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what can Wiki Education Foundation do to help WikiProject Plants?

Hi WikiProject Plants,

The Wiki Education Foundation wants to know what it can do to empower editors who work on science-related content on Wikipedia.

If you're familiar with Wiki Ed, it's likely by way of our classroom program, which grew out of the Wikipedia Education Program and through which we provide support for instructors and students who work on Wikipedia as part of a class assignment. This post is about something different, though. We'll be continuing to develop that program, of course, but we also want to start working on ways to help the existing Wikipedia community directly.

In 2016, Wiki Ed will be running a campaign tentatively titled, "Wikipedia Year of Science". The goal, generally stated, will be to improve the content and coverage of science-related content on Wikipedia ("science" interpreted loosely). Whereas our classroom program, as with many other extra-organizational initiatives, is premised on attracting and/or training new users, my aim is to figure out the sorts of things we can do to help the editors who are already engaged in the improvement of science content. The question is indeed wide open, but think about it this way: we have staff and a lot of institutional connections; how can we use our resources and relationships to support you? For example, is there a special collection of photos we should try to get on Commons? What about a document archive? Databases or specific journals? Organizationally, is there software that could be built that would help people working on these topics? What kinds of research could we conduct or help to organize that would help you to work more effectively? What are ways we can connect you with other human resources -- experts, for example (though, again, this is not intended to be an outreach program)? How could we motivate people to contribute, whether it be adding content, improving content, conducting reviews, adding images, improving sourcing, or any other part of the process? How can we get more plant-related articles to FA/GA? How could we help you to spend more of your time working on things you find fun and interesting and less time on process, organization, and functionary duties?

These questions are really just intended to get the ball rolling as this really is a nascent idea. So all ideas are welcome: big, small, obvious, obscure, ambitious, simple, technical, organizational.... I want to be clear that this is not just some survey -- the feedback I get will help to give shape to the "Year of Science" campaign.

I should also mention that this community engagement program we're starting isn't limited to the Year of Science campaign. Researching and planning it is high on my priority list right now, but we can also talk about shorter- or longer-term projects you may have in mind, too.

Apologies for the long message and thanks for your time. Looking forward to hearing what you think. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC) (volunteer account: User:Rhododendrites)

Interesting draft

What do you reckon? Draft:Branch attachment. Best, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Is this similar to grafting? Conifer (talk) 01:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
It's about the anatomy of natural branch junctions, so a different topic to grafting, though there is a potential overlap in the anatomy of grafted branch attachments. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:06, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

An amusing project for the right person(s)?

Perhaps someone who is interested in botanists and botanical literature might fancy a potentially large project working partly outside wikipedia, but probably also untangling some of the most confused parts of the wiki, particularly (I think) those related to cultivated plants. It would be necessary to read some Latin and probably various other languages, and it would be slow work. I think this would require a strong eventualist philosophy, because there is no systematic way to complete the task, but it could be enormously helpful here and to all the databases that are built on, or depend on IPNI, the International Plant Names Index, such as World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, The Plant List, all the flora projects around the world, and even the underfunded IUCN Red List.

In a recent interaction with the editors of IPNI I was told "The IPNI lacks 1000s pre-1970 infrasp names, and we have been adding them [now, one less to add!]". Perhaps IPNI will catch up eventually, but in the meantime there are lots of missing variety (and presumably forma) names, and lots of confusion. For example, Citrus medica L. var. dulcis Risso et Poit. and the synonym Citrus limonum Risso var. dulcis Moris are listed at the authoritative site Sorting Citrus Names, but are missing from IPNI. I suspect that Sorting Citrus Names all by itself is probably a rich source of names that are missing from IPNI.

To sort out examples like that would require working from the authority names to find the literature those people wrote, and if it is available to see if there is a description that satisfies the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. For example, there is just one of Moris' works in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, although several are listed in TL-2. However that one has an index at the back, and on page 312 describes a number of varieties of Citrus limonum which perhaps someone might like to carefully check and report to IPNI using their "contact us" link. Perhaps Moris described the same varieties in earlier works, but using only the publication that is accessible still gives information that should be added to IPNI. There are, of course, complications about whether the description is adequate, particularly article 40 of the code of nomenclature, article 41, etc. Sometimes there is only a weird inadequate description such as "This tree was brought to Britain by the Romans" or "This variety differs from other varieties of the species", so those have to be ignored because they say nothing that could be used to recognize the plant. Many old descriptions use letters of the Greek alphabet such as β, λ in front of the variety name, or as in this case **, ***, etc., which is fine and is interpreted as a variety description (by article 32).

It is certainly a daunting task to chase down any of these, but perhaps could be more fun than some simpler, faster, computer games ... If anyone would like to try this game, I'm happy to offer any advice that I can. Just a thought. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Are celery stalks phyllodes?

Are celery stalks phyllodes? Does anyone have an RS for the petiole article that the rhubarb stalks are phyllodes? FloraWilde (talk) 20:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

No. Celery and rhubarb stalks are petioles, not phyllodes. Where does the petiole article refer to these stalks as phyllodes?? Plantsurfer 20:58, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It doesn't, directly. It says phyllodes are flattened petioles then gives as example some Acacias. Then it immediately discusses rhubarb, which reads like it may possibly be another example of a petiol that is a phyllode (especially since rhubarb stalks are somewhat flattened and curved). FloraWilde (talk) 23:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it is not surprising you were confused - the article is very badly written. To lead off the description of petioles with stuff about phyllodes is just putting the cart before the horse. If I get a chance I may have a go at editing it. It is also a mistake, in my view, to have phyllode redirect to petiole. It would make more sense to have an article that deals specifically with phyllodes, cladodes and phylloclades, though heaven knows what you'd call it! Plantsurfer 00:23, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
You could call it some concatenation of all of those terms (with appropriate redirects) as was done for Thorns, spines, and prickles. Plantdrew (talk) 05:49, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that would work. Plantsurfer 11:35, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
(Except that it is important to distinguish phylloclades and cladodes (which are stems) from cladophylls and phyllodes (which are petioles).) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:26, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, but the same applies to Thorns, spines and prickles. What is important, I submit, is what unites them, not what divides them. Plantsurfer 14:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to show a talk page archive for 2014?

I can't seem to find any button for showing talk page archives. Am I blind, or is it missing? FloraWilde (talk) 16:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I've updated the links to archives to include the latest archive pages. I've highlighted a few of the longest (but not necessarily most important) threads in the description of each archive. Feel free to add other important threads (edit link now takes you to the page with descriptions for archive pages started in 2014). I've included a red link for 2015 archives (there aren't any archive pages started in 2015 yet). Plantdrew (talk) 18:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Infrageneric categories

Hi, all. Does anyone have strong opinions on the best ways to break up large genera categories? I ask because some categories like Category:Bulbophyllum are a bit on the large size. One way to subdivide a genus is by a (hopefully stable) infrageneric classification. There is a series of such categories for Category:Cattleya, but in such a relatively small genus, I thought it wasn't necessary and brought the category tree to CfD: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 June 8#Cattleya infrageneric categories. There's a similar category tree for Category:Epidendrum and while we currently only have about 100 articles on Epidendrum species, there's room for a good deal of growth. The only thing to look out for here is WP:SMALLCAT, categories on subgenera, sections, subsections, or series that will never contain many articles. Thoughts? Rkitko (talk) 00:34, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Are mycelia vascular in mycorrhizae?

The mycorrhiza article says, "Mycorrhizal mycelia are much smaller in diameter than the smallest root, and thus can explore a greater volume of soil, providing a larger surface area for absorption". This implies water is conducted along mycelia into the roots. Do mycelia act as vascular tissue? FloraWilde (talk) 22:13, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there's a literature on that, though I can't the quote sources off the top of my head. Also, that is how Aglaophyton worked. It (and contemporary plants) had no roots, and was dependent on the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi for water and mineral nutrients. Plantsurfer 22:20, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I linked your ref to the interesting article on Aglaophyton for others who might read this section. Do the mycelia ever form their own, tissue-like, vascular bundles? FloraWilde (talk) 02:34, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Leptosyne v. Coreopsis? Jepson authorship?

Jepson 2nd ed. (2012) moved 8 California occurring species of genus Coreopsis to genus Leptosyne, and kept 2 species in Coreopsis. (Jepson2 now has C. lanceolata, C. tinctoria, then L. bigelovii, L. californica, L. calliopsiea, L. douglasii, L. gigantea, L. hamiltonii, L. maritima, andL. stillmanii.) Jepson2's last note for genus L. is "Formerly in polyphyletic Coreopsis". User:Stemonitis points out[1]] that FNA still has the species as C. bigelovii, not L. bigelovii. Does anyone have any clarification? If the Jepson2 treatment is accepted, did this remove all species causing Coreopsis to be polyphyletic? FloraWilde (talk) 23:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Pulling out section Leptosyne doesn't resolve all the boundary problems with Bidens and Coreopsis; it might solve the problem for the USA flora. This seems to be an oldish change; it's mentioned in a 2007 issue of Fremontia (which however says that all the Californian species are moved to Leptosyne). (Digging round Google Scholar for Coreopsis Leptosyne doesn't seem to have found all the literature - I either need to go back earlier, or not require Leptosyne to be mentioned.) Lavateraguy (talk) 07:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
It might help with Google Scholar searches if the authorship of these genus sections was known. Do you know how to figure out who wrote the Jepson genus section when the author is not indicated? Since, e.g., the first named editor Bruce G. Baldwin is also listed as the author of the Achyrachaena section, this indicates the editors are not the default authors. And since the Coreopsis and Leptosyne sections have info that is not in the 1st edition, the sections are not just repeating previous material. FloraWilde (talk) 10:42, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Requested move

There is a requested move at Talk:Nepeta cataria#Requested move 15 June 2015. Members of this project are invited to particpate.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 02:06, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Sex

Some of you may wish to voice your opinion at Talk:Sex#Sex, facing ambiguity, where some are proposing that the "general" article on sex be made to cover the act of intercourse instead of the general biological process. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Plant identification: That plant that closes when you touch it

There are a few that look the same. Does anyone know which this is? Thank you. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:41, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Mimosa pudica. Plantsurfer 10:32, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Plantsurfer. I have renamed the file. Also, I will tell it what its name is so it doesn't just feel like any old plant. Anna Frodesiak (talk)

Coverage of plants in Wikipedia – random observation

Having returned from a short trip to the Galapagos and having managed to identify most of my natural history photos, I was interested in which species had Wikipedia articles. The results were:

  • Vertebrates (mostly birds) – all had articles
  • Invertebrates – half had articles (although I only photographed 4 species)
  • Plants – at most 40% had articles (I have some plants not yet identified which I suspect don't have articles)

I guess this reflects the generally lower level of interest in plants as compared to animals. Anyway, it creates opportunities for more article creation... Peter coxhead (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Or that plants and invertebrates are about even? Peter, you need to give us absolute numbers for the vertebrates and plants. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:43, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Definitely making more of it than it deserves, but as you asked, taking a conservative view of the species involved (it's often disputed as to whether Galápagos endemics differ specifically or infraspecifically), 22/22 vertebrate species have articles, 8/21 identified plant species have articles, which yields chi-square = 10.3, df = 1, p << 0.001. There aren't enough invertebrates to be statistically valid. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:16, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
I find finding the papers on invertebrates to be elusive at times, but this is not surprising given the numbers (e.g. 10,000 spp. of birds vs 300,000 spp of beetles and 30,000 spp of daisy for instance...)...oh well, let's get writing....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:29, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Going by the numbers, 40% is higher than I'd expect. The Plant List has 350k species, and we have 62k articles tagged for WikiProject Plants. I suspect Peter's photos tended to be of particularly showy species, and all else being equal (although it's not), I'd guess we're more likely to have articles on showy species than drab little things (did you take any photos of mosses, Peter?). As one of the top global ecotourism destinations, I'd also guess the coverage of Galapagos biota is somewhat better than most other tropical areas that don't use English as an official language. English speaking regions are definitely better covered than the world as a whole; I'd estimate Wikipedia covers more than 1/3 of US vascular plant species and UK coverage is better still.
I do wonder how many plant species articles we have. I suppose there might be a way to get that through Wikidata, but I have no idea how. Of 62k tagged plant articles, maybe 4k are on botanists, 1k on basic concepts in botany, and 2-3k on cultivars. Of the remainder, I'm not how many are on species and how many cover higher taxa (it's probably 1k or less for ranks above genus, but genus article number is still hard to estimate). Plantdrew (talk) 14:55, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Antennaria ??? - Are they?

Right are three photos of what I believe to be from Antennaria but not sure if A. neglecta or A. microphylla or something else. Identification help would be appreciated. These were taken in the dry north section of Yellowstone (el. ~ 5500ft) near the Gardner River on June 17. They were in a very rocky area with little to no large vegetation, just grasses and prickly pear. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 13:31, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Don't think so. I don't these are even in the family Asteraceae. Do you have better images of the inflorescence? These are all so out of focus it is difficult to see what is there.Plantsurfer 13:49, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
These look like Eriogonum to me. Plantdrew (talk) 14:09, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
That looks right. Possibly Eriogonum ovalifolium. Plantsurfer 14:24, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll get the names changed in the commons. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:55, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Meaning of the term "utricle" applied to a fruit

It seems to be traditional to describe the fruit of some genera as a "utricle" (Alternanthera is where I recently came across this). The Utricle article is a disambiguation page, and for the botanical use says "a type of dry fruit similar to an achene". Accordingly in the Alternanthera article, "utricle" is wikilinked to Achene. Can someone enlighten me on what exactly the difference is, if any, between a "utricle" and an "achene"? The Kew Plant Glossary doesn't give the fruit sense at all, the nearest being the prophyll around the nutlet in some genera of Cyperaceae. Other books I have that do define both terms do so in a way that seems to me to make them synonymous. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:27, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

To me, utricle implies some degree of inflation or spacing between the seed and the wall of the fruit. Achenes have little space between fruit and seed. Plantdrew (talk) 21:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: since the base meaning of "utricle" is something like "small bag", it makes sense that there should be some degree of inflation. If this is the distinction, then it needs to be sourced and the Achene article corrected. At present it says, without a source: "An [sic] utricle is like an achene, but it has a compound ovary, sometimes with several seeds. In addition, the ovary of the fruit becomes bladder-like or corky." None of the texts I have to hand which define "utricle" refer to a "compound ovary" or say that the number of seeds constitutes an important difference between the application of two terms. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
I've rewritten it and added a source. If anybody wants to play around with the wording further, here's what my source (Harris & Harris, Plant Identification Terminology) has to say: "Utricle. A small, thin-walled, one-seeded, more or less bladdery-inflated fruit". Edit: I haven't included a link to the book on-line; Google books doesn't allow you to see inside. There is a massive PDF HERE, but I expect it may have copyright issues and won't be around on the internet long-term. Plantdrew (talk) 21:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: thanks for this. Studying UK sources a bit more, it seems that "utricle" isn't now generally used here for the achene-related sense (Stace – the "bible" for UK and Irish field botanists doesn't use it, in line with the Kew Glossary), so I'm wondering if it might be best to paraphrase "utricle" as something like "inflated achene" in the interests of general understandability? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:30, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Sure, that seems reasonable. Plantdrew (talk) 14:32, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:35, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

The bot seems to be checking sources which copy from Wikipedia, and may themselves be open source, e.g. The Plant Encyclopedia. I've notified Lucas559.
The other pages currently on the list confirm something I've noticed before, namely that "food" and "folk medicine" plants attract less competent editors (to put it politely) who plagiarize, often low quality sources. I have to confess to taking some such articles off my watchlist, because it's just too tedious to keep patrolling them. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 07:21, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
An interesting experiment. It took me quite a bit more than 15 seconds to get some idea of what it is about (and I am already quite familiar with Turnitin). As a practical matter, it is not easy to quickly scan these entries. Perhaps this is a symptom of this being a trial run, but it would be nice if changes that were reverted several days ago were not flagged (such as on Brazil nut). The interface shows a version of the page, but I'd prefer have a diff readily available, since I think it is likely that we would be looking for an individual insertion of copyright material. At the entry for Goldenrod, the information flagging a problem seems to be "92% 72 words", but after clicking "compare", one sees "Violation Unlikely 4.8% confidence", so I'm puzzled about what the "92%" meant. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:06, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, this project seems very much "a work in progress", and isn't as useful as it might be in its present form. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:37, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Goldenrod had references to 3 sites, with very similar numbers, but very different differences. (The first was a page on alkanet which had a few clusters of words in common.) I suspect that there's a problem is propagating the numbers from the source. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Trade designation template

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Template talk:Trade designation#Proposed font style.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:59, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

High-quality picture offerings

Hi there! I have a photographer friend who uploaded a myriad of high-quality pictures of flora from the Montreal Botanical Garden's greenhouses, and he told me he's willing to re-license them under CC-BY-SA-2.0 (for Commons use) if you guys help me identify exactly what they are, so we can use them across Wikimedia projects! They're in this Flickr album. Please me know!!! ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 23:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps your friend has the information about what plant is what. The JBM greenhouses have labels on the plants, but to identify them without that information is nearly impossible because many are rare species. (I recommend always photographing labels in botanical gardens, perhaps photographing the plant and then the label immediately afterwards, so it is clear which label goes with which plant.) However, there are already quite a lot of photos in commons from there, so perhaps some can be matched with the already labelled photos. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:18, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

File:Succulent flowers near Stavromeno-Kokkini Hani.jpg

Succulent flowers near Stavromeno-Kokkini Hani

ID please. Jee 05:41, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Mesembryanthemum, probably M. crystallinum. I don't think the leaves are of the same species. Plantsurfer 09:42, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Plantsurfer. Jee 12:35, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Schinus gender

What gender is Schinus? I just came across a new article, Schinus lentiscifolius. Both that spelling and Schinus lentiscifolia are in The Plant List (as are several other binomial with both masculine/feminine versions). ARS-GRIN taxonomy goes with feminine endings, and Tropicos has a note for Schinus terebinthifolia that the original spelling was "Schinus terebinthifolius" (and Tropicos another note in Schinus itself that it should be feminine). As you can see from the red-link, Wikipedia is going with masculine endings, and not all feminine redirects have been created (but maybe articles need to be moved). I'm assuming feminine is correct from the sources I've examined, but wanted to make sure before I started moving stuff around. Plantdrew (talk) 22:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

At first sight it is treated as neuter in Schinus molle, but IPNI tells me that the molle here is a noun in apposition rather than an adjective. IPNI consistently uses the masculine forms, which is what I would expect - I think that feminine forms are hypercorrections - it's not a classical 1st declension Latin noun, but a Latinisation of the Greek schinos (is that masculine?) In spite of the annotation on the genus, Tropicos isn't consistent. This is probably one of those cases where a definite answer is hard to obtain. The only adjectival form that Linnaeus used was Schinus tragodes. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:51, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
This appears to be another example of the phenomenon we discussed some time ago: Linnaeus and authors of that era treated trees as feminine even though the form of the genus name is masculine (e.g. Populus alba L., Quercus alba L., Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn.) See the ICN, Art 62.1: "Although their ending suggests masculine gender, Cedrus Trew and Fagus L., like most other classical tree names, were traditionally treated as feminine and thus retain that gender". Peter coxhead (talk) 07:30, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Forgot to add that σχίνος is definitely masculine, so the Latinized schinus would be too, except for the tree issue. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC) No, I was wrong: in classical Greek it was feminine, although in later and modern Greek it's masculine. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:58, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
My understanding is that it's not being a tree that makes it feminine, but being a Classical Latin 1st declension noun. (That's what the Latinists I invited over agreed.) There's a history of botanists mistaking 1st declension nouns in -us as masculine 2nd declension nouns, and of botanists hypercorrecting, and treating 2nd declension nouns applied to trees as feminine. Schinus is not (as far as I know) a Classical Latin noun. My understanding is that it would default to masculine (Latinisation of a masculine Greek name; -us suffix standard way of creating New Latin masculine names), but this could be overridden if the original author specifically denoted it as feminine. As far as I can tell Linnaeus didn't make a statement, explicitly or implicitly, either way. (Modern botanists are quite aggressive about correcting orthographical errors, so it's even possible that they would correct a Linnaean feminine to masculine.) Lavateraguy (talk) 12:18, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

And another thing. Is it worth listing Schinus myricoides as the basionym of Cuscuta myricoides on the Schinus page? I was puzzled as to how a Cuscuta could have first been described as a Schinus (although GRIN explains it). Plantdrew (talk) 22:32, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

That's really funny. What a tangle that herbarium sheet must have been. No opinion on whether to list it as a synonym. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Lewis & Short in their 1958 A Latin Dictionary (which is large!) list Schinus with "f, the mastic tree", so it does seem to be a classical Latin word. Nicholas Turland 2013 The Code Decoded: A user's guide to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, p. 96, makes a point of explaining how the adjectival epithets in such genera should be corrected to agree with the feminine noun. He lists Agaricus and Astragalus as masculine, and the trees "tend to be feminine (Aesculus, Quercus, Prunus, Ulmus)". I think IPNI should be corrected, but have noticed what seems to be reluctance from the editors there to make such changes. I wonder if they know about some upcoming proposal to amend the code of nomenclature to make it de rigeur to use whatever form the original author used ... I'd suggest using feminine forms here and citing Tropicos and GRIN for that choice, wherever possible. Perhaps we can act as a bulwark against barbarism such as the lead image here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

The citation in Lewis and Short is to the (4th Century) Vulgate Bible, so Vulgar Latin, rather than Classical Latin, the Classical Latin being said to be lentiscus. The text (Daniel 13: 54 reads "unc ergo si vidisti eam dic sub qua arbore videris eos loquentes sibi qui ait sub scino" - ignoring the lack of an h, can be tell what gender it is from that context? Lavateraguy (talk) 15:30, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Article 62.1 has got to be the most ambiguous passage in the Code. The only case I can see where application is clear is when a tree genus had a name in classical Latin (and the Latin name mostly corresponds to current concepts of the genus). And I guess the endpoint for classical Latin isn't precise, nor is it always clear whether something is a tree (is Euonymus a tree or a shrub?). Schinus is a New World genus and was not what was originally referred to by that name in Greek/Latin, so I don't see it as falling under the one somewhat clear bit in Article 62.1 (but it might fall under some of the unclear bits about "tradition"). Plantdrew (talk) 17:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Euonymus is not a Classical Latin tree name, so whether it's a tree or a shrub is moot. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
This is getting to be a deep discussion! No, I don't think there are any clues to gender in the quote from Daniel. Lewis & Short helpfully also says that the genitive of Schinus ends in i (Schini). The endings come from the second declension, and this is ablative with sub, for resting in a place, so Schino. Some of us were taught in an introductory school Latin course that all first-declension nouns are feminine, all second-declension masculine or neuter, but it isn't so. For example, Stearn in Botanical Latin in the grammar section, under First Declension, gives a short list of masculine nouns that are declined -a, -am, -ae -ae, -ā (N, A, G, D, A) like so many feminine nouns. Agricola (farmer), incola (inhabitant), advena (newcomer), poeta (poet), scriba (scribe) are masculine and would take masculine adjectives. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:32, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
P.S.: I checked my school Latin book thinking it might have expunged all mention of such difficulties, but it lists "poēta, -ae, m., poet". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:37, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Digging around I find a statement that schinos is a feminine noun of the Greek 3rd declension. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
(But must have moved to 2nd declension in Latin, or the genitive would be Schinis and the ablative Schine). Still, I think we cannot yet get over the hurdle that we don't know what article 62.1 means by "nomenclatural tradition, irrespective of classical usage or the author's original usage". I hope this isn't a case of Kew databases unquestioningly following Index Kewensis and implicitly the pre-1906 Kew Rule. The instructions to correct the species epithets to feminine are coming from America (Tropicos.org and Nick Turland, and USDA GRIN). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:03, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Why all the debate? The Greek etymon σχίνος is feminine, despite assertions to the contrary made above. I checked Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, and the word there is explicitly listed as feminine. It appears in the works of Theophrastus, and presumably it would appear also in Latin translations of the same, with the same gender. It seems article 62.1 was correctly applied here, as the Classical usage was feminine. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:56, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
You are of course quite right and I was mislead by knowing the Modern Greek, in which it's masculine. I must remember to check Liddell & Scott. Apologies for misleading people. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:58, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Going by Google botanical tradition has been quite inconsistent - some species have been more commonly treated as masculine and other species more commonly treated as feminine. (And different wikis treat the same species differently.) So the case for any botanical tradition of this as a masculine name seems to be weak. Do we have an acceptable reliable source to justify changing the gender? (I not sure going from Liddell and Scott to New Latin doesn't count as WP:SYNTHESIS.)
PS: I didn't see how to tell that it was feminine in the Liddle and Scott entry at Perseus. What did I miss? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:19, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
You have to know the gender of the definite article: ο is masculine, η feminine, το neuter. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:20, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Lavateraguy, what species did you find that were more common as feminine? I got more results in Google Books and Google Scholar for the masculine version of every name I tried (polygam*, lentiscifoli*, terebinthifoli*, and latifoli*). Plantdrew (talk) 16:48, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
I had patagonica and montana commoner than patagonicus and montanus, but I forget to put double quotes round the search string, which poisoned the results. When I correct that, the masculine is commoner. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Sidenote: not of relevance to the botanical name, but this Cypriot site uses the feminine in its (Modern) Greek text; the Greek Wikipedia at el:Σχίνος the masculine. Cypriot Greek tends to be more conservative, so I suspect preserves the Classical feminine form. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:34, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

If you go back to the original entry for el:Σχίνος, it appears the creating author included both genders, but either way, it's the common name in Modern Greek, which has undergone significant langauge reform in recent centuries. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Schinus polygama now has a draft of an explanation, hanging on the fact that IPNI says that that species name should be corrected. A bold suggestion that would set a precedent for other genus names, is that we could make a statement on the wikiproject page that botanical tradition (IPNI) being mixed, we choose to follow the classical tradition by correcting all the adjectival species epithets in Schinus to feminine. By the way, Commons had already changed the spelling to S. polygama. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:39, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Iranian plant IDs

I had an editor come by my talk page requesting assistance IDing some photos. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with their flora and the resolution isn't that great, so aside from a Centaurea, I'm not very sure what they've got. Does anybody else have any ideas? MMSplant001.JPG, MMSplant002.JPG, MMSplant003.JPG, MMSplant004.JPG, MMSplant005.JPG, MMSplant006.JPG and MMSplant007.JPG. Plantdrew (talk) 22:25, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

The second one looks like Rosa persica. The fifth Torilis + perhaps a Silene species. The seventh Torilis in bloom. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
A Persian botanist friend says of the third one "It is Acanthophyllum sp. Impossible to name it to species even if you have the specimen and a key. A lot of hybridization." Prompted by that, I offer the wild guess that the first one is also Acanthophyllum. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
@Sminthopsis84: Thanks. I can write the coordination of flowers if it helps to identify them. They are at 35.83N 59.53E. Mahdy Saffar (talk) 07:02, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I'm told that the location isn't particularly helpful in these cases, sorry. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:22, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Talk page monitoring

I think it's unfortunate that comments on talk pages with few (or no) watchers sit unanswered for years. Wikipedia:WikiProject X is working on new tools for WikiProject, including one that monitors new topics on talk pages with in a project's scope. You can see this in action for Wikipedia:WikiProject Evolutionary Biology. I also just noticed that WikiProject Oregon has used a different approach to monitor talk pages. Their project banner adds Category:WikiProject Oregon pages to all pages, so all talk page changes can be viewed via this link. The problem with that approach versus the WikiProject X tool is that it captures everything, and most of the changes are reassessments that don't require any response.

Is there any interest here in signing WikiProject Plants up for WikiProject X tools or in creating a master category for all project articles? At present, we can kind of go the Oregon route by looking at changes in each assessment category (e.g. see stub talk changes here). I assume almost all of the pages with few watchers will be stub or start class so there's really only two categories that need checking and a master category may be unneccessary. I intend to start checking stub and start talk pages somewhat regularly, but I don't know if anybody else would be interested in doing so. Plantdrew (talk) 17:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The key question really is how many talk pages would get flagged per day. Too many and there really wouldn't be any point in the flagging, and it might create false expectations. Monitoring my own watchlist takes too long as it is! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:07, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, it looks like 12-14 changes per day in recent days for stubs, and 8-10 for start. Quite a range for C-class, depending on whether there is an active discussion going on. Most of the activity is assessment by various Wikiprojects (and about half of it is me doing assessment for this project; it helps me that one's own edits can be filtered out). So, maybe 40 a day going the WikiProject Oregon route, which includes a lot of stuff that can be ignored. That doesn't strike me as too difficult to monitor. And with the WikiProject X tool, I think it would be 0-1 on most days. Plantdrew (talk) 18:29, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: that seems a reasonable workload to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:38, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

A draft at AFC needs help

Please help get Draft:Desmodium oojeinense into acceptable shape. The text is confusing with several different names being mentioned. It probably also needs a Taxobox. If you do not wish to edit it directly please post comments on the talk page. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:47, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Desmodium oojeinense has been accepted to mainspace - now it's over to you to assess it (and perhaps add more categories). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:30, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Flower/plant identification project?

Hi folks, back in the day (~2009) I remember a place I could ask an expert to identify a flower within a photo. If that still exists, can someone point me in that direction? I have a photo of a flower that I'd like identified. I poked around a little bit here and the plant portal, but didn't see anything. Much appreciated! -- Matt Wade 03:40, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

A Crinum maybe? Was it growing in a garden, or in the wild? Crinum zeylanicum is naturalized in the US Virgin Islands. Plantdrew (talk) 04:53, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree that Crinum seems right: see the images here. (In my experience, the Pacific Bulb Society is very reliable as to names.) Crinum pedunculatum, which is probably conspecific with Crinum asiaticum, is very variable and widely planted. The first image of Crinum pedunculatum here looks very similar, having the dark filaments with paler bases. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:40, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Yep, I agree with you both. That's definitely the plant. Thanks for the awesomely quick responses! Matt Wade 00:13, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Terminalia chebula

There's some discussion at T. chebula that could use some WP Plants eyes as I am not familiar with WP Plants. I think I've said the right thing, but I am not familiar with the article standards. Right now there is an editor (currently IP) who is discussing my removal of a paragraph of some dozen or so Indic names for the plant and while I am quite sure the removal is correct I would appreciate someone who could make sure I've got the information/style guide issues sorted properly. Ogress smash! 03:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I think this is an issue which would benefit from a wider discussion; perhaps a formal RfC. On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the view that generally listing names in many other languages is not appropriate for the English Wikipedia. On the other hand, there are plants well known and used (e.g. for food or herbal medicine) in countries where English is not the mother tongue and scarcely known in countries where it is. There does seem to me to be a case for saying that where these uses form a significant part of the article, vernacular names connected with the use may be relevant. But I'm not sure whether it's possible to limit such a list of names. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:58, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
The issue is, of course, that when it comes to names, it spirals inevitably out of control: there are 20 official languages in India, for example, and if one gets added, I assure you that every single other one will immediately be added. Indic is a highly volatile set of topics and it is very high energy and there is a great deal of competition and hostility that assures things become quite maddening. Ogress smash! 06:35, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I understand this only too well. But the opposite view, "no vernacular names unless used in English mother tongue countries" is too restrictive (in my view). I think we need a wider discussion to see whether we can come up with a sensible compromise. But it's high summer (in the Northern Hemisphere!) and there are noticeably fewer editors around at present, so this is probably not the time. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:41, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Taxobox usage

I haven't found any other relevant discussion on this one so I will bring it here. Taxoboxes serve two useful purposes - an easily accessible summary of the taxonomy, and also a navigation aid. Traditionally they were used on pages dealing directly describing a taxon, e.g. Liliaceae. Since I started writing detailed subpages on the taxonomy of complex taxa (e.g. Taxonomy of Liliaceae), it seemed logical to include a copy of the taxobox on that page as well, for the above reasons, and if it deserves to be anywhere one might think this would be the most appropriate place for it.

So I was startled to find their removal and the reason given was that the tradition was only to include them on taxon pages not taxonomy pages. This seemed illogical to me, however the other editor was agreeable to having a group discussion and perhaps developing a concensus, that could be incorporated into our guidance. There is some urgency on this since that particular page is under GA review. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:58, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

It is my opinion that placing a taxobox on an article about the taxonomy of a group, particularly a group with such a complex taxonomic history as the Liliaceae, would be counter-productive. A taxobox can present only a single taxonomic viewpoint, and I would expect a page discussing the taxonomy of a group to provide a history of the various alternative classification systems employed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:54, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree with EncycloPetey. In addition to the point that an article on the taxonomy of a group necessarily discusses multiple taxonomies, so one taxobox is inappropriate, the purpose of the taxobox is to provide navigation among taxa. The taxon links in the taxobox go to articles on those taxa. Once you start to link other kinds of article (what about "List of X species" articles?) the clarity and purpose of the taxobox is lost. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I would have thought that summarising the current taxonomy would be an important reference point for understanding the history --Michael Goodyear (talk) 23:46, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
In the text, sure. But the taxobox is also there for navigation. It's expected that the article is the target of the taxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that if taxoboxes are not permitted on taxonomy pages, then an equivalent box or table needs to be constructed to make sense of the page to any but specialists. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 01:45, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Um... If an article needs an infobox to make sense, then there's something wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:37, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm also a bit mystified by the call for a taxobox. Taxoboxes fix the subject taxon in the current consensus classification, allowing links to taxa above and below in the hierarchy. But they're not really suited for describing and comparing the various circumscriptions of the taxon. It's hard to imagine a "standardized" set of fields for a taxonomy infobox. I think the tables as constructed in the article are much more suited for the purpose than trying to make an infobox or taxobox. Choess (talk) 18:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I mis-spoke. Not so much making sense, but rather the same rational as for tables (see above). Tables summarise a lot of dense text in an easily understable fashion. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 10:55, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Endangered plants

Currently, Endangered plants redirects to Endangered species, which says very little about plants. Can somebody get together an actual article on endangered plants? Cheers! bd2412 T 01:27, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Merger of two phytopathological fungal genera

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see WT:FUNGI#Merger of two genera (back in 2000!), big mess  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:43, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Unidentified mushroom in Hainan

Does anyone have any idea what this might be? Thank you for any information you can offer. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:38, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps Calvatia gigantea. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:22, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Thank you very much. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 16:49, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Calvatia or Bovista; impossible to determine more without additional details. Sasata (talk) 17:59, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Darn. Okay, I'll rename it as "unidentified Agaricaceae in Hainan". I should have dug it up and cut it open for more images but I didn't have the heart to destroy it. Thank you kindly. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:11, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
"A"

There is also image "A" showing the side. I'm not sure if that helps. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:42, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm deeply intrigued by the yellowish-golden fluid it seems to be exsuding. Is that typical of any Calvatis/Bovista species? Circéus (talk) 11:12, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

It's just excited about being paid so well. ;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:45, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Georg Forster

It would be great if folks could comment as to whether this article currently meets FA criteria at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Georg Forster/archive1. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:27, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Berry

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Berry, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
Delivered by Evad37 [talk] 01:56, 10 August 2015 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

This is a sad situation. The article had been worked on extensively to try to clarify that there are two very different definitions of "berry", the botanical one, and the one that includes all fleshy fruit that happen to be rather small. The current lead is a tangle, with that distinction removed, various "jargon" tags added, and a composite image that includes a drupe (Triosteum) and an aggregate fruit (Rubus). I would like to propose splitting the article into two, one for the common definition (small juicy fruits) and one for the botanical meaning (one flower, one ovary, homogeneous pulp with one or more seeds) where we can summarize in the lead what the botanical meaning is. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
There is a RfC on the Talk:Berry page regarding that subject.Falconjh (talk) 21:53, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Berry (botany) was created today by User:CFCF in a Bold split based on what was seen as the consensus on Talk:BerryFalconjh (talk) 01:50, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
I can only hope that no other important botanical article is selected for "improvement". What a mess! Peter coxhead (talk) 06:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Berry is today's article for improvement

Hi, all -- The article berry is today's article for improvement. It certainly could use some work, but there appears to be some thought that the article should emphasize the colloquial usage instead of the correct botanical definition. Any sourcing or improvements you could make would be appreciated. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 14:06, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I with the suggestion above that split would be better: one article on the popular meaning and one on the botanical meaning? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:19, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Post-split work

The original version of "Berry" has now been renamed as Berry (botany), so at least we have an article covering the botanical sense.

However, a huge number of links exist to "Berry". Since they were created when the botanical version was there, many are wrong and need fixing.

"What links here" shows up links to "Berry" from templates, like {{Non-timber forest products}}, so it looks as though there's a link to "Berry" in the text when there isn't. Anyone know how to exclude links in templates from "What links here"? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:53, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think template links can be excluded. "Hide transclusions" is supposed to accomplish that, but it doesn't work. Plantdrew (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Fruit of Cornaceae: drupe or berry or what?

As Plantsurfer first noticed, there are differences in how our articles describe the fruit of Cornaceae, especially Cornus species. These differences seem to follow different uses in sources:

  • Some call them "drupes" (e.g. Stace (2010), New Flora of the British Isles, p.509, says of Cornaceae: "fruit a drupe with 1 2-celled stone")
  • Others call them berries or "drupaceous berries" (e.g. the Flora of China Cornaceae article).

Any botanists care to venture a view? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

What does Stace say about walnuts, and does he provide a glossary definition of "drupe"? I've come across drupe used in a variety of imprecise ways, with an underlying meaning of perhaps, "a fruit with a hard bit inside a fleshy bit". My understanding is that the fleshy bit in walnuts is derived from bract tissue, not ovary tissue. And just recently I found that some people call lychees drupes. I'm not quite sure what type of fruit lychees are, but drupe doesn't seem right; they don't have a stony endocarp, and the flesh is an aril. Plantdrew (talk) 15:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Some more sources:
  • Stace's definition: "drupe – a succulent or spongy fruit, the seeds usually 1 and with a stony coat"; Juglans = drupe, Cornaceae = drupe
  • Kew Plant Glossary definition: "a fleshy indehiscent fruit with the seed(s) enclosed in a stony endocarp"
  • Heywood et al. (1978), Flowering Plants of the World definition: "a fleshy fruit containing one or more seeds, each of which is surrounded by a stony layer"; Juglans = drupe, Cornaceae = drupe or berry (Curtisoideae = drupe, Cornoideae not called a drupe so by inference a berry?)
  • APweb: Juglandaceae = "fruit drupaceous, nut, samaroid, or winged by persistent bracts"; Cornaceae = drupe
Um... Peter coxhead (talk) 17:10, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
With the definition given, Stace is justified in calling Juglans and Cornus drupes. That doesn't help us reconcile competing definitions though. Cornus apparently has a stony endocarp, so I'd call it a drupe. I guess berry comes up because some Cornus species have multiple seeds (e.g. C. kousa)? Plantdrew (talk) 18:03, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
It's not clear to me whether the issue is with slightly varying definitions or with prioritizing different parts of the definitions.
At present, drupaceous redirects to Drupe, but the latter contains no explanation of "drupaceous", which various sources seem to use to mean "intermediate between a drupe and something else". The Flora of China is fond of the term. Thus I was trying to find out which sense of "berry" was meant at Syzygium cumini which is there said to have "fruits resembling large berries" – large botanical berries or large colloquial berries? The Flora of China says of Syzygium that the fruits are "drupaceous", so are they between a drupe and a botanical berry or not? I wish botanists used their terminology as clearly and consistently as physical scientists do! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:06, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Peter, the problem is that biology refuses to respect terminological boundaries. Drupes and pomes and even berries grade into one another depending on how much hard tissue is present and whether it completely surrounds the seeds. Syzygium fruits are accessory fruits to varying degrees (some have a decidedly fleshy calyx like this one, some have a persistent non-fleshy calyx, and in others it hardly persists) so they'll never be exactly one category. In this case I'd suggest using the botanical berry link, because a colloquial berry can't be large and because this fruit doesn't resemble a raspberry. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:11, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I know that in reality these are somewhat arbitrary categories imposed on continua, so there are bound to be marginal cases. But this isn't the whole cause of the problem: botanists also use different definitions, which seems to me much less true of physical scientists (consider how the definitions of "planet" and "dwarf planet" were agreed). Anyway, enough moaning!
Thanks for the advice about Syzygium.
Do you know of any source which says something more about "drupaceous"? Although it constantly uses the term, the online Flora of China doesn't have a glossary, and so far I haven't found anything that can be used as a Wikipedia reliable source. The term seems to be used in two senses: (1) of a plant, meaning "possesses drupes" (2) of a fruit, meaning approaching/similar to a drupe but not entirely. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps the Categorical Glossary for the Flora of North America Project is the best source now available. Flora of China seems to have been less prescriptive to its authors ([2]). The FNA source says for drupaceous "Having the structure and texture of a drupe." and for drupe "Fleshy, indehiscent and derived from a single, superior, simple or compound ovary; having a soft outer wall (exocarp and mesocarp) and an osseous inner stone (endocarp) containing the seed(s) (usually only one)." Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Wow, that's a really useful source; thanks! I've used the FNA regularly but wasn't aware of the glossary. Definitely a website to be bookmarked. I've added it to WP:Plants/Resources#Websites, which didn't have any glossaries. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Conifer evolution

Hello plant experts. This old draft will soon be deleted unless someone takes an interest in it. Is this a topic that should have an article? Or is it already covered somewhere under another title?—Anne Delong (talk) 17:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Question about cultivars

The issue of single versus double marks to indicate a cultivar recently came up at Talk:Perovskia atriplicifolia/GA1. The convention in botany is to use single marks around cultivar names such as Longin and 'Blue Spire', but should I follow this here? RO(talk) 16:24, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, always use single quotes, unless it is a cultivar group, in which case use none - see WP:MOSLIFE. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

RfD notification: How plants make food

Could we get some feedback at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 August 7#How plants make food? Thanks. --BDD (talk) 17:33, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Template:Infobox pepper

On a few of the pepper pages I noticed that there were requests to add cultivar infoboxes; there is already the pepper infobox though; so I created Template:Infobox pepper/sandbox (haven't updated the documentation) and Template:Infobox pepper/testcases to add in the cultivar infobox information to the pepper infobox, as well as change the heat scale graphic to be objectively tied to the scoville scale listing as according to the current infobox documentation. As the requests were from WikiProject Plants I thought I should put this here, unless there is a better place to get more review of and discussion of purposed changes to an infobox? Falconjh (talk) 17:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not in general keen on multiplying templates; if it's a matter of displaying the hotness graphically, couldn't this be a option in the normal cultivar infobox? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
This has already been the infobox, I am not creating a new one. It is currently in use on basically all (chili) peppers. Falconjh (talk) 18:58, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: How about as a module that can be embedded into the cultivar infobox? See the current testcases: Template:Infobox pepper/testcases. I also have questions, as you appear to have done edits on the cultivar infobox, regarding how to display things like the Carolina Reaper being a cross between a ghost pepper and a red habanero, the first an interspecies hybrid and the second a cultivar, or where to put things like the TAM Mild Jalapeño either in terms of itself or on the Jalapeño infobox.
Being a module is better as some hot sauces and the chemicals involved are also rated, so while the edits are relatively finished in terms of the template code as it relates to peppers, it looks like a little bit more is needed for how it is used for the chemicals, and the title of pepper as a module looks like it is incorrect; "Scoville Rating" might be correct. Falconjh (talk) 00:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

could someone add Conyza canadensis to Conyza list on Conyza page?

could someone add Conyza canadens to Conyza list on Conyza page 207.177.82.193 (talk) 03:34, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Done Lavateraguy (talk) 07:05, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
The Global Compositae Checklist, given as the source of the list of Conyza species, says that Conyza canadensis is a synonym of Erigeron canadensis. The Plant List accepts this judgement. So actually I think that Conyza canadensis should be moved to "Erigeron canadensis". Certainly Conyza canadensis shouldn't be added to the Conyza list unless a different source is used. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:42, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Taxoboxes (again) - multiple names

1. It was just drawn to my attention that WP:TX permits only one name at the top of the box. Personally I thought allowing both a scientific name and a vernacular name (when not obvious) was quite a good idea, but the vernacular was removed. One criticism of this project is that it is written by botanists for botanists, so there is a case for sometimes including both scientific and vernacular names.

2. On the other hand, as an extension of this, I recently came across a number of taxoboxes with several names, because they included the names in a number of different languages. I had started to remove them, relegating them to the text, but thought I should check in here first. I could see why, for a plant native to Russia for example, someone might want to include the Russian name, but I think that is already covered by having a languages sidebar on every Wikipedia page, which allows a quick check on the name in other languages. I can also see a place for using other languages in the text where relevant (for instance discussing why narcissi are called Easter Bells in German), but not in a taxobox. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 13:21, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

@Michael Goodyear: "permits" is too strong; the documentation at WP:TX isn't policy, and I don't believe that it alone justifies removing a second name.
I entirely agree about names other than (a) the scientific name (b) the English vernacular name when there is a single name that is clearly more common than others and is used in all or most of the areas in which the plant is found. I'm not convinced non-English names are generally needed in the text; they most certainly should not be in the taxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:47, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Case in point - multiple Allium pages, such as Allium nutans. I had already removed several, but thought I had better check here first --Michael Goodyear (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Peter is right that WP:TX isn't policy, but it is a usage guideline. No other infobox that I've seen includes more than one name in the header. Including more than one name is just clutter; I think the advice at WP:TX is sound and should be followed. Infoboxes are tools for navigation and summarize the text, in part. No part of that purpose is served by expanding a list of names into what is meant to be a simple header. Rkitko (talk) 14:10, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't see much value in having Russian/Chinese names for obscure Alliums growing in Russia/China, especially when they are given in Cyrillic or hanzi (transliterations would be a little more appropriate). Most vernacular names are coined by botanists, and hardly ever used by lay people. Based on Peter's comments, maybe we should be removing vernacular names from the taxobox whenever they can't beat the scientific name in a Google test? We'd still include them in the text and create redirects from them.
Regarding "non-English" names in the text, I think there needs to be some latitude for including them, but it's hard to know where to stop. Many Hindi/Tagalog/Malay speakers are bilingual in English (and those with internet access are more likely to be bilingual than those without), and will use the common name in their native language when communicating in English. We list names of English etymology that are basically only used historically, but shy away from widely used names of non-English etymology for cultivated plants. Somebody on a plant ID forum I visit said Wikipedia was incorrect in listing "creeping jenny" as a common name for Diphasiastrum complanatum; while nobody calls it "creeping jenny" these days, and that name usually refers to something else, I can find a source for that usage. But we don't list methi as a common name for Trigonella foenum-graecum even though methi is a very widely used common name (the obvious problem is that if we open the door to including Hindi names for cultivated plants, there are 20 other Indian languages that might merit inclusion). Plantdrew (talk) 16:08, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I think if you want non-English plant names, one should go to the appropropriate language page, which in most cases is listed as part of the page. In the above case of Trigonella, there is indeed a Hindi page, to wit मेथी. Although of course it is in Hindi script, similarly in Marathi. However Methi, the transliteraated Marathi term is mentioned on the English page, but not in the infobox. I don't really see how the page would improved by adding it to the infobox.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 02:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

My thoughts of adding stuff

Hi. Just asking, should a section about 'How to plant' is necessary to all plant articles? Typhoon2013 (talk) 00:51, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, firstly, the majority of plants aren't grown by humans, so clearly their articles wouldn't have such a section. Secondly, WP:NOTMANUAL is clear that we shouldn't give directions on how to grow plants, but a factually worded "Cultivation" section is fine. See the style of this example in a featured article. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: Ok. Also because I'd joined this project for a while now and haven't done anything, what can I do? I am just interested in plants wanted to help on something but I can't find anything. Typhoon2013 (talk) 05:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
@Typhoon2013: All hands are welcome. Proof-reading/copyediting/pointing out glaring omissions...bringing something here that reads weirdly on an article etc. What you interested in? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:35, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
BTW..the pix of various cultivars on the Telopea_speciosissima page are a memorial of all the now-dead goddamn waratahs I have tried to grow over the years...while my brother in law's are as healthy as muck... :((( 06:37, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Asa Gray seems likely GA or FA candidate

The article on Asa Gray is currently ranked as B, but upon casual review I think it could easily be a contender for Good Article or possibly even Featured Article. I'm not familiar enough with Gray's life to assess how ready it is, or what might be lacking, so I probably won't personally be nominating it any time soon, but want to motivate and encourage someone more knowledgeable to get it recognized, as there are relatively few Good Article biologist biographies and even fewer Featured biology biographies. Let's get more quality bio bios the recognition they deserve! --Animalparty! (talk) 19:22, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Citrus micrantha

Hi, I'm unsure what to do about Citrus micrantha Wester. The page for kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix DC.) shows it as a synonym, but Talk:Citrus micrantha shows that this is disputed by User:Offnfopt, who has sources. As it stands now, the article is just a taxobox with no categories except the obligatory "Articles with 'species' microformats". I'm letting Offnfopt know about this thread. Thanks, Hamamelis (talk) 16:11, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I can't access the source in full, but does it actually say that C. micrantha is distinct from C. hystrix or merely use the former name? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't any better access to the article either. Hopefully someone here does, or Offnfopt responds. At Talk:Citrus micrantha, If you read what Offnfopt writes, the Khan and Grosser article seems to at least strongly infer that C. micrantha and C. hystrix are distinct, by referring to them by two separate common names, kaffir lime and biasong. But the page shouldn't remain as just a taxobox, unless that's an unusual but accepted practice that I'm unaware of. Hamamelis (talk) 10:11, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I have access - the source simply refers to C. hystrix as a "close relative" of C. micrantha, but there is no further elaboration. I can send you the pdf if you wish. Plantsurfer 10:56, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I've enabled email on my user page. Yes, please send it, and thank you! Hamamelis (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I duly made a basic stub and provideed a source. No such user (talk) 12:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

While I'm at it: is it kosher, copyright-wise, to nick the whole botanical description from the original source, like i just did [3]? For what it's worth, the source is from 1915 and the author died in 1931, so it might actually be in the public domain. (Of course, I attributed it). I don't quite feel like paraphrasing what is pretty dry, list-y prose. No such user (talk) 12:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyright would presumably be ok under the "life of author + 70" rule, but the prose style is not ok for Wikipedia, in my view. You need to paraphrase!
Also I am still concerned that no reliable secondary source has been given foe the distinctness of these two. Citrus taxonomy seems very tangled, and I would only trust a substantial review. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
OK, will do paraphrasing. But what better can we do in the absence of a substantial review? There already is a note in the article that some sources do consider them synonyms, and that's the state of the art in this moment. No such user (talk) 14:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't help with C. micrantha, but this 2015 article shows that insight about the Citrus problem is coming. For what it can offer, it would be a good citation. Presumably, the various databases will build on its information soon. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing terminological article: pathotype

Needs at least a stub, that distinguishes it from race (biology), forma specialis, cultivar, and other infraspecific ranks and terms. The term is already redlinked in articles, e.g. Stem rust.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Good point. I've added it to Pathovar, using the definition as used in bacteriology. It is strange that journal articles still sometimes have that old usage (about pre-1900 for plants), where a type is a taxon rather than a specimen. There is a newer meaning in mycology, apparently not supported by the code of nomenclature, and I'll try to add that. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:31, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

"Grain"

The usage of Grain is under discussion, see talk:food grain -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

"Atlantic Giant"

Can someone have a look at Atlantic Giant? It seems as though the article was rewritten in 2014 in an NPOV manner, and now consists of an intro that does not reveal the topic of the article, but instead is a criticism of the name. Also see the talk page. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 06:15, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Can the taxobox template be improved

Apologies for asking a question which is undoubtedly complex, from the great depth of my ignorance about template design. At Talk:Petunia integrifolia#Redirects needed? and cruft, if I understand it correctly without having a mobile device to test it on, there is discussion of a display problem with the citation attached to the authority list in the taxobox. Perhaps the problem is only when editing, I'm not sure. Would it be feasible to add a parameter to the taxobox template, called authority_ref or binomial_ref, that would work in a similar manner to synonyms_ref? The reason I'd like this to happen, is that the fundamental databases such as The International Plant Names Index get too little credit for their vital work, and it would be nice for wikipedia to set a higher standard about that. It would also be helpful to set a standard that would work to reduce the number of poor sources that are already cited for that line in taxoboxen. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:57, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the problem with the taxobox at Petunia integrifolia when viewed on the mobile site with a small screen device is actually anything to do with the reference for the authority. The overlap reported is between the last reference in the references list and the taxobox; references never seem to like to be beside something else, as happens because the text of the article is very short. The "solution" is, I think, to put "clear" before the references.
It's necessary to have the parameter |synonyms_ref= because the reference mark must end up in one of the title bars in the taxobox, rather than in the content. All that |authority_ref= would do is to place the reference mark where it would appear if placed directly in the content. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:30, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Helonias Bullata

Trying to expand Helonias. Sutter, Robert D. "The Status of Helonias Bullata L. (Liliaceae) in the Southern Appalachians." Castanea 49.1 (1984): 9-16. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. Seems like a good source; haven't read it yet. Will be looking for some more later. Khzzang9 (talk) 05:41, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Do have a look at WP:PLANTS/Template, if you don't know it. (I don't mean all the detail, just the main section ordering.) The article seems long enough already to be divided into sections. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:05, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

{{Species abbreviation}}

Since 2010 there has been a template {{Species abbreviation}} which has been added to many disambiguation pages to provide links to the various species names or disambiguation pages which use the word in question (examples include Vanzolinii and Sylvestre).

In a Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_27#Template:Species_abbreviation deletion discussion in April 2015 the consensus appeared to be that it should be replaced by something better, but the close was as "delete". Some instances have already been deleted, but there is now a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Species_abbreviations. If you have opinions on the best way forward, please join that discussion. Thanks. PamD 21:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Jepson Manual Treatment: new website and linkrot


~~ Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 09:47, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Can someone ask a bot operator to update these? --2601:285:101:9DAF:DC7D:E1F3:1BCC:6873 (talk) 23:39, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Microsorum scolopendria and Phymatosorus scolopendria

According to Microsorum scolopendria the term Phymatosorus scolopendria is synonymous. Because there are 2 items in Wikidata (Microsorium scolopendrium and Phymatosorus scolopendria) the language links don't show all the references. Therefore I'd like to merge the Wikidata items, but I don't know, which term should be the preferred one. Can somebody help me with this? Best, --ThT (talk) 12:22, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

That is quite a tangled story. Wikipedia should be following secondary sources, but secondary sources do not always give a clear statement about which name they consider a synonym. In this case, Tropicos lists the genus Phymatosorus as a synonym of Microsorum, but what Tropicos is actually listing is the various publications that give particular opinions. That listing doesn't mean that every species name of Microsorum would have priority over the equivalent species name in Phymatosorus, although our page Microsorum assumes that. The Plant List lists Phymatosorus scolopendria as the correct name, with Microsorum scolopendria (Burm. f.) Copel. as a synonym, and that agrees with its source, the Tropicos species entry. There was a confusion on the page with the species Microsorum grossum, which is now corrected. I've moved the page to Phymatosorus scolopendria. I'm not sure what that does (will do after some small delay) to the wikidata entries. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:56, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I reported the Interwiki-conflict (wikidata:Wikidata:Interwiki conflicts/Unresolved/2015#Phymatosorus scolopendria (Q3027867)/Microsorium scolopendrium (Q15248487)) as the first step of merging the Wikidata items. Best, --ThT (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Tree root picture

Hello. I'm curious whether someone interested in botany can tell more about this tree from the image alone (e.g., genus, possible diseases, etc.)? Thank you. Sb2s3 (talk) 07:24, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

My first reaction is that it looks like Fagus sylvatica, though that's only an impression. It's rather difficult to make a definite identification based on just the roots and trunk. Where was the picture taken, and do you have any images of other parts of the tree - such as leaves, flowers, fruit or twigs? The only other comment on these roots is that they possibly appear to have formed with this particular morpholgy as a result of the tree growing on top of a mound that seems to contain a lot of boulders, and the positioning of the wall suggests that previously the tree might have been squashed against a section of wall, which may have resulted in the flattened presentation of the roots. But this is all conjecture. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:56, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! Here are two more images - does this help with the genus? It's an urban tree in the English Midlands. Sb2s3 (talk) 12:28, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
& a closer look at the leaves (sorry for the low resolution). Sb2s3 (talk) 13:26, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it's Fagus sylvatica, a purple-leaved form, such as F. sylvatica f. purpurea or a cultivar of it. I'm guessing that the green leaves near the bottom are perhaps on a second, smaller, adjacent tree with standard colouring, or maybe a branch that has reverted. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:25, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Wow, what an eye you have for roots that have grown squashed against a fence or something, PCW. Those green leaves look a bit like holly. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:58, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
The lower leaves in the first image do indeed look like holly, but I was looking at the other images, slightly higher into the canopy. Actually, looking more closely at the base of the roots, it seems most likely that the roots grew abutting a continuation of the black railings, rather than an extension of the wall as I first thought- a careful scrutiny reveals a kind of ledge along the base of the roots, in line with a level where a missing piece of railing would have been. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, indeed. You've been very helpful. Sb2s3 (talk) 09:10, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Seeking input for student handbook on editing plants / species articles

Hello all; I'm writing on behalf of the Wiki Education Foundation, which works with instructors who assign university students to write or edit Wikipedia articles in the United States and Canada. We're developing a print handbook for students who will write or expand articles on living species, including plants and fungi. I'd appreciate any feedback on the draft! It is open for comment until November 5th; after that we will set it to print. Thanks so much! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Orchid alliances

I've just made a stub from what I could find about the use of the term Alliance (biology), and it seems to be an entirely informal grouping similar to a rank, but used more or less to mean a taxonomic puzzle that the authors are trying to untangle. However, orchid articles about genera often have an Alliance line in the taxobox (e.g., Ascocenda, Anacamptis, Brassia, Eria). I don't know what organization has defined these alliances; they are not discussed in the ICNCP. Can someone versed in Orchid taxonomy help with this? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:56, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

In Malveae alliance is a informal rank intermediate between subtribe and genus. In Thymelaeaceae genera are collected into groups.

I seem to recall that there's something in the ICN about people being allowed to introduce non-standard intermediate ranks. Proles is an example of such an intraspecific rank. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

That's what Article 4.3 would appear to imply:
4.3. Further ranks [in addition to those cited in §4.2.] may also be intercalated or added, provided that confusion or error is not thereby introduced.
However, I'm not clear how or even whether the ICN actually may apply to such groupings, especially since they are usually explicitly created to group taxon in a way that is unbeholden to taxonomy. Circéus (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
I had never heard of proles. They are apparently considered identical to race (biology) (!). Wikipedia could step into the breach and explain all this stuff (maybe). Lots to do ...
About the orchid alliances, which are clearly useful to any reader who wants to understand something about orchid diversity, it seems that there are two possibilities:
  • to find a citation that has defined a nomenclature rank that is equivalent, perhaps sub-tribe, and replace what is in our taxoboxen with those names
  • to find a citation where the orchid alliances are defined and add it to each taxobox.
I don't think we should have a page or section that explains the notion of "group" as for Thymelaeaceae genera, except on the page about that family. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:01, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I propose that Alliance lines be removed from the taxoboxes of Orchidaceae. Salazar, G.A.; Chase, M.W.; Soto Arenas, M.A.; Ingrouille, M. (2003), "Phylogenetics of Cranichideae with emphasis on Spiranthinae (Orchidaceae, Orchidoideae): evidence from plastid and nuclear DNA sequences", American Journal of Botany, 90 (5): 777–795{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) shows not only that the most recent delimitations of alliances correspond poorly to clades, but that the numbers and boundaries of alliances have been redrawn quite differently at different times. Opinions are invited. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:13, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree. We have discussed in the past what should be in taxoboxes, and the general view has been to limit the ranks/levels shown, particularly where there are conflicting taxonomic views. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Just stopping by since I saw this old discussion while I was here, but yes, orchid alliances have not really been used since the last great Dressler classification of the family in the mid-1990s. Few of his arrangements have held up to molecular phylogenetic analysis and newer publications have a great deal of support for rearranging the tribes and subtribes. I believe that when most of the orchid taxoboxes were created on Wikipedia, the reference most often used was Dressler's classification. I've updated what I could in the area I was working in, see Cymbidiinae and the genera contained within for accurate taxoboxes. I would wager that the majority of orchid taxoboxes use the outdated alliances, which means the category system might also be a mess. There is certainly fertile ground for whomever wants to tackle such an issue. Rkitko (talk) 02:43, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

5 million articles

Wikipedia's 5 millionth article is Persoonia terminalis thanks to Casliber (talk · contribs). There was a bit of a race involving Turkish villages, camera models, plant species and other topics at the run-up to 5 million. I'm glad to see a taxon article made the mark, and especially pleased that it was a plant. Yay! Plantdrew (talk) 06:34, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

As someone observed on Casliber (talk · contribs)'s talkpage, when he eventually dies and goes to the great beyond, The Pope will probably declare him patron saint of shrubbery. Parkywiki (talk) 08:57, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Just saw that the 5 millionth was by Casliber (talk · contribs). As an somewhat infrequent user, I was proud to see it was someone I have actually worked with on FAs and whose articles I have read many of. Way to go Cas! DJLayton4 (talk) 09:36, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Move reversal

I want to reverse a Move from species to subsp., no longer considered valid as the subsp. has now been sunk as insufficiently distinct from the species. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ulmus_minor_subsp._minor_%27Variegata%27 I've managed to revert all the other U. minor cultivar pages, but this one was moved from species to subsp. some time ago. Assistance much appreciated. Regards, Ptelea (talk) 11:56, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The cautious way is following the instructions at {{Rm}}. If you're sure it's uncontroversial, you can request a speedy resolution at WP:RM#Requesting technical moves. An iffy way is by tagging the redirect with {{db-move}} (sometimes admin perform the deletion but forget to do the move for you, leaving it a redlink until you or someone else notices).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:29, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Potato article names and notability

The article names in Category:Potato cultivars are a mess with some simply being the name (Bintje) others have potato after them (Skerry Champion potato) and others use brackets (Melody (potato)). Many do need more than the name but is there any preference for having potato bracketed? It's certainly the way that biographies etc are named. This also led me wonder whether we have a way of determining the notability of cultivars - for example the Skerry Champion doesn't appear to have an RS coverage so should probably be deleted, but very few meet WP:GNG which makes things a bit tricky. SmartSE (talk) 22:31, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

It can be hard to access agricultural and horticultural material online I have found, so I suppose GNG is the best we have but suggest we be careful. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:47, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
There are certainly some cultivars with notability issues. Looking through subcategories of Category:Food plant cultivars, mangoes are standardized to use the parenthetical "(mango)" disambiguation. Grapes are almost entirely parenthetical. Apples are mostly parenthetical. Tomatoes and potatoes are mixed pretty evenly. Bananas, capsicum and rice are almost entirely nonparenthetical. Cherries, olives, oranges and plums are entirely nonparenthetical. Most of the coffee entries aren't actually cultivars, but none use parentheses. Going through the other subcategories of Category:Cultivars, almost all other cultivars on Wikipedia use scientific names (e.g. in the form Solanum tuberosum 'Melody'). There's also Category:Cannabis strains with entirely parenthetical disambiguation.
There' are surely some cultivar articles that don't show up in any of the categories I've looked at, but my overall impression is that ornamental plant cultivars almost always use a scientific name format (which precludes any possible ambiguity), while edible plant cultivars use a mix of parenthetical and nonparenthetical disambiguation when it is needed. I think a lot of articles included under the edible cultivars aren't actually formally named cultivars. Breeders of edible plants haven't taken up the ICNCP to the extent that ornamental breeders have. Many important crops don't even have active cultivar registrars. Using scientifically formatted cultivar names isn't really feasible for edible plants (and wouldn't be very helpful to readers at any rate).
Across the food plant cultivar subcategories, the trend seems to go with nonparenthetical disambiguation. But grapes and apples are the two largest subcategories, and favor parenthetical. Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine might have an opinion about how to handle grapes. And @SMcCandlish: has been working on standardizing the titles for animal breeds. Plantdrew (talk) 00:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Also been working, off-and-on, on the MOS:ORGANISMS draft (held up for a long time because of the capitalize-or-not question about standardized breeds of domestic animals). A lot of these article titles probably predate the explicit preference for natural disambiguation at WP:Article titles policy (going back far enough, it was the WP:Naming conventions guideline, which at one stage had no such expectation). The basic rule of thumb is "would anyone write this in a newspaper?" Except in a conversation strictly limited to insiders focusing intently on their specialty in a way that precluded any possibility of ambiguity, no one would use "the nursery has some Andersons", or "a preference for Algerian Arabs", so AT policy would have us use natural disambiguation; the phrases "the nursery has some Anderson mangoes" and "a preference for Algerian Arab sheep" would come naturally even to specialists any time they needed to be clear what they were talking about. Per WP:AT#DAB and MOS:LIFE, we're expected to create redirects from alternative disambiguations, alternative names, and variant spellings (alternative capitalization, diacritics, hyphenation, ligatures, plurals – even Granny Smith apples is still a redlink). It's important that readers not aware of our (sometimes changing) naming conventions be able to get to the article they're looking for with minimal fuss. Natural disambiguation is the fastest route for most readers, unless it's artificial nonsense because the name is not actually ambiguous and is almost always used alone ("Ocicat cat" is redundant, for example, and virtually no one says "bok choy cabbage").

The plant project's default practice of naming plant articles with the scientific name obviously could introduce a complication. The argument for doing so is pretty strong when a given plant species has a dozen common names that vary regionally, but seems to be much weaker when it comes to names of cultivars of things that clearly do have a single WP:COMMONNAME. An article title like Solanum tuberosum 'Melody' would be of dubious utility to many readers (but not zero of them, since that exact phrase occurs in published literature). We don't seem to be naming that way, and instead are using the ICNCP name in article prose [mostly] where it makes encyclopedic sense to do so. It also seems to make sense at Commons, which is multilingual. So, it probably should not be a redlink here, and WP:NATDIS would have us move Melody (potato) to Melody potato, which is even more unreasonably a redlink right now. It nice to see that ICNCP conventions, which apply to extended scientific names, are not being used inappropriately to create Frankenstein constructions like 'Melody' potato or 'Melody' (potato), which we need not create redirs for. I'm skeptical anyone would post "I put a 'Granny Smith' apple in my daughter's lunchbox" on a child nutrition forum, even if they were an apple horticulur[al]ist.

Agreed that many cultivars have, at least superficially, a WP:Notability problem. I think it's an open question. Any well-established cultivar will appear in multiple tertiary sources like encyclopedias of garden plants, but tertiary sources don't count for notability establishment, last I looked. Same goes for primary-source journal articles; it's not enough that an obscure new cultivar was part of a study of cucurbit phytopathology. Is coverage in highly specialized horticultural publications of a more secondary nature sufficient? Some would argue that they're not really independent of the subject, and the same could be argued for coverage of new dog breeds, or whatever, in fancier publications, which are not yet covered in mainstream sources or outside of dog breed encyclopedias. (By contrast, the Hass avocado and the Jack Russell terrier are things that zillions of people have heard of and seen mentioned in print.) Hobbyist publications have a promotional interest in new variations (articles on them may be toward the top of their most popular content), and are typically also beholden to commercial advertisers with a fiduciary interest in their acceptance and popularity.

Agreed that things that are not strictly cultivars shouldn't be categorized as such. They're not all varieties, strictly, either. I'm not sure if it's better to fork the categories or rename them something more general (probably the latter, since only experts will know whether something is or isn't a cultivar, but how to name the categories would be an open question). In dealing with domesticated animals, a similar problem came up. Everything was just lumped into "breeds" including things that are not breeds at all. I started forking these into separate breeds and landraces categories, but disputes arose about the definition of "breed" (an issue that might or might not arise for "cultivar"). I've not moved to do anything yet, but the sensible approach now seems to be to treat "breed" in its broadest sense, and then subscategorize into standardized breeds, historically attested breeds that pre-date standardization, and landraces, based on the sourcing for each breed-in-the-broad sense. Something vaguely like this could work for plants. E.g. a catchall directory for potato varietals or types or whatever term is best, subcategorized into formal cultivars, notable heirloom types, landraces, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:52, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

One small point: potato 'Melody' is a format accepted by the ICNCP – the words before the cultivar name don't have to be the scientific name.
As SMcCandlish says, it's complicated. In the case of newer cultivars, whether of edible or ornamental plants, it's generally clear that they are cultivars, and the ICNCP can be applied. Vegetatively propagated plants can usually be assumed to be cultivars, given their uniformity. But long established seed-raised crop plants (like squashes, which continue to cause problems over article titling) have names where it's totally unclear whether they refer to land races, cultivar groups, or cultivars, or to uses rather than botanical characteristics, and whether these names have been used consistently over time. (Thus "Zucchini" seems originally to have been what we would now call a cultivar name, but has become a much more general term for summer squashes with certain characteristics that are used in a particular way.) So there's no "one size fits all" solution. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:06, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Acacia

We now have articles on Acacia and Acacia sensu lato. And more than 1000 incoming links to Acacia with many that should be going to Acacia s.l.. Are we ready to split Acacia? Is there another way to handle this? It seems to me that acacia is a common name for a bunch of African species (and wattle is a common name for a bunch of Australian species). Should the broad sense be at Acacia with the narrow sense at Acacia (sensu stricto) or Acacia (genus), or ....? Plantdrew (talk) 05:08, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I agree that the present article titles aren't correct, and also that after the Melbourne decision the nomenclatural position is clear, but what to do? I favour accepting the split. In which case the two articles should be:
  • Acacia (genus) – the new narrow sense, expanded to cover the botany
  • Acacia – unitalicized, a briefer article explaining the traditional and common name meanings.
(Some of the naming problems around arise from the insistence on the singular; I wish we could use titles like "Pelargonium" and "Pelargoniums", since "Acacia" and "Acacias" would, in my view, be better titles. However, we can't.) Peter coxhead (talk) 11:39, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Well, WP:PLURAL and WP:IAR certainly do allow for exceptions. While the species case is not explicitly covered, the provision Articles that actually distinguish among multiple distinct instances of related items (sans the rest), might be applicable. In any case, it doesn't cost much to test the popular opinion via a WP:RM. No such user (talk) 13:04, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Oof. I didn't really pay attention to the content of the articles previously. Acacia now covers the African species ("Vachellia"), completely ignoring retypification. I'd assumed (without reading it) that it covered the Australian species ("Racosperma"). I'd suggest that we redirect Acacia to Acacia sensu lato (or do we keep Acacia as the title, but unitalicized; would the taxobox get stripped out too then?), leave all the species article at Acacia title, and retain articles on the segregate genera (including both Racosperma and Vachellia) Acacia sensu stricto could be a dab page, or a redirect to Taxonomy of Acacia. Plantdrew (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that sounds good. Presumably the taxobox would be stripped out of unitalicized Acacia or the plural Acacias. Acacia (genus) and Acacia sensu stricto should be equivalent (one a redirect), I think. [The current Acacia certainly needs a rewrite, and this statement must give a reader pause: "The following species are suspected to belong to Acacia.[7] Acacia bellula Drake Acacia bolei R.P. Subhedar ..."] Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:31, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't think that it's a good idea to include either "sensu stricto" or "sensu lato" in the title. It's a recipe for multiple articles on different taxonomic views (why not "Asparagaceae sensu lato" and "Asparagaceae sensu stricto" – both can be defended from the current literature); and if we have "sensu stricto" and "sensu lato" articles, why not "sensu Smith" and "sensu Jones" articles? We have to make a decision on the taxonomy in our article titles and taxoboxes while, of course, respecting NPOV in the text where we discuss alternative views. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:34, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Germplasm Resources Information Network vernacular names compromised

I just came across this. GRIN is now pulling vernacular names from Wikipedia and applying their own formatting style (our "porcupine tomato" is given as "porcupine-tomato" there). Sigh. Another reliable source joins the cloud of circular Wikipedia sourcing. Plantdrew (talk) 05:20, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

That's very sad. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 08:04, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. We need to watch out for this, and try to avoid circular WP sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
And now GRIN is attributing "porcupine-tomato" to "web document" rather than Wikipedia. Some kind of bug rolling this out, or are they having second thoughts? At least with Wikipedia explicitly cited, it's possible to avoid circular sourcing. The formatting style bothers me more than pulling names from Wikipedia; I always try to format vernacular names as given in the source, and had assumed GRIN did likewise. Plantdrew (talk) 18:38, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Fern taxoboxes

So I've been polishing Asplenium articles again, and I've run into two taxobox-related issues where I could use some help.

The first regards the upper ranks of classification, as pertains to ferns. Many of our taxoboxes contain "Class: Polypodiopsida / Pteridopsida (disputed)". I guess, having accepted that Equisetum is part of our bailiwick, we fern people don't think very much about that end of the classification. The families laid out by Christenhusz, Zhang & Schneider (2011) are pretty well accepted; for ranks above that, they follow Chase & Reveal (2009) in classifying all land plants into subclasses of a single class, Equisetopsida, allotting subclass Lycopodiidae to the lycophytes and subclasses Equisetidae, Ophioglossidae, Marattiidae, and Polypodiidae to the ferns s.l. However, I get the impression that this scheme (which places all angiosperms in subclass Magnoliidae) hasn't exactly caught fire with the angiosperm community. Any thoughts on what to apply for class through order in ferns, or should I just leave what's there alone?

The second issue involves the use of eupolypods I and eupolypods II, subclades of the Polypodiales. These are not explicitly mentioned in Christenhusz et al. (2011), but would be unranked clades containing several families. Christenhusz & Chase (2014) decided to raise these clades to the rank of family and downgrade the families within them to subfamilies, but no one except the authors seems particularly enthusiastic about using that circumscription, so I would suggest we avoid it for the time being. However, I would like to know whether or not to include them in taxoboxes below the family level. It's sort of useful information (both have easily-examined synapomorphies associated with vascular bundles in the stipe), but I think that would run against our current practice.

Commentary would be warmly appreciated. Choess (talk) 06:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

As you imply, there are two different issues here.
  1. Can the top levels of our consensus classifications of major plant groups be fitted together? This is a problem not only for ferns vs. angiosperms, but also for fossil plants, whose classification requires several higher levels (see e.g. the unsourced classification in the Polysporangiophyte taxobox). Are ferns Moniliformopses? This taxon name redirects to Fern, but so do several other taxon names that aren't at the same phylogenetic level.
  2. What classification should be used for ferns?
I've thought a lot about (1), having worked on fossil plants. My conclusion is that, at present, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, there simply isn't a coherent classification supported by reliable sources which can be used across all "plants", and we have to use well-sourced internally consistent classifications in different areas, accepting that they don't "fit" at the top level.
I don't have the expertise to answer (2), other than to say that we've normally tried to avoid trying to squeeze multiple classifications into taxoboxes, so I would like to see "Class: Polypodiopsida / Pteridopsida (disputed)" disappear. Any dispute should be discussed in the relevant article and not spill over into the taxobox.
Peter coxhead (talk) 09:50, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree that (1) is probably not possible. I guess we're better than protists, but that's about it. For dealing with (2), I turned to the most recent backbone fern phlogeny paper (Rothfels et al., AJB 102(7):1089-1107, July 2015). They seem to use subclasses circumscribed like those of Chase & Reveal '09 and Christenhusz et al. '11, but they've placed the four fern subclasses in class Polypodiopsida. (They also use "Psilotidae" for the Ophioglossales + Psilotales clade, whereas Christenhusz et al. synonymized that name with "Ophioglossidae".) The Ruggiero et al. paper in PLoS One earlier this year, "A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms", setting out the new CoL/ITIS backbone classification, also places ferns in Polypodiopsida with four subclasses (including "Ophioglossidae [=Psilotidae]"). "Pteridopsida" seems to have been essentially abandoned in recent literature.
So I'd propose the following:
  1. All of our ferns (inclusive of horsetails) to be placed in class Polypodiopsida, divided among the four subclasses of Christenhusz et al.; subclasses to appear in the taxoboxes of orders but not below that level.
  2. The subclasses to be divided into orders according to Christenhusz et al.
  3. Within order Polypodiales, eupolypods I and eupolypods II to be placed as unranked clades between order and family in the taxoboxes of families but not below that level.
  4. The orders to be divided into families according to Christenhusz et al., with suitable modifications (i.e., publication of Didymochlaenaceae).
  5. The revised circumscriptions of families and subfamilies according to Christenhusz & Chase should be discussed in the appropriate articles, but not used for our consensus taxonomy, pending more widespread adoption in the fern community. Choess (talk) 15:54, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Populus sect. Aigeiros (cottonwood)

A couple of hundred articles refer to this as "Populus sect. Aegeiros", which is a redirect to Populus sect. Aigeiros. Is "Aegeiros" an acceptable alternative spelling, or simply a mistake? Colonies Chris (talk)

Alternative spellings are generally not permitted by the code of nomenclature. What may be the original description is now added as a citation at Populus sect. Aigeiros. That's not definitive, just suggestive evidence that Aigeiros is the correct spelling. It is certain, though, that authoritative references use that spelling, such as Flora of North America. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:10, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
It's interesting that a search in Google Scholar for "Populus sect. section Aigeiros" produces about 600 hits as opposed to 17 for "Populus sect. section Aegeiros". Again not definitive but highly suggestive. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

"Populus sect. Aegiros" is the spelling that has all the incoming links. Until 2 July 2009, the article on the trees was at Cottonwood, after which the tree article was moved to Populus sect. Aegiros and the dab page was moved to Cottonwood. On 16 November 2011, the spelling on the dab page was corrected, and the tree article was moved to the current spelling. It looks like the misspelling originated on Wikipedia, and all the links to the misspelling are a result of having that spelling in the dab page when it moved to the base title. Simple English Wikipedia uses "Aegiros" as I write this, and there are 648 Google hits for that spelling. Good illustration of the power of Wikipedia. Plantdrew (talk) 17:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

And I don't have move permission on Simple. I'll see if I can find something to do there to rack up my edit count for autoconfirmation. Plantdrew (talk) 17:13, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Now moved on Simple. Plantdrew (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I think we need someone with a bot to go and fix all the links. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

As has just been pointed out to me after I started changing links for those areas where P. fremontii could not have been the intended species, P. trichocarpa is also called black cottonwood, and that species is not in section Aigeiros. Flora of North America makes it clear that there are large parts of the continent where poplars from different sections of the genus could all be referred to as cottonwoods. It seems that many of the links should be to Cottonwood, but that would run afoul of the efforts to remove links to disambiguation pages. To fix this properly would require more than a bot changing Aegiros to Aigeiros, and it seem to require a lot of thought. I don't know whether linking to Cottonwood is an acceptable option. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:58, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Gerardia

Gerardia is making my brain hurt. It should be an Orobanchaceae genus that we have an article on, right? (see Tropicos search) And looking at TPL, I suspect that the Orobanchaceae genus maybe should be treated as synonym of Agalinis? And we need an article for the acanths at Stenandrium? Plantdrew (talk) 05:38, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

You need to look at the appendices to the IC(B)N. What I find here is that Stenandrium Nees is conserved over Gerardia L. Apparently no mention of the Gerardia Benth., so it's a nomen illegitimum. According to Tropicos the correct (accepted) name for Gerardia Benth. is Micrargeria Benth. (Tho' the species are to be found in both Micrargeria and Agalinis, so the question is which species is the type and where that goes.
I think that Gerardia becomes a redirect to Stenandrium or a dismambiguation page. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
Yikes, Gerardia is tangled. ING is helpful because it lists clearly that the type of Gerardia L. is G. tuberosa, which belongs to the genus Stenandrium, and the type of Gerardia Benth. has not been designated. There was a competing proposal in 1959 to conserve Gerardia Benth., but the proposal was rejected in 1961 on the grounds that nobody was using the name because Agalinis was used instead. There's an animal genus of the same name, so disambiguation would be good. I've made a start, see Gerardia (disambiguation). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:42, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
For further confusion there's the asteroid 1337 Gerarda and the snake Gerarda prevostiana, but perhaps we can ignore them as it's a different spelling. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:19, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
Google search keeps offering Giardia, but I thought that a distastefull addition . Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:18, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Telopea truncata

..is at FAC (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Telopea truncata/archive1) ..in case anyone wants to offer an opinion or suggest improvements....cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Things are pretty slow over there...I suspect with the arb elections and all....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:48, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Comments sought re Taxonomy of the Orchidaceae

Please see Talk:Taxonomy of the Orchidaceae#Need new title. As the IP who has been working on the article says, the current title is misleading. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Also I noticed there is no Category for these articles, so I have created Category:Taxonomic articles, which provides a way to collect them together.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Someone immediately proposed it for deletion - I would appreciate support or discussion! --Michael Goodyear (talk) 13:29, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Today's featured article and FAC

I just wanted to stop by to introduce Corinne; she'll continue to help out at TFA and will be focusing for now on WP:PLANTS, WP:MAMMALS and WP:FUNGI. She'll also be helping out with prose reviews at FAC, and I'm available to answer questions about FAC or TFA any time. - Dank (push to talk) 16:34, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Request ID help

I'm in the process of moving old files over to Commons and ran across this file. The uploader claimed that it is lythrum salicaria but an IP editor later changed the description to say it is a species of Epilobium. Can anyone identify this plant? Kelly hi! 10:30, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

According to the Lythrum salicaria article, the flowers of L. salicaria are "clustered tightly in the axils of bracts or leaves", which is not the case of the flowers in this image. According to the Epilobium article, there are uncertainties over the taxonomy of the genus, with Chamerion possibly separate. See Chamerion angustifolium for a superficially similar image. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 10:55, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
This isn't Lythrum. It's a Chamerion (distinguished from Epilobium by the slightly zygomorphic flowers), and almost certainly Chamerion angustifolium unless there are other, similar Chamerion species in Washington, which there don't appear to be: only C. latifolium, which is a much smaller plant). --Stemonitis (talk) 11:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the help! Kelly hi! 11:43, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Alpine Pennycress

We used to have an article titled Alpine Pennycress. Now it's at Thlaspi caerulescens, and it's a total trainwreck. Thlaspia caerulescens is apparently a European plant with a common name that's formatted by BSBI as "Alpine Penny-cress". And there is a western North American plant with "alpine pennycress" as the usual format for it's common name. TPL via WCSP [4] appears to accept the North American plant as Thlaspi montanum, but USDA PLANTS and FNA (see [5]) treat it as Noccaea fendleri subsp. glauca and TPL is also happy to accept that name via Tropicos ([6]). I'm not sure whether to go with WCSP/TPL or FNA for the North American species. We can chalk this one up as another outstanding win for WP:COMMONNAME, but does anybody have some ideas about what title should be used for the North American plant? Plantdrew (talk)

The WCSP source is only "in review", so isn't necessarily reliable. As pointed out before, TPL's algorithm for deciding what Tropicos has "accepted" is seriously faulty, so you must always check the Tropicos entry. If you look at http://www.tropicos.org/Name/50258715 you'll see that actually the "accepted name" in Tropicos is Noccaea montana (L.) F.K.Mey., based a more recent source (2005) than the 2004 source given for Noccaea fendleri subsp. glauca. So there's agreement that the epithet is montana/um, but disagreement as to the genus. I'd go with Noccaea montana for now. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:55, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Alright, I went with Noccaea montana. Not feeling very confident about that, but at least it gives a place to put the North American stuff. Plantdrew (talk) 16:40, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Unless I'm overlooking something online, this seems to be a case where the online version of FNA has omitted the paragraphs that explain what is going on. There is a paragraph in the treatment of Noccaea and another under N. fendleri that together are very helpful. Plantdrew, I'll send you email with details. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:13, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Help at AfC

Hi. I need some expertise. I declined an article at AfC for lack of notability, simply based on the WP:GNG guidelines, which it clearly does not meet. Here is the draft: Draft:Herbert Alexander Wahl. The author (Parkywiki) of the article requested I re-think my position with a query on my talk page, in which he brings up what I consider some damn fine points. However, admittedly, this is not a field of expertise for me, so I'd appreciate some input. That way, in the future if I run into this type of article, I'll know which way to evaluate. Thanks. Onel5969 TT me 19:54, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Because taxoboxes contain the authority for a taxon (as do lists of genera in family articles and lists of species in genus articles), and because botanical authorities have often cryptic standard abbreviations, it's desirable to wikilink the authority to an article, where possible. So you see things like:
where the authorities are wikilinked. So if there is ever an article on, say, Chenopodium foggii Wahl, "Wahl" could be linked to Herbert Alexander Wahl.
It's arguable that anyone who is the botanical authority for a "reasonable number" of taxa is inherently notable. What counts as a "reasonable number" is necessarily unclear; this individual is perhaps marginal, as his taxa often seem to be synonyms, but even synonyms get listed in taxoboxes. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Comment: In the event that a taxon authority with a standard botanical abbreviation does not meet WP:GNG or WP:SCHOLAR, one could plausibly redirect to List of botanists by author abbreviation, or alternatively (especially likely for younger/contemporary taxonomists), accept that no one beyond a very small number of plant taxonomists has yet considered the author worthy of note and leave the name unlinked, perhaps defined within the article. --Animalparty! (talk) 20:49, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Template:Iris

Since I keep running into all kinds of iris-related pages on Wikipedia, I've just morphed the Template:Iris page into one for the iris plant family, modeled loosely on Template:Rose. (Before, it was a template page for a band, but I moved that to Template:Iris (American band) so that they wouldn't lose the information already assembled.) It's just a start, and I've never done one of these before, so I welcome the input of anyone who wants to improve it themselves, or just offer suggestions.Alafarge (talk) 22:51, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Nothofagus dilemma

Would like some input from folks interested in plant taxonomy on this one.....

In 2013, Nothofagus was split into four genera, however Greg Jordan of the university of Tasmania and expert on fossil nothofagaceae has disputed the utility of the split and had a paper published on this. Now I am not sure on the consensus on the uptake of the split and how to weigh various bodies. Whatever we end up doing, it'd be good to resent the pros and cons on the genus or family article fully. Greg has begun editing here and it'd be good to engage collaboratively rather than see some edit-war erupt etc. I'll hunt for sources soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:34, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The split made within a monophyletic group, so empirically and as a phlyogeneticist my response is: who cares? But more seriously, it looks like the phylogeny that the split is based on (Sauquet et al 2012) is strong, so I think the groups are real, but whether or not to split them taxonomically is just a matter of opinion. Rafaël Govaerts at Kew does not recognize the newly promoted names as genera in his World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, and I often defer to him on these issues. Since the new genera are already subgeneric names, an option would be to make articles on the subgenera and say "some consider them genera" or some such. DJLayton4 (talk) 13:16, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Seems a good solution to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:24, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Second that, it sounds like a good solution. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:08, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Third that. I recently came across Fuscospora solandri which says that it "is a species of southern beech" (with southern beech redirecting to Nothofagus). It saves us some headaches if with the common name if we recognize Nothfagus s.l. Plantdrew (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
I think it must be more that there are fossil taxa that are only assignable to Nothofagus s.l. ....and they can't if the name has been restricted. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:26, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Botanical editing needed

(Transferred from WP:THQ#Botanical editing needed)

Eucalyptus angophoroides was full of sentence fragments and botanical jargon that's meaningless to the layman. I've done what I can about the former, but as to the latter, well, I'm a layman. Trying to decipher the sentence about "exerted valves" led to about a half hour of searching around the web, much of it spent trying to explain to the search engines that I didn't want to know about machinery (though I did find that the spelling perhaps should be "exserted", with an S). See

Can someone knowledgeable about the field please have a look there? Thanks.

--Thnidu (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

exserted means protruding beyond the surrounding organ - one normally sees is applied to stamens and styles in relation to the perianth (sepals, tepals, petals, ...). (The antonym in the context is included.) I has to look up the structure of gumnuts to understand what was meant in this instance. It turns out that gumnuts are accessory fruits, in which part of the fruiting structure is derived from non-ovarian sources. The top of the ovary breaks up into separate structures (the valves) which in this species protrude from the surrounding structures.
It looks as if accessory fruit needs tweaking; it assumes that accessory fruits are fleshy, but gummnuts (and acorns) look like exceptions to that rule. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:48, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Lavateraguy: Thanks for the info, but I'm still not qualified to edit Eucalyptus angophoroides into coherency. D'you think you could? --Thnidu (talk) 20:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I've done some tweaking, but we could probably do with assistance from an Australian editor. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:59, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Christmas DYK hooks

My free time is a bit in short supply, but I will try to buff Costus chartaceus, Blandfordia punicea and/or Blandfordia cunninghamii for DYK. Anyone is welcome to help. I find Oz plants alot easier to source (as I know where to look) than exotics. While we're at it, Christmas plants could do with some references I suspect. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:26, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

NB: Can anyone think of other plants called "Xmas bush"? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:28, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

It is said here that poinsettia is called Christmas bush in Jamaica, but that's the only such claim I can find, so perhaps it's not reliable. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Forensic botany puzzle

There are three images in Commons in the category "Gooseberries" that would benefit from a botanical brain-wave: here, here and here. They are clearly not Ribes uva-crispa. The camera location of the photos places it in India, where I think the most likely meaning of gooseberry is Phyllanthus emblica, but these cut, dried, fruit appear to have large stones in the middle that have also been cut. I don't think they are a large Crataegus like Crataegus pinnatifida. Can anyone help? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:07, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Note: All three images are used on kn:ನೆಲ್ಲಿ ಸಟ್ಟು. The key word in the text is ನೆಲ್ಲಿ and this seems to translate to Phyllanthus niruri or Phyllanthus emblica. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:28, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
That's clever, thanks. I think they must be Phyllanthus emblica, but with the stone appearing relatively large (presumably because the fruit pulp has dried down to almost nothing) and not dark green but pale, perhaps bleached by the sun. Most sellers offer either dried fruit pieces without the stone, or the seeds extracted from the stones, so this must be an uncommon preparation. I don't see any clear images of seeds in the photos, so perhaps they have been separated. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:39, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Google images finds this, labelled as Phyllanthus emblica. Lavateraguy (talk) 23:28, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Excellent. Categorized now at Commons. Thanks all. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:30, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Student editing

I'd come across some of editing by the students listed here while working in other areas. But I see there are some plant articles needing attention as well, e.g. Leymus, which has material about one of its species that needs moving. If anyone has spare time, checking their contributions would be worthwhile. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

done that one - will look at others later. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Not on that list, but there's a similar issue at Iliamna (plant). I dropped a note to the editor at the time (2nd December). Lavateraguy (talk) 15:20, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Sambangi listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Sambangi. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -- Tavix (talk) 06:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Confusion at Saraca indica and Saraca asoca

These two articles appear to contradict each other about which one is the "Ashoka tree". Some of the references at Saraca asoca actually refer to Saraca indica. Are they in fact the same plant which has two names? I don't know how to resolve the confusion, so I'm hoping someone here can have a look. I started a discussion at Talk:Saraca_asoca#Contradiction and/or confusion with Saraca indica. Deli nk (talk) 16:19, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It's complicated. According to TPL (The Plant List), on the authority of ILDIS (The International Legume Database and Information Service), Saraca asoca (Roxb.) Willd. and Saraca indica L. are different species, but Saraca indica sensu Bedd. non L. is Saraca asoca. That means that some references to to Saraca indica will be referring to Saraca asoca, but you can't easily tell which ones. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:14, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
The images in the categories at commons are probably quite a mess. I was able to adjust a few using the citation given in the discussion. It says that these plants have no corolla, and that the two bracteoles of S. asoca are clasping the calyx tube at anthesis (they look like a calyx would in many other taxa). Perhaps the flowers of the species look quite different, but I did notice that S. indica is said to be very variable, so unless someone is very familiar with the two species, it could be hazardous to try to reassign the images. (I suspect that, given the degree of confusion, some of the plants in botanical gardens that have been photographed might be mislabelled.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:02, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Is evolution part of taxonomy?

Background

Following this discussion (see also just above it Question) the guidance was revised by @Circeus: and evolution was included in our Template under Taxonomy on 23 May 2009. The only subsequent discussion I have unearthed was in 2011, here. There seems to have been no wish to change this policy since it was enacted.

Consequently I have followed this practice in my taxon articles, and following WP:SS, by logical extension in taxonomy subpages, such as Taxonomy of Narcissus (GA) without any problems, till now.

The problem

Taxonomy of Liliaceae was nominated for GA review in April, and has since undergone extensive review. However there remains one sticking point that prevents its promotion. The reviewer believes Evolution should not be mentioned on a taxonomy page. We have had extensive discussions around this but have reached an impasse. Basically mention of evolution fails GA status.

The issues

I support our current policy, and to change it now might effect a large number of pages. In an era of molecular phylogenetics, inferences about evolution and current phylogeny and taxonomy stem from the same process, eg Patterson, T. B.; Givnish, T. J. (2002). "Phylogeny, concerted convergence, and phylogenetic niche conservatism in the core Liliales: insights from rbcL and ndhF sequence data" (PDF). Evolution. 56 (2): 233–252. doi:10.1111/j.0014-3820.2002.tb01334.x. PMID 11926492., rather than reliance on the fossil record alone. Our current taxonomy has derived from evolutionary divergence, that is to say it is a dynamic, not static process. Or by a blunt analogy, our current taxonomic diversity and relationships derive from evolution not creation.

The questions

Is our current policy justified? If so should having evolution on a taxonomy page automatically fail it for GA (or FA)? If not, how should the topic of evolution be subsequently handled in the template and in articles based on that?--Michael Goodyear (talk) 13:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

  • It's absolutely justified. Reconstructing phylogeny is an essential part of all modern taxonomy. What is the APG III system other than an attempt to understand the evolution of angiosperms and then capture it in taxa? All the trends are away from using formal ranks and classifications and towards clades as represented in cladograms. It's impossible to discuss the taxonomy of any group now without discussing their phylogeny. The reviewer is just plain wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:30, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Separate evolution and taxonomy: Hi everyone, I'm the reviewer of Taxonomy of Liliaceae. Perhaps some confusion about what I was trying to say comes from what we include in evolution.
Evolution overlaps with taxonomy, and the overlap is phylogenetics/cladistics, because it is used in modern taxonomy to define groups. Evolution however covers much more: ages of clades, areas of origin, fossil remains, range contractions and expansions, population genetics, hybridisation, coevolution with mutualists or natural enemies, etc. Take a look for example at Evolution of lemurs or Evolution of plants to see what I mean. All that information cannot be conceptually subsumed under taxonomy. We all agree that phylogenetics (in the sense of "which are the monophyletic groups"?) is essential to modern taxonomy, and that when such info is available it must be mentioned in a taxonomy article. I just believe that any "evolution" that goes beyond this is out of focus for a taxonomy article, as per GA criterion 3b.
In this particular case, I argue that the parts on diversification history and biogeography should be placed in the main Liliaceae article, or in its own Evolution of Liliaceae article, as there already is a section "phylogeny". For example, to understand how tribe Lilieae came to be circumscribed as it is now, I need to know that it is was shown to be monophyletic, but I don't need to know when it diverged or where it originated. Taxonomy of Banksia is an example of a taxonomy article which mentions just the phylogenetics which is necessary to understand the genus' taxonomy.
I think that Taxonomy of Liliaceae meets all other GA criteria, but I asked for a second opinion on criterion 3b. Burklemore1's suggestion of renaming the article "taxonomy and evolution" seemed an acceptable solution to me. The taxon article template is rather unprecise on the evolution and phylogeny part, and I think the confusion comes from the fact that many equate "evolution" with "phylogeny". I think the template needs some updating. "Tradition" does not seem a good argument to me to keep evolution under taxonomy – Wikipedia is constantly updated and restructured, fortunately. In practice, I would suggest adding a separate evolution section in the article template. What goes in that section depends on the information available. If there is only phylogenetics, I am happy to present that under taxonomy, but all other evolution is clearly independent from that. We may also want a template for Taxonomy of articles (and why not Evolution of articles, too?).
Keeping evolution and taxonomy separate is important because they are not based on the same process. Evolution is a natural process that we can only try to reconstruct. Taxonomy is a purely human process of classifying and naming groups. The criteria to define these groups have evolved over time and have only come to include phylogenetics since a few decades. To illustrate this, you can talk about the clade Lilieae and how it evolved over time – here you'll be interested in its ancestor, its divergence and area of origin, millions of years ago. If we talk about the taxonomic concept of Lilieae, we talk about something that was invented by biologists and whose circumscription evolved over the last centuries, or decades. It is only today that the taxonomic concept matches the clade, and the idea of a taxonomy section or article, in my opinion, is to show how the taxonomic concepts evolved depending on which criteria were applied over time. Many taxonomic systems are still not aligned with phylogeny, and many clades will never be formally named because our taxonomic hierarchy cannot account for every intermediate point of divergence. As an example, the big BOP and PACMAD clades in the grasses don't fit into classical taxonomy, but they are evolutionarily and ecologically important and distinct lineages. Tylototriton (talk) 08:48, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Response: As I said on the talk page, renaming the page "taxonomy and evolution" is not a solution, because it does not address the underlying issue, and there is no precedent. Also I don't think it is a matter of what one person "needs to know", the evolution adds considerably to the understanding of the taxonomy.
Separate templates for what are essentially subpages, just adds unnecessary complexity. Subpages should follow he same guidance as the parent page. Obviously if there is sufficient information on evolution, the usual practice would be to further split that, but I don't think that is the case here.
For clarification, both phylogeny and evolution were split, and discussed together under Taxonomy of Liliaceae.
If we change practice for this one article, we should change it for all articles.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I should point out that the template was alway a rough guideline to me. In particular, there was never in my mind anything to prevent splitting off a subsection where appropriate. Also, the template was originally written primarily for species, where it is exceedingly rare that evolution, phylogeny and biogeography (although the information should be included, obviously, when available) are sufficient to justify even a subsection (as opposed to a paragraph within the taxonomy/distribution sections). In the case of larger taxon, there is obviously no overwhelming necessity to follow the idiosyncrasies of a species-centric template!

My opinion in this particular dispute is that the phylogeny section clearly belongs in the taxonomy article, but that the Evolution and biogeography section can probably go back in the main article, except for information relevant specifically relevant to the taxonomy proper, of which at first glance there does not seem to be a lot.

As a side-note, Cladogram 2 is clearly intended to present timescales more than phylogenetic information, and would probably do a better job of providing that information if it were presented as a timeline (not something that would block a good article nomination though). Circéus (talk) 10 December 2015

  • Summation: There being no further discussion for ten days, it is time to move forward and sum up the question. I agree that a guidance is a guidance having written many in my own institution, but at the moment it is all we have. As with the last time this question was raised, there is no clear concensus to change the status quo. In most political institutions, that translates into leaving things as they are for now. I will annotate the template with a link to this discussion. As a model I might suggest - Soltis, Soltis, Endress and Chase Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms Sinauer 2005, as an indication that modern taxonomists see Phylogeny and Evolution as part of the same process. Thanks for all the suggestions.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 20:13, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure the issue is resolved. We all agree that phylogenetics is essential to taxonomy but I maintain that evolution, more general, is not part of taxonomy. To stimulate discussion, I have been bold and propose this revised template, with a separate but optional evolution section. This still allows phylogeny to be presented with taxonomy so doesn't affect current practice in most articles. It just provides an option for all evolution information that goes beyond phylogenetics. To illustrate that treating general evolution as separate from taxonomy is current practice, I'd like to cite the Banksia example again, where the fossil record and ages are presented in a separate section. The Taxonomy of Banksia article does not include such information. Tylototriton (talk) 11:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Response: I think that changing the template to suit one person's Point of View is not in the spirit of the discussion here. Nor do I think that citing one Taxonomy page creates a concensus as to this group's approach to the issue. The edits to the template should be reverted unless since they do not have the support of the group. I will quote a further example from the literature: Kubitzki, Rudall and Chase Systematics and Evolution in Kubitzki and Huber Flowering plants vol iii Monocotyledons Springer 1998
I agree. I've revised the changes to the template a bit; I think that the result is more in line with the consensus here. "Evolutionary history" is different from "evolution"; where the fossil record is known, it does make sense to treat this in a separate subsection or section. But for most plant taxa, little is known in terms of fossils, so in most cases it is appropriate to treat phylogeny and evolution together.
@Tylototriton: Stepping back a bit, the project had a discussion about the section title "Taxonomy" and whether it should be "Systematics" or even something else. Biologists currently use these terms inconsistently – see Systematics#Definition and relation with taxonomy. It was decided to use "Taxonomy" as essentially equivalent to the broad sense of "Systematics" (some articles use "Systematics", but the content is the same). Perhaps this is causing some confusion? Coming from outside professional biology, I've discovered that biologists are frequently confident that "their" definitions of biological terminology are universal, when in fact they vary markedly between traditions, subdisciplines, countries, and even individuals. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Impasse: We seem to continue to be at an impasse. To my mind there are three related but separate questions that need to be dealt with.
  • 1. The academic question as to the relationship between those issues that broadly fall within the topic headings "Taxonomy" and "Evolution". That does not necessarily need to be resolved now but can be an ongoing discussion for information and education.
  • 2. The Template. As written in 2009 it positioned "Evolution" as a subtopic of "Taxonomy", and that has remained for six years. We can argue as to what those terms actually mean and their relationship, but "Evolution" was just removed (in a way that I don't think reflected the views of people here) and placed in a separate section, and then modified to read "Evolutionary history". Those terms need careful definition to avoid this becoming an endless process.
  • 3. The implications for past, current and future Taxonomy articles, and for the handling of these issues within taxa pages. Specifically Taxonomy of Liliaceae, a fairly critical issue in monocot phylogeny, has been stuck in GA review since April 2015, since the reviewer and I disagree as to how to handle the evolution section. I might humbly suggest it be passed in keeping with previous similar pages like Taxonomy of Narcissus for now, while the discussion on the other issues continues. I can't really see that inclusion of evolution automatically fails it.
  • I will continue to give these issues further thought. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 18:22, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
    • Analysis: I must admit I do agree with @Peter coxhead:, that we need to step back a bit and avoid counting the angels dancing on the head of a pin. To do that we need to look, not just at the definition of taxonomy, but at the concept of taxonomy, or as it has been called the essence of taxonomy. Which, in turn, must inform the guidances we provide to editors working on taxon articles. A review of most of the major texts on taxonomy, and indeed the taxonomic writings of most post Darwinian taxonomists, demonstrates a vision of taxonomy which is overarching. Taxonomy is frequently referred to by alternative names (which we could consider in our template) such as systematics, systematic botany, biosystematics or plant diversity science. It is conceptualised as being a unifying, synthesising and integrating concept encompassing all the relationships between evidence and diversity. It has even been depicted as a mandala with taxonomy at the hub, embracing multiple radiating areas of science.
    • Taxonomy then, is the central theme, and a review of the taxonomy literature demonstrates that taxonomy and evolution have been intimately connected, at least since the inception of phyletic taxonomy. Not only have the major taxonomists of our time embraced this in the titles of their books, chapters and articles but they have woven this relationship into the very fabric of their texts. This has become increasingly so as taxonomy has moved from a phenetic basis through cladistics to phyletics, but phylogenetic taxonomy itself has been referred to as more appropriately called "evolutionary taxonomy".
    • Taxonomy involves an account of the causes and consequences of variation and embraces multiple disciplines from the gathering of the data that constitutes the evidence, including an understanding of the evolutionary processes and pathways (evolutionary lines), through the now complex techniques for analysis of very large data sets to robust phylogenies which in turn inform our concept of the relationships between taxa that we call classification.
    • Naturally any boundaries which we place between disciplines are by definition arbitrary, but a more holistic conceptualisation of taxonomy has many advantages. It has been suggested here that "evolutionary history" is distinct from "evolution", but I did not find any such distinction in the taxonomic literature.
    • In summary I think that any attempt to separate our understanding of evolutionary processes from other processes that contribute to diversity to be inconsistent with contemporary taxonomic thinking.
    • I would like to continue this contribution with some concrete proposals for dealing with the template.

Sources (inter alia):

Proposed section

Taxonomy and systematics

Taxonomy deals with the causes and consequences of variation of an entity (taxon). It integrates the gathering of evidence, its processing, the production of phylogenetic relationships and a the resulting classification of the entity and its relationships, reflecting the totality of similarities and differences, including the evolutionary processes and pathways which produced divergence and diversity.

Topics to include in this section would usually include;

History
In this particular case the WCSPF suffices. This example is relatively simple, where the taxon has remained fairly stable since its inception in 1753. In many other cases the taxon has evolved considerably or its circumscription is controversial and there may be several authorities attached to the name. In such cases knowing in which sensu the taxon name is being used is important, even though it nay not necessarily be the current one. Thus one might need to specify Liliaceae sensu Dahlgren. Sometimes the most authoritative reference will be in proposals or considerations published in a journal like Taxon or the deliberations of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) committees, also published there. Other sources include Phytotaxa.
  • Historical treatment: A description of subsequent handling of the taxonomic entity up to modern times. This is the history of the circumscription of the taxon and its relationship to other taxa at the same and higher ranks. Discuss the major synonyms, and any disputes about classification (e.g. Hippeastrum nomenclature debate). Mention whether conserved (nom. cons.), rejected (nom. rej.) or illegitimate (nom. illeg.) names exist in relation to the taxon. The use of tables over text alone is recommended if comparing different historical classifications, for instance:
Table 1: Evolution of placement of Liliaceae in different taxonomic schemes[1][2]
Rank Bentham and Hooker (1883)[3] Cronquist (1981)[4] Takhtajan (1966, 1980, 2009)[5][6][7] Dahlgren (1977, 1985)[8][9] Thorne (1992–2007)[10][11] APG (2003–9)[12][13]
Division Magnoliophyta Magnoliophyta Magnoliophyta
Class Monocotyledons Liliopsida Liliopsida (monocots) - unranked Magnoliopsida (Angiospermae) (monocots) - unranked
Subclass Liliidae Liliidae Liliidae Liliidae
Superorder (Series) Coronarieæ (Liliiflorae) Lilianae[14] (Lilianae) Liliiflorae Lilianae Lilianae
Order Liliales Liliales Liliales Liliales Liliales
For a comparison of the classifications of genera from 1959 (Hutchinson)[15] to 2000 (Wilson and Morrison),[16] see Table 1 in Fay et al. 2006,[17] Table 1 in Peruzzi et al. 2009[18] and Table 3.
Modern classification
The currently accepted circumscription (where does the taxon fit into higher hierarchies and how is it distinguished from other taxa at the same rank?). The use of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification is strongly recommended. Deviations from this, for instance inclusion of more recent taxonomic research should be justified with appropriate citations. For complex taxonomies, tables often provide greater clarity. Commonly used synonyms should be listed, since in their absence it is possible that someone else will start a separate page, or add them to a list. Lists of synonyms, especially if lengthy, are best handled in an infobox with a collapsible table.
Characteristics
Explain the defining characteristics of the taxon. Illustrations are helpful (see Liliaceae).
Phylogeny
Modern taxonomy is based on phylogenetic analyses and to present such work, if available, is essential. Mention whether there are still doubts about monophyly and the most closely related sister group. An account of the current relationships of the taxon is best illustrated with a cladogram. Include an account of what evidence (e.g. morphology, embryology, chromosomes, karyology, cytogenetics, biogeography, ecology, palynology, phytochemistry, proteins and nucleic acid segments) was used in constructing the phylogeny, and the processes involved
  • Evolutionary processes:[a] Describe how the evolutionary processes, lines and history and biogeography have contributed to the diversity, and discuss speciation where appropriate. For many taxa below the genus level this may not be informative. Where a cladistic analysis is available, consider including a cladogram to illustrate the relationships, using either the Clade or Cladex templates, which may be embedded in the Cladogram template, as shown in this example for the genus Rhododendron:
Cladogram of genus Rhododendron
(Goetsch et al. 2005)

Include the fossil record where known and explain to what degree it supports the constructed phylogeny. Some evolutionary information may be better presented as a Timeline.

Subdivision
Where applicable, provide a description of the structure of the subdivision of the taxon (for genera and higher ranks).
  • History: The history of the subdivision of the taxon, where applicable. Use tables for comparing systems, for instance, for the genus Narcissus:
Tabe I: Comparison of Classifications Schemes of Narcissus
Fernandes 1975[19][20] Webb 1978[21] Blanchard 1990[22] Mathew 2002[23] Zonneveld 2008[24] RHS 2013[25]
Subgenus Section Subsection Section Subsection Section Subsection Subgenus Section Subsection Series Subgenus Section Section
Hermione Serotini Serotini Serotini Hermione Hermione Serotini Hermione Serotini Serotini
Hermione Angustifolii Tazettae Angustifoliae Tazettae Angustifoliae Angustifoliae Tazettae Tazettae
Hermione Tazettae Tazettae Hermione Hermione
Aurelia Aurelia Aurelia Albiflorae
Aurelia Aurelia
Narcissus Apodanthi Apodanthae Narcissus Jonquillae Apodanthi Narcissus Apodanthi Apodanthi
Jonquilla Jonquilla Jonquillae Jonquillae Jonquillae Jonquillae Jonquilla Jonquilla
Juncifolii Apodanthi Chloranthi Juncifolii
Tapeinanthus Tapeinanthus Tapeinanthus Tapeinanthus Tapeinanthus Tapeinanthus
Ganymedes Ganymedes Ganymedes Ganymedes Ganymedes Ganymedes
Bulbocodium Bulbocodium Bulbocodium Bulbocodium Bulbocodium
Pseudonarcissus Pseudonarcissi Pseudonarcissi Pseudonarcissus Pseudonarcissus Pseudonarcissus Pseudonarcissus
Reflexi Nevadensis
Narcissus Narcissus Narcissus Narcissus Narcissus Narcissus
Chloranthi
(N. viridiflorus)		 Corbularia
syn. Bulbocodium
  • Modern classification, including phylogeny. Mention which subdivisions are supported through cladistic analyses. Discuss any competing schemes and the current consensus, if it exists.
Use Tables to show the structure, such as this example for Liliaceae
Table 4: APWeb/APG Distribution of Subfamilies, Tribes and Genera of Liliaceae[26]
with illustration of morphological diversity
Subfamily Tribe Genus
Lilioideae Eaton Medeoleae Benth.
Clintonia borealis
Clintonia borealis
 Clintonia Raf. - bead lilies
Medeola Gronov. ex L. - Indian cucumber-root
Lilieae s.l. Ritgen
Cardiocrinum giganteum
Cardiocrinum giganteum

Gagea lutea
Gagea lutea1,2

Erythronium sibiricum
Erythronium sibiricum1
 Cardiocrinum (Endl.) Lindl. - giant lilies
Fritillaria Tourn. ex L. – fritillary or mission bells
Gagea Salisb. (including Lloydia Salisb. ex Rchb.)
– yellow star-of-Bethlehem1,2
Lilium Tourn. ex L. – lily
Nomocharis Franch.
Notholirion Wall. ex Boiss.
Tulipa L. (including Amana Honda) – tulip1
Erythronium L. – trout lily1
Calochortoideae Dumort.3
Calochortus catalinae
Calochortus catalinae

Tricyrtis hirta
Tricyrtis hirta
 Calochortus Pursh - mariposa, globe lilies
Tricyrtis Wall. – toad lily
Streptopoideae
Prosartes hookeri
Prosartes hookeri
 Prosartes D.Don – drops of gold
Scoliopus Torr. – Fetid Adder's Tongue
Streptopus Michx. – twistedstalk
1. Some classifications place Tulipa, Erythronium and Gagea into a separate tribe, Tulipeae with the remaining genera in Lilieae s.s.[18][27][28]
2. Other authorities place Gagea within its own tribe, Lloydieae[27][28]

3. The situation with respect to Calochortoideae remains uncertain. Originally Calochortus and Tricyrtis were considered to be sister clades and placed together in subfamily Calochortoideae.
Further study has not confirmed this (see Cladogram III, below) and it has been proposed that Tricyrtis be placed in a separate subfamily.[27][28]

and Cladograms to show the relationships such as this example for the genus Narcissus:

Narcissus Cladogram (Graham and Barrett 2004)[29]
Narcissus
I subgen. Hermione

Aurelia, Serotinii, Tazettae

VI subg. Narcissus
II

Jonquillae

III

Apodanthi

IV

Bulbicodium

V

Pseudonarcissi, Ganymedes, Narcissus, Tapeinanthus

  • Lists and subpages: Provide a subsection heading for the child taxa, such as "Species", "Subfamilies and genera"... etc. For instance in an article on a Family, this might be Subfamilies. Where there are several ranks below the level of the taxon page being edited, e.g. an article on the family Narcissus might include subfamilies, tribes, genera and subgenera, it is usually only necessary to list the most immediate inferior rank, in this case subfamilies, provided that further subdivisions are addressed through links to other pages providing that information. For instance an article on a family need only list the subfamilies, if each subfamily already has a separate page. Otherwise, if the resulting structure is complex, list only the immediate inferior rank (subfamilies in this case), and create separate subpages on which the detailed taxonomy of each subfamily is described, rather than including too much detail on the main page (see for example genus Rhododendron, which links to each subgenus page).
In listing child taxa, avoid long lists (particularly noticeable for species). These too, are best handled by creating a subpage, with a summary and a linking hat on the main page, such as
Main article: List of Narcissus species
These List pages should have Category "Taxonomy list (rank)", where applicable, added e.g. Category:Taxonomic lists (species) as well as the Category of the parent taxon, be titled "List of ..." e.g. List of Narcissus species, and have a template such as {{WP Plants|class=list|importance=low}} placed on their talk page.
If a separate list subpage is created, in its place on the main page some selected lower taxa can be listed, such as those mentioned in the text, or the more important members, particularly if links are available. If not consider providing them. The accompanying text should include the information that it refers only to selected taxa (see example below).
    • Format: In compiling such a list it is worth considering including important synonyms and disputed species, which may be used by some sources. To avoid possible confusion over the taxon intended, include the botanical authority, using the method already detailed above. Inclusion of the complete bibliographical reference in such a list should be relegated to footnotes.
Example (see Hippeastrum):
Selected species
Hippeastrum angustifolium Pax syn. Amaryllis angustifolia (Pax) Traub & Uphof<ref>[[Ferdinand Albin Pax|Pax, Ferdinand Albin]], 1889: ''''Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie''''. Leipzig, 11: 321.</ref>
If the list or article discusses further subdivisions, consider structuring the list according to those subdivisions instead of purely alphabetically, as in the example List of Narcissus species. For longer lists use columns (e.g. List of Hippeastrum species), or Collapsible Lists may also be used with {{collapsible list |title=|taxon1|taxon2}}
    • Nomenclature: In listing species care should be taken to distinguish between accepted species and hybrids, since in horticultural use it is not uncommon to find, e.g. Begonia × benariensis written incorrectly as Begonia benariensis. Similarly some cultivar names are also written as if they were species. Listing hybrids and cultivars is valid, but they should be distinguished from accepted names.
Etymology
Explain how the taxon name was created, if known. Useful tools include:
Tools and procedures
  • {{TaxonIds}} is a useful template for summarising data from a a number of databases. The basic parameters can be expanded using the others= parameter such as others=[http://www.tropicos.org/Name/40025195Tropicos ], as here:

{{TaxonIds|name=''Narcissus''|wikispecies=narcissus|ncbi=4697|eol=29121|itis= 500435|gbif=2858200|others=[http://www.tropicos.org/Name/40025195 Tropicos]}}

  • Accepted names: All taxa names should be checked against standard databases, e.g. the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, The Plant List, Tropicos, and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, to ensure that only currently accepted names are used. Include any of these databases that were used as sources in your references. For pages at genus rank, consider consulting the Statistics section at the end of the genus page on The Plant List (although all entries in The Plant List need cross-checking as the algorithms that obtain data from the underlying sources are not always totally reliable).
  • Page names: If taxon nomenclature changes require a page name change, use the Move tab at the top of the page to change it. Do not cut and paste.
  • Splitting off complex taxonomies: Some taxonomies require a very lengthy discussion, in which case they should be treated as a separate page, and summarised on the taxon page. For example, Taxonomy of Liliaceae and Taxonomy of the Orchidaceae. The same principles as outlined above should be used in writing a Taxonomy page. Some taxonomy pages such as Taxonomy of Banksia, in turn, have multiple subpages.

References

  1. ^ Singh 2004, Historical background of plant classification. pp. 10–29.
  2. ^ Jeffrey 1982, p. 123.
  3. ^ Bentham & Hooker 1862–1883, Vol III Part II Liliaceae pp. 748–836.
  4. ^ Cronquist 1981.
  5. ^ Takhtajan 1966.
  6. ^ Takhtajan 1980.
  7. ^ Takhtadzhi︠a︡n 2009, Liliaceae p. 634 .
  8. ^ Dahlgren 1977.
  9. ^ Rasmussen 1985.
  10. ^ Thorne 1992.
  11. ^ Thorne & Reveal 2007.
  12. ^ APG II 2003.
  13. ^ APG III 2009.
  14. ^ Naikh 1984, Post-Darwinian systems of classification, p. 111, at Google Books.
  15. ^ Hutchinson 1959.
  16. ^ Wilson & Morrison 2000.
  17. ^ Fay et al. 2006.
  18. ^ a b Peruzzi, Leitch & Caparelli 2009.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fernandes68 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fernandes75 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Webb 1978.
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Blanchard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mathew was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zonneveld was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference RHSBC was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Stevens 2015, Liliaceae.
  27. ^ a b c Kim et al. 2013a.
  28. ^ a b c Kim et al. 2013b.
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference Graham was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

--Michael Goodyear (talk) 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Update: Since the phrase "Systematics and Evolution" is now so embedded in the botanical literature, I propose renaming this section
Systematics, taxonomy and evolution

--Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Writing up our discussions is much needed, and there's a lot of good material above. There are some different issues here, though, and they need a bit of unpacking. To start with:
  • Name of section: we discussed this extensively in the past, and "Taxonomy" is now embedded in a large number of our articles. I'm unconvinced that any change is need, provided that it's made clear that we are using "Taxonomy" in the broad sense.
  • Purpose of the template: I'm all in favour of extended examples/explanations of the sections in our template, but putting all the detail above in the template page makes it far too intimidating to new editors, and unusable as a copy-and-paste outline, which is how it started. I suggest having a brief outline, as we seem to have had originally, with links to separate pages which give more detail.
Peter coxhead (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm happy to go along with that Peter. As the initiator, since there seems no other input, I think I am entitled to start to proceed with that plan.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 23:31, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Caltha dionaeifolia

The spelling dionaeifolia in our article Caltha dionaeifolia is problematic.

  • The text of the article consistently has dioneaefolia; the -i- only appears in the title and the taxobox.
  • IPNI has Caltha dioneaefolia here and Psychrophila dioneaefolia here.
  • TPL, following WCSP, has dioneifolia here.

If the foliage was named to resemble a species called dionea, so that dioneae- represents the genitive, then Art. 60.8 of the ICN (see here) does require changing the -ae- to -i-, which changes dioneaefolia to dioneifolia. Hooker explicitly says here that it's named for the resemblance of the leaves to those of Dionaea but then uses the spelling dioneaefolia. Presumably he didn't like dionaeaefolia, and replaced the first -ae- by -e- So if Hooker's change of the genus name to produce dioneaefolia is accepted, Art. 60.8 supports dioneifolia as per TPL/WCSP. On the other hand, you could "correct" Hooker's epithet to dionaeaefolia and thence to dionaeifolia. My view, for what it's worth, is that WCSP/TPL are correct, and it should be dioneifolia since the "correction" of Hooker's epithet isn't sanctioned by the ICN. Expert taxonomic comments sought! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Not sure that I agree that TPL/WCSP's alteration is justified. I think this might be a case where "other pseudocompounds have been deliberately introduced to reveal etymological differences", and "the original spelling of a name or epithet is to be retained, except ...", meaning that when in doubt use the original spelling. I'm not claiming to have much experience with such cases as this; they are certainly worthy of extended groans. Rather, I wonder if Hooker would have been trying to ensure that there is no suggestion that the name derives from Dionaeus or Dione rather than Dionaea. There is a cycad Dion (published by Lindley in the very same year, 1843); could that plant possibly be something he was trying to avoid confusion with? In any case, I think that, because Hooker is not usually suspected of goofing up his Latin, this case might be one for retaining the original spelling. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:47, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
To thicken the plot, IPNI reveals 7 specific epithets with "Hook.f" in the authority field with "-aefolius/a/um" in the epithet. TPL has all of them corrected to "-ifolius/a/um", all apparently on the authority of WCSP, but I'm not clear about some of the others either:
  1. Oxymitra unonaefolia Hook.f. & Thomson → O. unonifolia – ok
  2. Homalomena pontederaefolia Griff. ex Hook.f. → O. pontederifolia – ok
  3. Lasiococca symphilliaefolia Hook.f. → L. symphillifolia – why not L. symphilliifolia?
  4. Macaranga gmelinaefolia King ex Hook.f. → M. gmelinifolia – ok
  5. Caltha dioneaefolia Hook.f. → C. dioneifolia – as discussed above
  6. Anotis lanceaefolia Benth. & Hook.f. → A. lancifolia – why not A. lanceifolia?
  7. Myriophyllum variaefolium Hook.f. → M. variifolium – ok
So we can conclude that WCSP and hence TPL routinely "correct" -aefoli- epithets to -ifoli- epithets, but possibly not entirely consistently. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
The plot seems to thicken a bit further.
2. pontedera is a strange spelling. If Hook.f. meant Pontederia but misspelled it, perhaps it should be corrected so that the epithet becomes pontederiifolia. I wonder, though, what happens if Pontedera was the original spelling that has been subsequently corrected.
3. Presumably symphillia is Symphyllia (plant). Perhaps it is be corrected to a "y" spelling, and I agree about the -iifolia.
6. Benth. & Hook.f. are right in the middle of a muddle about "lanceolate". Stearn (Botanical Latin 1992 p. 438) discusses lanceolate as used by George Bentham and "most English-speaking authors from 1865 onwards" as meaning "a shape broadest below the middle with a length to width ratio of about 3:1" whereas John Lindley, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, and German authors used it for the same ratio, but broadest in the middle. By contrast, lanceatus is listed as meaning only the Lindley-de-Candolle meaning of lanceolate. To paraphrase, Stearn lists lanci- and lancifolius as meaning with lanceolate leaves, but lancea is a Latin noun that would lead to lanceifolia, and Bentham & Hook.f. apparently cared very much about which term they used.
It looks as if we need to ask IPNI and WCSP to discuss this with one another, and then let us know what they decide. Tropicos has yet other opinions, listing Homalomena pontederaefolia, Lasiococca symphyllifolia, and Anotis lancifolia. USDA GRIN is a good source for such corrections, but doesn't list these plants. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure you're right about IPNI & WCSP needing to discuss this. (On the other hand, when I asked them about Roscoea cautleyoides – see the Taxonomy section of that article – they came to different conclusions, so it may not help.) Having spent many hours in my youth learning Latin, I initially favoured the botanical view that authors who committed Latin solecisms should have their names corrected, as opposed to the zoological view that the original orthography almost always stands, whether "wrong" or not. But when I look at the muddle caused by different databases either applying or not applying "corrections" or applying them differently, while remembering that the authorized corrections have changed over time, I do begin to have sympathy for the zoological view! I particularly wish that IPNI would always show both the original and corrected orthography; sometimes it silently "corrects" without any indication, so that when you get hold of the original paper you don't know the exact string to search for. I suppose it all keeps taxonomists employed. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:16, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I think it never does any harm to draw the attention of organisations like WCLSPF to anomalies, but of course we cannot actually set policies. It seems to me that where there are discrepancies we should indicate that there are differences and let readers decide. I'm still not sure whether all those years of Latin did me any good! --Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

IBS

A year after we noticed that the International Bulb Society website had gone, does anyone have any inside information as to what happened to them? The fact that other groups like the Pacific Bulb Society have changed their links to the Internet Archive suggests they don't interpret the "under construction" sign to indicate they are coming back any time soon. And presumably that is also the end of the Herbert Medal. If nobody knows we could ask a former medallist like Peter Goldblatt. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:27, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata - disappointing news

A personal comment on the situation at Wikidata regarding their treatment of taxonomy:

Wikidata admins know nothing of taxonomy, and neither does one of the two people who controls all taxonomic edits. As a result, when I tried to remove incorrect information that had been placed on the wrong data item, I was reverted and warned that removing any further source information would result in a block. You can see here where the admin told me flat out that "there is no truth only sources". The User:Succu insists that the APG III expanded classification paper puts the Subclass of arthrodontous mosses as a clade within the Class of horsetails, which is clearly wrong.

As a result, I believe that neither the Wikipedias nor Wikispecies will ever be able to make much use of the data stored at Wikidata. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:57, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

That is indeed a mess. I gave up on wikispecies after concluding that it cannot handle multiple taxonomies, though I'm not sure whether that is an inherent failing or the result of the many users who insist that there must be one *true* taxonomy. I'd suggest saving your energy at that pit of edit-wars, and instead creating a page here called something like Equisetopsida (land plants). Something (though not a good example) of an explanation of different circumscriptions exists at Thallophyte. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:18, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Climate change denial

There is a RfC at Talk:Climate change denial. Please contribute if you are interested. Biscuittin (talk) 00:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Taxonomic query

Does anyone recall seeing a book/paper treatise on taxonomic names dealing with orthographic variants - in particular genitive segments - I write this as the issue has come up at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Isopogon anemonifolius/archive1. Originally Salisbury had the species name as anemonefolius and I have seen several species (e.g. ericaefolia becoming ericifolia), so was looking for some source that clarified that -i- was used systematically as the ending for the first (genitive) stem......Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:57, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

The authority for these emendations would generally be Rec. 60G of the ICN: "In a regular compound, a noun or adjective in non-final position appears as a compounding form generally obtained by
  1. removing the case ending of the genitive singular (Latin -ae, -i, -us, -is; transcribed Greek -ou, -os, -es, -as, -ous and its equivalent -eos) and
  2. before a consonant, adding a connecting vowel ( -i- for Latin elements, -o- for Greek elements)."
Does that suffice to cover the case? Choess (talk) 03:16, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
That helps - thanks! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:17, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
The key part of the ICN isn't, I think, Rec. 80G, because that's just a recommendation on how to form names. What matters is Article 60.8 (my bolding):
"Adjectival epithets that combine elements derived from two or more Greek or Latin words but are not formed in accordance with Rec. 60G.1(a) are to be corrected to conform with it, unless Rec. 60G.1(b) or (c) applies. In particular, the use, in pseudocompounding, of the genitive singular of Latin first-declension nouns (Rec. 60G.1(c)) instead of a regular compound (Rec. 60G.1(a)) is treated as an error to be corrected unless it serves to make an etymological distinction."
Articles are binding, so 60.8 justifies changing authors' original names. I just wish that sources like IPNI or WCSP (and hence The Plant List) would consistently list the original as an orthographic variant of the corrected name, instead of making the correction "silently". Tropicos is to be partially commended in this respect; for example at the entry for Magnolia annonifolia there's the line 'Annotation: as "annonaefolia"', although a search for "Magnolia annonaefolia" fails. IPNI just has an entry under Magnolia annonifolia with no mention of the original spelling.
So, whenever modern sources have -ifolia or -iflora, in searching older sources it's wise also to look for -aefolia or -aeflora. (Although it only applies when the Latin noun is feminine.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:30, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Higher taxa articles at English names: singular or plural?

"Lilioid monocot" has recently been moved to lilioid monocots. I can see an argument for the plural, in line with the Latin names of higher taxa, but the move does raise some issues:

What do others think? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:52, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

This could be a massive headache. Why not "plants" then as a group of organisms. I think we need an RfC on this and make it wide-reaching and involve MOS. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Certainly there is an argument for the plural, but I'd support a draconian edict from this project in favour of the singular, because it is possible to build such a very long list of near-parallels that are singular, as Peter coxhead has started to do above. Commons uses English plurals for category names; this would be a similarly arbitrary but useful convention. We have a redirect from Polysporangiate but not from Polysporangiates. A particular plant is a liliod monocot; Chlorine is a chemical element. I'd like to see eudicots, asterids, and magnoliids made singular, the plural nature of family names such as Brunoniaceae notwithstanding. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I had no idea what a can of worms I was opening there, by making that page plural while I was upgrading it. It seemed to me it was a page about Lilioid monocots not a particular lilioid monocot. Also anyone searching for it would be coming from another page, article or book that would have referred to Lilioid monocots. I don't think anyone would really refer to the singular anyway, the term exists as a collection called Lilioid monocots. Obviously as a vernacular name it is not directly comparable to Latin, but the Latin terms are plurals. How they are used is another matter! The inconsistency is no surprise. Perhaps the question is more one of which categories should be single and which plural. It seems quite reasonable to refer to a Fern. Of course if we were using latin, monocot or monocotyledon would be monocotyledonae. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:15, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I think you can as easily refer to "a lilioid monocot" as to, e.g., "a fern", or "a grass" or "a cycad". If we were starting from the beginning, I would support articles about higher taxa being at the plural, but we aren't: the great majority of such articles are at the singular. On reflection, I agree with Sminthopsis84: for consistency, the few articles at the plural should be moved to the singular, citing WP:SINGULAR. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree that it is natural to use the singular form, e.g., "I don't know what species this is, but I'm sure it is a lilioid monocot." For the Latinate plurals "I don't know what species this is, but I'm sure it is a member of the Gentianales." On the other hand, "a member of the lilioid monocots" seems unnecessarily stilted. Perhaps the dividing line is whether the phrase is anglicized. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:20, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
And just to add to the consistency/inconsistency, I notice that the other major lineage of monocots is also plural! (commelinids), i.e commelinid monocots--Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
There seems to be some consistency behind the inconsistency (if that makes sense!): articles about the clades introduced by the APG are unusual in being at the plural. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:15, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
The article Grass kicks off with "Grasses, or more technically graminoids . . .". Since when was graminoids a technical term? Plantsurfer 19:20, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Graminoid is part of the vocabulary of a specific field - that's one sense of technical. More importantly, grass and graminoid aren't synonyms - graminoids are grasses, sedges and rushes, and possible more families if you consider the world outside Europe and North America. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:43, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. Graminoid is a widely-used informal, descriptive term for stuff that looks grassy. Adjective. Not a noun. Not a technical term. To say that grasses are technically graminoids, as was done at Grass is to omit the technical definition and get the taxonomy base over apex. Plantsurfer 20:00, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I see that graminoid redirects to grass. Perhaps we need a short article, or a wiktionary redirect. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:49, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
(Or a zoologist, to handle all these cans of worms. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:18, 29 January 2016 (UTC))

scale leaf

Someone who knows what they're doing and has a botany term book handy make a stub for scale leaf - or add a section at leaf and make it a redirect? I have no textbook......Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

The Kew Plant Glossary doesn't have "scale leaf" but under "scale" gives one meaning as "reduced leaf, usually sessile and scarious and seldom green". The Flora of North America Glossary also doesn't have "scale leaf", but when "scale" is used as a synonym of "bract" has "a basically dry, more or less appressed, diminutive bract." What's the context in which "scale leaf" is used? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Typing it into google yields these. Essentially the meaning of a small rudimentary leaf. I was using it in Persoonia terminalis where it applies to tiny rudimentary leaves at the junction of flowers arising from the stems, but seems to be in many plants for different tiny leaves. (conifers for instance) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:15, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
J.E. Eckenwalder in his book Conifers of the World says (page 48): "There is also a near continuum in leaf shapes of conifers. The most extensive work on conifer leaf shapes was done by David de Laubenfels, who divided them into four types, with most conifer species bearing two or three types during their lifetime or even at the same time along a single shoot. Although it is convenient to assign leaves to predefined types, it is important to keep in mind that these types are somewhat arbitrary segments of a continuum of forms. Thus the terms scalelike and needlelike (or scale leaves and needles) are used throughout this book, but there are numerous transitions between them, and many species go back and forth between them with relative ease." There are 22 de Laubenfels references in the bibliography, mostly concerning Podocarpus; I'd guess that the appropriate one is 1953, "The external morphology of coniferous leaves", Phytomorphology 3:1–20. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
There's a new page Leaf size that could be somewhat related to this, perhaps with "See also" entries to tie them together, and the older page Leaf shape. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:32, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
It seems to me that there are at least two different concepts covered by the term: one based on size – thus conifer leaves too small to be called "needles" are called "scales" or "scale-like"; the other based on appearance, including the absence of chlorophyll. Sometimes the two are combined, but if the wiktionary definition is correct (where's the source?), and bulb scales are examples of "scale leaves", they can be very large in plants like Drimia maritima or Crinum pedunculatum. How would this second use be dealt with? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Hence the need for an encyclopedic article rather than a dicdef. As we can highlight all these meanings and connotations (but being careful to reflect sources and avoid OR) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
I've added a basic def at wiktionary (still no source yet, sorry). I have a problem with the Persoonia images, noted on the talk page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:48, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
At Glossary of botanical terms, scale is defined as 1. a reduced or rudimentary leaf, for example around a dormant bud. 2. a flattened epidermal outgrowth, such as those commonly found on the leaves and rhizomes of ferns. Cutter (1971), in her book Plant Anatomy Part 2 Organs, (p51) discusses them in relation to cataphylls or bud scales, which are defined thus in Glossary of botanical terms: cataphyll: "Early leaf forms of plants or shoots, such as cotyledons, bud-scales, rhizome-scales; anatomically they are leaves, but do not develop to perform the usual functions of photosynthetic leaves." These definitions are again consistent with Cutter's (p119) "Scale leaves are sometimes known as cataphylls, and may comprise bracts, bud scales and bulb scales. They are usually flattened, often thin structures of somewhat limited growth, with more or less sheathing bases. In the winter buds of perennial species bud scales and foliage leaf primordia are usually present, and there may be transitional forms of intermediate morphology." Plantsurfer 15:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the unsourced speculation that we have at cataphyll about cotyledons and whatever, both Hickey, M.; King, C. (2001), The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, Cambridge University Press{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) and Beentje, H.; Williamson, J. (2010), The Kew Plant Glossary: an Illustrated Dictionary of Plant Terms, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Kew Publishing{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) say that cataphylls are scale leaves. The former says "A reduced leaf, e.g., a bract, bracteole, bud scale, or one of the papery sheathing leaves which enclose the whole of a newly developing aerial shoot in the genus Crocus. The latter says "1. scale leaf. 2. scale-like leaf." I suggest a redirect (and rather large-scale cleanup). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:52, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Redirect made, some trimming done, more needed. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:00, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Botanist template

I believe we have had some discussions about modifications to {{Botanist}} before. I see that User:Peter coxhead has recently improved it, thank you Peter! Currently it does three things

  1. Writes a line regarding the standard abbreviation
  2. Generates a link to the author's page on IPNI
  3. Adds a category

I needed a template that would also list all the taxa on IPNI that have the author as authority. I could not find one so I put together one today, as {{IPNI author plant list}}, which you can see demonstrated at Peter Goldblatt.

But it overlaps with Botanist so is not ideal.

Botanist generates the citation: Author Query for 'Goldblatt'. International Plant Names Index.
IPNI author plant list generates: Author entry and List of described plant names for Peter Goldblatt at IPNI

So the field "Author Query"="Author entry" appears twice.

I would like to propose modifying Botanist to incorporate the link to the search results, so we only need one template, if nobody has any objections. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:47, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your suggested change. At present {{botanist}} puts some text in the article and generates a reference. Is the idea that the link to the list would be part of the reference? Peter coxhead (talk) 23:10, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I did not not make myself clear. I was referring to item #2 which places "Author Query for 'Author abbreviation'" into the references. There is no easy way to navigate to the list of taxa from there. My proposed tweak would include the list as well, as per the template I just created. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Ah, right. I understand why this could be useful, but it does mean that the "reference" isn't just a reference for the information it's apparently supporting, namely the link between the abbreviation and the person. This seems a bit unusual to me, but I'd like to know what others think. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I thought about that afterwards. Let me play with it a bit. If the template can generate one line of text, or one footnote, it probably can generate more than one. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 00:58, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
You are right. After numerous sandbox iterations I concluded it works better as a separate template. I tweaked {{Botanist}} a bit and clarified some issues in the documentation, as I see you did. Thanks. In its new guise the second template is now {{Plantlist}}, which returns a citation usable as either an inline reference or an External link (See Peter Goldblatt). I note that Tropicos can be used to generate a similar list.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Conifer evolution

Hello plant experts. Here's an old draft that may be of interest. Should it be kept and improved? Or is this information already in the encyclopedia under another title? I posted about this once before, but no one commented. Is there a better place to report this? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:33, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The article at Pinophyta is the main article about conifers. An IP editor made some major revisions here, which I hadn't noticed but which need to be checked. The section order doesn't conform to the WP:PLANTS template.
  • Some information from the draft article could be added to Pinophyta
  • A separate article could be created from it.
I'm not sure whether this project has any members with a strong interest in conifers. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Peter coxhead, I just noticed your reply. Unfortunately (for the fate of the draft), I am a musician and know little about biology (although I know a nice conifer when I see one), so I can't edit or merge the content reliably. The draft has a lot of references that are not on line, and anyway I wouldn't be able to tell if they were suitable. I am inclined to make a separate article, since there's a lot that could be written about conifers and the article could get quite long in the future. I was hoping to find someone here who could assure me that the content was reasonably appropriate. (or not...)—Anne Delong (talk) 14:46, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

IPA clutter

Does anyone know if there is any move to reduce the IPA pronunciation clutter in lead paragraphs, perhaps by putting them into some sort of margin box? We have discussed this before, but as far as I can see not for quite a while. The unsourced clutter in the first sentence of Heteromeles is one case in point, but zooplankton is even worse. In a previous discussion it was mentioned that IPA has caused a lot of bother at wiktionary, but the codes are now present there. (Curiously, only one pronunciation of zooplankton is given at wiktionary.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:55, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I would certainly like to see them moved. I doubt they are of much use to most readers (having tried to teach the IPA to undergraduate and masters students I know how difficult it is to use).
  • The pronunciations of Latin names are rarely well-sourced (at Heteromeles the comment about the pronunciation by Californian botanists isn't sourced at all).
  • They rarely reflect the true variety of pronunciation actually encountered, which varies by country and by adherence to different ways of pronouncing Latin.
Hieracium is a nice example I've been aware of for some time. I don't think I would have recognized the pronunciation given in the article if I'd heard it. I would say something like "hee-e-RAY-see-um" or "hee-e-RAH-kee-um" depending on whose company I was in, but never the "short a" /æ/ given in the article at present. Now I can source "hee-e-RAH-kee-um" in precisely this respelling, and I could convert it to IPA as /hi.ərˈɑːkiəm/, but the conversion wouldn't be sourced, which bothers me. For Hieracium I think you would hear at least these variants:
  • Hie- pronounced "high-e" or "hee-e" (with "e" either as in "get" or as the last "a" in "data") or just "hee"
  • -ra- pronounced as in "rat" (apparently) or as "rah" or as "ray"
  • -cium pronounced as "see-um" or "kee-um" (with the "um" very short)
You certainly couldn't source all these variants! It's a minefield, and I agree that giving IPA pronunciations such prominence is a mistake. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:03, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Peter. I didn't initially find any relevant guidelines, but there is one at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation. It suggests relegating it all to a footnote, and I think that is an excellent idea. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
And we can make explicit group-specific recommendations regarding IPA for scientific names in the WP:PLANTS article style guidelines somewhere. My inclination is to relegate information about the etymology and pronunciation to a section of its own somewhere under Taxonomy or Nomenclature. Also, my experience is that most of these additions to articles on Wikipedia are bot-generated, using the standards of Classical Latin (which few English-speaking botanists actually follow). --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:01, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Other areas of biology and astronomy may also benefit from a discussion, as has been mentioned on this user talk page. Question is, where is a more suitable place to have a general discussion? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:57, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation already has some discussion about OR issues. Maybe an RFC is needed to bring it to an even broader audience? Plantdrew (talk) 18:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Plantdrew. At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation it is clear that these issues are perennial topics, so it seems that a more specific topic for discussion is needed. I think what it comes down to is the question of what are good sources. I'm at a loss, since I've always followed a free style. As a footnote says at Rhaphiolepis: "William T. Stearn in his book Botanical Latin says "Botanical Latin is essentially a written language, but the scientific names of plants often occur in speech. How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood..." --so that's no help.
Botany may have something of an extra problem because of the preponderance of -eae endings. In keeping with the French influence mentioned at Traditional English pronunciation of Latin, I've always pronounced those endings as one syllable; French even uses modified spellings of botanical Latin, such as rosacées for Rosaceae. I've very rarely heard another form that uses two syllables, roʊseɪsiːeɪ instead of roʊseɪsiː. Does anyone know of a good citable source for particular botanical words? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I do not think there is a need for any regulation. If there is a source for a pronunciation, we can keep it. I would not worry about the question of what are good sources. Of course, the quality of sources can be challenged, but that boils down to finding other sources that directly support the challenge. The quote by William T. Stearn is far too general for challenging a specific source such as the Sunset Western Garden Book or Fine Gardening’s "Pronunciation Guide". (and quite off-topic in the Rhaphiolepis article). Also, I do not think it matters whether or not the source uses the exact same pronunciation conventions we use.
If the pronunciation causes clutter, I think the easiest solution is moving it away to a footnote. As an example, I have done this in the article Zooplankton, see [7]. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 22:26, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

@J. 'mach' wust: I do not think it matters whether or not the source uses the exact same pronunciation conventions we use – I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that it doesn't matter if we change the source's representation to our IPA, or that it doesn't matter if we directly reproduce the source's representation? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Botanist biographies

And speaking of Peter Goldblatt (see above) that I just started today, we could really do with a template for botanist biographies similar to the one we have for taxa. I would be happy to take care of that if there is general agreement. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Under construction --Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Completed and added as a tab to top of Wikiproject plant page as Botanist template. This is a first draft, but I think it will prove useful --Michael Goodyear (talk) 23:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I am dismayed to notice that nav boxes are now being included in articles on plant species. Aside from the fact that these made redundant by the well maintained categories and taxobox, they have the effect of smothering the incoming links (what links here) to any article. I believe this is significantly detrimental to the overall structure of the site, and to any especial interest in the mention of biota in other articles. cygnis insignis 16:45, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of the nav boxes either. But I don't think "now being included" is accurate. Nav boxes are rare. There were about 12 nav boxes for genera and higher taxa made in 2015 (plus a handful more for cultivars of a particular species). 8 of the 12 were made by a single user who's been hounded off Wikipedia for questionable page creation (Neelix). Neelix's nav boxes are indeed awful; see Succisa, Manihot, Kaempferia, Hypolepis (plant) and Flourensia where there are dozens of species in the genus but less than 5 with articles resulting in very misleading nav boxes. Neelix aside, I don't think there's a a brewing crisis with nav boxes, but I'd certainly support looking at the nav boxes we have and considering deleting many of them. Plantdrew (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Step 1 is to be bold and remove pointless nav box templates whenever you find them. When they aren't used anywhere, then they can be proposed for deletion. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Well maybe the first step is to identify which are deemed unhelpful, so that we can discuss them, rather than wholesale deletion. In many cases I have found the one's I have across very useful. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Looks like Peter already removed the above examples which I support. The original complaint was about "species" pages, but these were genera, which I agree made little sense. I think it does require a case by case basis, though. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, the ones I mentioned were on species pages as well. Since removed, but here's one of the templates {{Manihot}}; navbox links 4 species (the only ones with blue-links) out of 109 in the genus. I know red-links are discouraged in navboxes, but that's part of the problem; there are few, if any genera where every species has a Wikipedia article.
Maybe Cynis insignis can clarify which navboxes they are concerned about. The ones I'm concerned about are the genus navboxes that list each species with an article. It seems to me that the natural way to navigate between species in a genus is to load the genus page and the click through to each species. The navbox does eliminate the need to click to genus, but it needs far more maintenance. When species articles are added, they should be added to the navbox, but that doesn't really seem to happen (see {{Hieracium}} which is missing at least 1/3 of the species mentioned on the genus page). And if recognized species change, both the genus and the navbox will need updating. Plantdrew (talk) 20:50, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree. Data repetition is always and everywhere a mistake; the different data sets will always become inconsistent at some point. All the navbox does is to double the maintenance required. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I meant genera nav boxes in species articles. The example that prompted me to seek a second opinion on this page was {{Persoonia nav}}. I would appreciate clarification on how such a thing is "very useful". cygnis insignis 03:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
@Cygnis insignis: I think they are equally harmful. A navbox that purports to show all the species of genus arranged according to one taxonomic classification is of no real value. Phylogenetic studies regularly change intra-generic arrangements which are anyway only of interest to specialists and so outside Wikipedia's mission. A navbox that guides users among the main articles on a broad topic is quite different. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
If you want to hear a different opinion on the value of infrageneric taxa, I'll oblige you in a new section (NPI). cygnis insignis 03:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I notice that the navboxes don't show up in the Wikipedia apps (iOS and Android) nor in the mobile version on a Samsung Android device.--Melburnian (talk) 05:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

This whole discussion begs the question "Where is a navbox appropriate", which is almost a WP wide question, and its corollary "What should a navbox contain and what should it look like"? It would seem that if we can agree on those questions, a guidance should be added to our Template. At the very least a navbox should be complete, for instance contain all families of an order. Redlinking is acceptable in the short term but should be remedied ASAP. And for usefulness the navbox should appear on the both the higher taxon page and the lower taxon pages it targets. We also have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 20:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Navboxes which consist of lists of taxa are, in my opinion, just bathwater, and certainly not a baby. Throw them out! Peter coxhead (talk) 22:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I've also been wondering what to do about enormous nav boxes, such as template:Apples which is about 1/10 the size it would be if reasonably close to complete. For now, I've just been collapsing it wherever I find it, not adding to it, and not adding it to new pages about apple cultivars. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:12, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
There's some guidance at Wikipedia:Navigation templates. One point made is "They should be kept small in size as a large template has limited navigation value." Peter coxhead (talk) 22:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I would take the same approach, collapse and ignore, but that doesn't resolve the problem I initially identified (finding and maintaining links to a taxon or cultivar). The fact, I fear, is that contributors who prefer nifty coding of colourful boxes, instead of research and writing sentences supported by references, have too much investment in nav boxes, so any attempt to have them deleted at another forum will be unsuccessful. I do hope consensus can reached here, the only dissenting opinion, "very useful", has not been explained. I can see how they might have some use if article sections, categories and lists didn't exist, but transclusion (duplication) of these everywhere one can think of is not. cygnis insignis 03:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, too much investment by their creators looks like a big problem. @Michael Goodyear: can you identify a baby in the bathwater? I'm inclined to throw it all out, as per Peter's suggestion. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Well I need to declare an interest as a creator of navboxes, myself, which I have found extremely useful, and have had positive feedback. So I think it is a case by case basis. I have not done a survey, but just how many are we talking about? --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
What I've seen of your navboxes, @Michael Goodyear:, are quite different. To create a navbox for concepts and to have it work well is, I believe, *extremely* difficult. The navboxes that have out-dated species lists and other clutter are generally included in Category:Vegetation templates or in Category:Botany templates, perhaps 50 that list species in a genus, as for example Template:Leucopogon. There are other more difficult cases, such as Template:Pineapples which has an outdated species list, but I wonder if there are any Ananas species that are not considered to be pineapples, in which case a species list could be justified. Template:Citrus has caused its constructors and others many headaches because the taxonomy of cultivated Citrus is too fluid for wikipedia to be able to get a handle on; having it as a template makes sense because updates could be made in one place, but having that template gives the false impression that material here is accurate; the whole subject needs to be discussed in a way that uses citations and equivocation rather than simple lists. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I am greatly relieved! I was expecting to wake up in the morning and find them all gone. So, yes, that was the "baby" I referred to. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Some of them were previously nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_September_9#Template:Navbox_Artemisia, which failed as an overly broad nomination (and with very few people commenting). I'll try to put together a deletion nomination for just the genus navboxes that are incomplete in listing species due to avoided red-links, and which include no other topics besides species. That won't include the Persoonia navbox (which is apparently complete) or stuff like {{Allium}} (woefully incomplete, but not restricted to species topics). Plantdrew (talk) 21:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Legumes and Fabaceae

By pure coincidence, I raised an issue of content overlap similar to Grass/Poeceae at Talk:Fabaceae#Overlap with Legume. I would like to solicit some input in that discussion. Thanks. No such user (talk) 11:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I've indicated my support for a split on the talk page. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC)


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