Talk:Chenopodium spinescens

Accepted taxonomy

The name accepted by the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria for this species is Rhagodia spinescens. I would like to redirect this article to a new article Rhagodia spinescens. It seems to be all too frequently the case that the most authoritative northern hemisphere sources have failed to catch up with the taxonomy of plants endemic to Australasia. MargaretRDonald (talk) 11:48, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

The inclusion of Rhagodia in Chenopodium was made after molecular biological investigations. Main sources:

• Fuentes-Bazan, S, Mansion, G. & Borsch, T. 2012. Towards a species level tree of the globally diverse genus Chenopodium (Chenopodiaceae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 62(1): 359–374. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2011.10.006
• Fuentes-Bazan, S., Uotila, P. & Borsch, T. 2012. A novel phylogeny-based generic classification for Chenopodium sensu lato, and a tribal rearrangement of Chenopodioideae (Chenopodiaceae). Willdenowia 42(1): 5–24. doi: 10.3372/wi42.42101 Full text PDF
• Mosyakin, S.L. & Iamonico, D. 2017. Nomenclatural changes in Chenopodium (incl. Rhagodia) (Chenopodiaceae), with considerations on relationships of some Australian taxa and their possible Eurasian relatives. Nuytsia 28: 255–271

This has been accepted by most databases, e.g. Cataloque of Life, GRIN, Tropicos, and POWO, and Wikipedia should follow them. The Australian Plant Census still uses Rhagodia, but it has not been updated since 2014 and is not up-to-date here.

A quite different issue is the use of family Amaranthaceae for all chenopods in Wikipedia. Even Fuentes-Bazan et al. 2012 use family Chenopodiaceae (and most taxonomists working on modern taxonomy of Chenopodiaceae do!). But in 2005, Wikipedia has decided, to follow the system of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group APG, who included the Chenopodiaceae in an "Amaranthaceae sensu lato". Personnally, I prefer to follow Hernández-Ledesma et al. 2015. (A taxonomic backbone for the global synthesis of species diversity in the angiosperm order Caryophyllales. Willdenowia 45(3): 281–383. doi: 10.3372/wi.45.4530). They use Amaranthaceae s.str. and Chenopodiaceae s.str.(excluding one problematic subfamily), see Amaranthaceae at Wikispecies. So the family is a Wikipedia problem and should be discussed in a greater forum. Kind regards, --Thiotrix (talk) 14:09, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone for the prompt & helpful responses. "This has been accepted by most databases" Cataloque of Life (2019), GRIN (2012), Tropicos (no evidence of when it was last updated), and POWO (2017), Australian Plant Census (2014, Rhagodia). Thus, the evidence against the name Rhagodia is not quite so overwhelming as at first glance, with a weight of just 2 against 1). (Additionally, the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria made this determination in the awareness of the 2012 paper by Fuentes-Bazan, S., Uotila, P. & Borsch, T. 2012.) So for the moment, I am happy to let rest the issue of the placement of the article. MargaretRDonald (talk) 19:52, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Tropicos seems to update very often, as it contains several new species of Amaranthaceae/Chenopodiaceae that were published in October 2018, e.g. Iresine cubensis. --Thiotrix (talk) 16:24, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

This saltbush is an Australian species. I think it likely that Tropicos and others follow (or at least should follow) the lead of Australian authorities in naming this plant Rhagodia spinescens. The genus Rhagodia is endemic to Australia. Gderrin (talk) 22:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)