species-specific links to further nomenclatural, distributional, plant use resources of a larger network of botanical resources for Africa. Apparently I am not alone with this view as I received some positive feedback on this activity. But this morning, I found a note by User:Stemonitis, having a very different view on these links and starting to revert my edits. Please find a copy of our discussion below and give your opinion and recommendations, whether external links to 'African Plants' are a good idea or not, or only in certain cases and how to proceed:

copied over

I have concerns about the external links you have been adding to a large number of pages. According to WP:EL, a site which "does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article" should not normally be included. Where the African Plants page only contains a few images, that would appear to be the case, and the link should not be included. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC) Well, for most of these species there are not many reliable image sources around and field guides with images (print or online) are often crucial in identifying plants and then, African plants also provides further links to nomenclature, distribution, plant use, other floras... --Marco Schmidt (talk) 08:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC) Nonetheless, I don't think it's an appropriate link, following the guidance at WP:EL. Lists of links to other sites are explicitly discouraged, and a featured article would certainly contain images. Please stop adding them immediately. If you can demonstrate consensus to add them, then things might be different. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:12, 21 April 2015 (UTC) The links are perfectly in line with WP:ELYES, Point 3: "Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues". The criterium "does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article" (I must admit, that I did not know about this) may well be a point for better-known species, but for the majority of species from tropical areas, would you ever expect articles to reach featured-article level? Would you please stop being destructive by reverting all this??? --Marco Schmidt (talk) 08:41, 21 April 2015 (UTC) All the links I've checked contained only a few photos, and no other information. Photographs can be easily incorporated into Wikipedia articles, so that argument does not apply. The fact that almost all your edits have been to add this particular external link suggests that you are here more to promote that website than to build a generalist encyclopaedia. Where resources are already available (esp. Commons), such links are not at all helpful. You cannot really argue that particular criteria do not apply to particular articles; they apply just as much to African plants as to any others. Please do not continue to add these external links until you can demonstrate consensus to do so. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:22, 21 April 2015 (UTC) As an author of the linked work you have a conflict of interest in this issue and should not be directly editing the articles yourself. Instead, you are strongly advised to restrict yourself to making suggestions on the article talk pages. If you are really here to improve the encyclpaedia rather than promote your own work then you could upload images for which you own the copyright to Commons: where they can be used in the articles directly. SpinningSpark 09:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC) Thanks for the WP:COI article, it clearly says under WP:CURATOR:"Museum curators, librarians, archivists, and similar are encouraged to help improve Wikipedia, or to share their information in the form of links to their resources. If a link cannot be used as a reliable source, it may be placed under further reading or external links if it complies with the external links guideline. Bear in mind that Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files." (I am well aware of the last part, which is why I don't place links, where they don't provide any useful additional information.) Concerning the Commons option, many photographers (including me) are fine with non-profit or educational use of their photos, but since Wiki Commons won't let you choose CC-NC licences, that is in many cases not an option. --Marco Schmidt (talk) 10:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC) Ah, I had not realised that you are acting in the role of a curator. Nevertheless, I think you would be wise to gain consensus for your actions before proceeding, as Stemonitis has already suggested. Those who come here to do nothing else but add links are always treated with great suspicion. A good place to raise the issue would be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants. Most, if not all, the articles you have edited are within the scope of that Wikiproject and I believe Stemonitis is active within it. As for the licencing issue, the whole foundation of Wikimedia is that it is free content. If you don't want to play by those rules, that's fine, we respect that, but you cannot then expect Wikipedia to help drive traffic to the place where you do want to play. SpinningSpark 15:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for contributing to this discussion! --Marco Schmidt (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I have welcomed the addition of the African Plants external links to some articles I've worked on (and also helped to improve the template used to add the link). However the issue must always be whether an external link adds valuable information. Where Commons does not have images or has ones of doubtful identity, the link is useful, and I think it should not be removed. However it shouldn't be added routinely just because the species has an African Plants entry. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Adding links only, where there are no suitable Commons images sounds like a reasonable guideline to me. Stemonitis, what is your opinion? --Marco Schmidt (talk) 13:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I had been doing until now, as it happens. I did not remove all the links you added recently, only those which added nothing new to the articles, although that was still quite a high proportion. The issue of the conflict of interest remains (especially given that many of the photos are your own), so it may be best to avoid adding such links yourself. You clearly have a lot of knowledge of the African flora, and there are many ways that could be used to benefit the encyclopaedia. Trying to use Wikipedia to drive traffic to a particular external website is probably not one of them. If there is no commercial intent behind your site, then I would strongly encourage you to consider making as many images as possible available under a free licence. They could then be uploaded to the Commons and used directly in articles. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:11, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

New Essay

There is a new essay, "Identifying primary and secondary sources for biology articles", you are invited to comment on.DrChrissy ^(talk) 12:13, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Georg Forster FAR

I have nominated Georg Forster for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for plant article template re - regional flora lists

Please comment here - Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Template#Proposal_for_regional_flora_list_articles FloraWilde (talk) 01:45, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for plant article template re structure for regional flora articles

Please comment here - Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Template#Proposal_for_regional_flora_article_structure. FloraWilde (talk) 01:47, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

A few CfDs for your attention

Hi, all: Here are links to a few CfDs that may interest you. I know we've talked here at least once before about the North/Northern and South/Southern America difference. Please participate if you're so inclined.

• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 11#Flora of Northern and Southern America
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 10#Category:Pinus of China
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 6#Category:Flora of the Levant
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 April 26#Category:Flora of Cornwall
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 April 25#Category:Asparagales of Metropolitan France

Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 02:56, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

James L Reveal

I would just like to pause for a moment and give tribute to the work of Dr James Reveal who died earlier this year. His taxonomic work, described as 'Herculean' by the APG (APG I) has contributed much to these pages. Michael Goodyear (talk) 12:30, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. That is a nice thought, Michael. Should we perhaps have a category for botanical nomenclaturists to mark that rather unusual specialty that is so important to sorting out what is what among plants? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:13, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

On the other hand there seems to be some concern here amongst our colleagues about overer-categorisation - so we would need to justify how this would help.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 12:12, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Archiving

Is there a problem with the archiving of this page, or at least their retrieval? The Archive box goes to April 2013 - Archive 61, yet there are at least 65 pages of archives.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 14:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

There's no problem with the bot archiving stuff off the talk page and creating new archive pages once the "current" one reaches a certain size. However, the bot doesn't take care of updating the archive box; that needs to be done manually. I'll look into it (unless somebody else wants to take it on; the hard part for me is determining which threads are important enough to list in the box). Plantdrew (talk) 15:58, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Redirects for common name referring to multiple species

The same plant common name often refers to multiple species, often unrelated and in entirely different plant families. E.g., greasewood. Often editors who are familiar with local flora binomial names and technical information, may not be aware of other areas in the world in which the same common name refers to an entirely different species. Using "#Genus species" instead of "#RedirectGenus species" starts a numbered list. Does anyone have any comments pro, or con, for starting a list (which may or may not have more than one species in it), instead of doing the basic redirect? FloraWilde (talk) 17:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

I believe that's called a set index article, and editors here certainly have been setting them up more or less as you describe. Choess (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Is pygmy poppy one of the common names you have in mind? By all means, start a list for that one (I'll get to it soon myself if you don't). It's a good idea to run the common name through a search engine; the common name by itself, and in conjunction each of the scientific names concerned. If the common name is overwhelmingly associated with one scientific name, it may be better to have it as a redirect to the taxon with a hatnote for the less commonly used meaning. But in many cases you'll find usage pretty well split and you should start a list. Sarching "pygmy poppy" I get hits for both Eschcholzia and Canbya in the first page of results, and doing searches for "pygmy poppy"+Escholzia and "pygmy poppy"+Canbya gives me a similar numbr of results for each search.

Use {{Plant common name}} at the bottom of the list. I think bulleted lists are preferable to numbered (which tend to imply a complete enumeration); for similar reasons, I prefer to say "Foo is a common name for several plants" rather than "common name for two plants". Many of the common name set index articles are bare lists of scientific names, but if you can include additional information to distinguish the taxa please do (greasewood is one of the best developed set indices). Family, flower color, growth habit, range, habitat can be good distinguishing characteristics to mention; and include photos if any are available. Plantdrew (talk) 23:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and sources presenting common names may attempt to make them unique with details in formatting that are unintuitive to the average reader. "Pygmypoppy" and "pygmy-poppy" pretty much exclusively refer to Canbya. However, I question whether anybody searching for a common name will find any meaning in the absence of a space or presence of a hyphen. I usually redirect minor variants like these to the set index article. Plantdrew (talk) 00:07, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Wow, Plantdrew. You really do think while you edit. Pygmy poppy is exactly the place I got concerned that in writing list of Mojave flora, I should check where the common name links take us, rather than just combing the list for dead links and redirecting the red linked common names to the species. Last year, I heard rumors of a massive number of new tiny Eschscholzia species that were recently described, and about to be published, all of which used to be called pygmy poppy.

Possible source of rumour - http://search.proquest.com/docview/872863242 Lavateraguy (talk) 11:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to Lavateraguy. :) FloraWilde (talk) 11:11, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Jepson eFlora version of Jepson Manual 2nd ed (2012) is now online for use as a ref at Wiki

I have had lots of talk page discussions with editors who said they did not have access the 2nd ed (2012) Jepson Manual to verify things. The latest CNPS Santa Monica Chapter Newsletter[8] says it is now online - "An important advance in systematics of California plants: The Jepson eFlora is now on line. The Jepson eFlora initially parallels the second edition of The Jepson Manual, Vascular Plants of California, which is the work of 300 authors and editors being published by the University of California Press. The eFlora includes all of the taxonomic treatments of the print Manual and has in addition treatments for taxa that were excluded from the print Manual because of doubts about naturalization status. Interactive distribution maps linked to specimen data from the Consortium of California Herbaria are included. Words that were abbreviated to save space in the print Manual have been expanded. Keys are linked to the treatments to which they refer. Accepted names and synonyms can be searched for. The eFlora is linked to the Jepson Online Interchange, and from there to numerous electronic tools. The Jepson Herbarium will work with the treatment authors and users to keep the eFlora in sync with advances in California botanical knowledge." FloraWilde (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Criteria for the upload project of Naturalis Biodiversity Center?

Naturalis at Leiden, The Netherlands, has lately scanned millions of biological specimens (say 5 million herbarium sheets and three million other biohistorical photographs, art works, documents etc., quite a bounty). They intend to donate a selection to Wikimedia Commons. I am a temporary wikipedian in residence and looking for selection criteria. I would like to find out the expert opinion of the Plants community.

• Are you interested in herbarium sheets (examples)? If so, an option could be to upload for every plant species one (or two) images of recent (because best condition) herbarium sheets - Naturalis has them for 400.000 plant species.
• Would you (also) appreciate holotypes - but they tend to be old and so in lesser condition -, (extra) images of endangered/extinct species etc.?
• What extra biological image material is NOT wanted on Commons, because....?

Perhaps you know better selection schemes and considerations.
Please comment. Remarks, suggestions, wishes and criticism are most welcome, thanks Hansmuller (talk) 08:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. We've not used them often but maybe there'd be value in the type specimens....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:38, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, interesting. Just seen this; I’ll spend more time thinking this over, before replying.

On the side of this topic, Hansmuller i have long searched for online access to all those Blumea journal issues prior to those available in Ingenta (here.) As really significant scientific literature for botany generally, and including significant reference sources here in plants articles in WP, eg. Sapindaceae family genera and species articles, hopefully they have been digitised and have become available—please where are they? --Macropneuma 00:28, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll inquire about Blumea <2003. Thanks, Hansmuller (talk) 07:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I found what looked like a full run of Blumea at Naturalis a little while ago. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:40, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Yay! Lavateraguy, that looks like it, yes like a full run of issues and including the longer monographic(?) supplement issues, eg. this important one. Excellent literature searching result. Many to catch up with reading and using out in Bama Country (the Wet Tropics of NE. Qld) now! As well as continuing using them as sources and updating citations with fulltext links here in WP. --Macropneuma 02:41, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

You already found the repository site the main editor of Blumea at Naturalis advised me, enjoy! --Hansmuller (talk) 07:27, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Yay! Been busy gathering articles from them this arvo. I wonder how long Blumea has been up on the repository—if i remember well, i didn’t find it when searching the repository last year. --Macropneuma 08:06, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Botanist Matthieu Bonafous

Hello. I have just created a stub about French botanist Matthieu Bonafous, best known for his book on maize/corn, has a plant named after him...I would appreciate it if some of you wanted to expand the page with in-line referenced info. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 02:04, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

One can extract some more information from Wikipedia FR and Wikipedia IT.

He was an agronomist; what I don't know was he was just an agronomist ("agronomist") or more ("agronomist and botanist"). According to IPNI he published 5 names - 1 mulberry and 4 maize - which supports weakly a designation of agronomist. (Darwin only published 3 names, but was a significant experimental botanist.) Lavateraguy (talk) 08:23, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

TL2 says "agronomist and botanist". Looking at other entries in TL2 suggests that if he had notable other pursuits TL2 would list those as well. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, guys. I wonder if we could find out where his theories about corn were implemented. I am not sure if he owned any land himself...Zigzig20s (talk) 18:28, 20 May 2015 (UTC)