Talk:Monocotyledon

Orders

On Liliopsida, the following list of orders was given:

• Butomales
• Alismatales
• Triuridales
• Juncaginales
• Aponogetonales
• Potamogetonales
• Najadales
• Commelinales
• Xyridales
• Eriocaulales
• Bromeliales
• Zingiberales
• Liliales
• Alstroemeriales
• Arales
• Typhales
• Amaryllidales
• Iridales
• Dioscorales
• Agavales
• Arecales
• Pandanales
• Cyclanthales
• Haemodorales
• Burmanniales
• Orchidales
• Juncales
• Cyperales
• Poales

As far as I can tell, the degree of splitting here is very much overkill, i.e. it is unnecessary for creation of monophyletic groups. The list of orders currently given is based on what I have seen in a number of different sources, but someone more familiar with botany should compare the two schemes and make notes.

What is the point of the name being Monocotyledon and stating it to be a "class" when science says it is not the correct designation. The name is old fashioned. The justification of the name is in taxonomy. It is either a correct name or it is not. Science says it is not. Hence it should be renamed and made a redirect. GerardM 18:03, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

The name is not old fashioned. It's the common name of the group in question, and we have a policy of using common names. It's also its name as a clade, i.e. one still used in the taxonomic literature. The group is named Liliopsida when treated as a class, because classes have to be named after a type genus. On the other hand, if the rank were changed, so would that name. Further, if it turned out Lilium were not a monocot, the name Liliopsida would ened up referring to an entirely different group. That's somewhat far fetched, but the same thing has happened with Magnolia: although it is a dicot, it probably belongs in a different class than the others.

In short: Liliopsida is the name of the class containing Lilium. At the moment, it happens to be the same as the monocotyledons, and it is even likely it will stay that way. But there's no reason to prefer that name, since the other name is perfectly valid in taxonomy and more common in the vernacular. -- Josh

The text of the Monocotyledon article includes the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's most current classification scheme, which has 10 orders--Acorales, Alismatales, Asparagales, Dioscoreales, Liliales, Pandanales, Arecales, Commelinales, Poales, and Zingiberales, with two families not yet assigned an order, Petrosaviaceae and Dasypogonaceae. It is a reasonably parsimonious scheme, and is backed up by current phylogeny. I didn't, however, change the taxotable.

I didn't do so because there is a great deal of disagreement on plant taxonomy, and I am not an Angiosperm expert by any stretch of the imagination. This layperson's view is that the APG system seems like a reasonable attempt to develop a standard phylogeny. It also seems to me that Wikipedia ought to use the APG as a standard for organizing its pages on plant taxa, while noting the Cronquist and other important variations from the APG scheme in the relevant articles. What do others think?Tom Radulovich 04:05, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I would think that is reasonable, IF we put something in the text that explains that the taxobox is based on Cronquist or some modification of Cronquist. That way the reader has a chance of understanding why there is disagreement - Marshman 04:13, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

APG II is the standard we have been using in wikipedia. To make this page more consistent with the others, in fact, we should have it in the taxobox and notable alternatives like Cronquist in the article. Josh 06:53, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Josh, at the moment the same word represts differet taxonomic levels and it makes it very messy for someone tyring to put together a new article--nixie 03:07, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Monocotyledones merge to here

I don't know enough about this or I'd do it myself. CambridgeBayWeather 07:38, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Done - MPF 10:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Note that is has not been merged, just deleted. Where it differed with this page the errors have been maintained - 20 Sep 2005

Note that there is also a separate monocots article that should be merged with this one. MrDarwin 14:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, it took over a year to get around to it, but I've finally moved what little was not already redundant from the Monocots article to this one, and made the former into a redirect. Not only was the Monocots article redundant, the numerous links to the term "monocot" took users to an article that was extremely unhelpful. MrDarwin 16:58, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

better organization

you have got to have better organization. i mean instead of starting by monocots are plants blah blah blah, you might want to start with what is a monocot!! then you can discuss that there are certain no. of plants etc.

Seedling photograph

The photo comparing a monocot (grass) and dicot seedling purports to show the single cotyledon of a monocot seedling. In fact the "cotyledon" in the photograph is the first true leaf of the seedling, with the coleoptile barely visible below it. Neither of these is the cotyledon. MrDarwin 20:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Infobox?

This article has no infobox, most species, genus etc do, I don't know all the correct info myself but would it be plausible and correct practice to add an infobox here? I read that grass is monocotyledon, in the grass article, but that page also has no infobox.

Carlwev 23:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The infobox for grass is actually at Poaceae. The term "grass" is often used with a somewhat broader meaning than just the members of the grass family. I suppose you could put one in here, as it is a monophyletic group. I won't do it myself because of concerns about mixing taxonomic systems within the box. Check out Poaceae, though. KP Botany 23:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I've taken a shot at an infobox (we'll see how long it lasts). This case is easier than most, in the sense that the different taxonomic systems agree on the group, they just differ on what to call it. Kingdon 16:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. KP Botany 20:16, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Descended from dicots?

I've met some statements in Russian web that Monos descended from Dicots. Is that true? If yes (not sure, I'm an amateur), maybe it should be mentioned. Best regards, --CopperKettle 09:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It is true. The article says many things which (at least taken together) imply this (most directly, the cladogram showing their position in the Mesangiospermae). We address it more directly at Angiosperm. Because of this set of relationships the word "dicot" is one that many people would avoid, since it groups together all the angiosperms which aren't monocots (but which don't really have much to unify them). Kingdon (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Monocotyledons or monocots (Greek language: Μονοκοτυλήδονο)

"Monocotyledons or monocots (Greek language: Μονοκοτυλήδονο)" Do we need the greek of Monocotyledon? I can't see that it adds any thing and is not monocot from the Latin? Hardyplants (talk) 06:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

No, and we don't need the Latin etymology either. That's better handled at Wikipedia. Note also that the addition was modern Greek, not Classical/Ancient Greek. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Is it correct that 'monocot' is a slang form of 'monocotyledon'? If so, then it seems to me unencyclopedic to be using 'monocot' freely throughout the article as if it was as correct as the fully spelled-out form (and I note that 'monocot' is also used freely throughout the rest of Wikipedia. MrDemeanour (talk) 08:55, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't think that it's slang. "Dicot" and "monocot" are widely used by biologists. An advantage is that it doesn't draw so much attention to the original derivation based on the number of cotyledons; this isn't a defining feature of the modern use of "eudicot" and "monocot". (I don't think I've ever seen "eudicotyledon".) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:45, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Picture Examples

I think the cross-sectional view of an onion bulb is a less obvious example of parallel veins than a top-down image of a leaf with parallel veins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.194.194.155 (talk) 17:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Original or plagiarized material?

The "Evolution" section seems to be sourced much differently than the rest of Wikipedia. I have no evidence that it is plagiarized, but I don't see why else it would be sourced like that. To anyone that does, thanks for looking into it. Lets keep Wikipedia free and legitimate for all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.176.228.106 (talk) 05:05, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

The reason it is sourced differently is that it was translated from the Spanish Wikipedia article. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:38, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Deleted "Monocots" article

Is any of the following material from the recently deleted "Monocots" article useful to integrate into this article?

In plant taxonomy monocots (plural, not capitalised) is a monophyletic clade within the flowering plants or angiosperms. It is an unranked clade as defined by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group in its 1998 paper to include ten monophyletic orders, the Acorales, Alismatales, Asparagales, Dioscoreales, Liliales, Pandanales, Arecales, Poales, Commelinales, and the Zingiberales. The name now includes these ten orders plus the Petrosaviales and an unplaced family, the Dasypogonaceae.

Diagnostic characteristics or apomorphies of the monocot clade include sieve tube plastids that contain only proteinaceous (no starch) inclusions that are wedge shaped, vascular bundles in the stem arranged as an atactostele, and the lack of true wood formation. Most monocots have leaf veins that parallel each other, but some monocot clades have secondarily evolved reticulate venation, and almost all monocots have a single cotyledon.

The taxa belonging to this clade of monocots are those plants known as "monocots" or "monocotyledons". This group has been given various names (each with their own internal taxononomy). Historically, the monocotyledons were named:

• Monocotyledoneae in the de Candolle system and the Engler system.
• Monocotyledones in the Bentham & Hooker system and the Wettstein system
• class Liliopsida in the Cronquist system; also the Takhtajan and the Reveal systems.
• subclass Liliidae in the Dahlgren system and the Thorne system (1992).
• clade monocots in the APG and the APG II system.

---

Within the monocots, the APG II system recognizes ten orders of monocots and two families not yet assigned to any order. A number of these are recognised as the clade "commelinids", the rest (a paraphyletic unit) is occasionally referred to as the "base monocots".

• clade monocots :

• family Petrosaviaceae

• order Acorales
• order Alismatales
• order Asparagales
• order Dioscoreales
• order Liliales
• order Pandanales

• clade commelinids:

• family Dasypogonaceae

• order Arecales
• order Commelinales
• order Poales
• order Zingiberales

All the material except the paragraph that begins "Diagnostic characters ..." was either already in the Monocotyledon article or is out of date (e.g. the APG II system has been superseded by the APG III system), which is why there was no need for a separate article. The paragraph can usefully be added, but the article has a rather muddled order at present (in my view anyway) and this needs to be sorted first. I've been thinking about it and will do something if no-one else does. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

One problem is that great chunks of material at the end have been auto-translated from the Spanish Wikipedia, as far as I can tell (although this is not acknowledged anywhere) and are in very poor English as a result. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Still all about monocots and dicots

This article still neglects a robust discussion of the monocots as a clade in favor of the childhood memories of the botanical owners of Wikipedia for their love of monocots versus dicots, while 100s, if not 1000s, of articles link to this mysterious and unknown (at least on Wikipedia) clade, the monocots as the one major and huge APG clade undeserving of an article.

If you're going to be rude because an outsider dared to point out the confusion, then offer up your precious childhood love of a concept and other places ignoring it too while promising only yourselves, not outsiders, are cpable of fixing it, then why don't you fix it? I forgot, Peter already understands the concept and the encyclopedia is written just for him.

Still sucks on the clade. Still not understanding why botanists think it worthy of 10,000 articles, while the owners of botanical "scholarship" on Wikipedia freaked out that it might deserve a solid understanding in even one.

97.124.184.75 (talk) 19:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Quote policies myself: article ownership, treat potential (ha ha! as if ever) new editors somewhat civil. Wait, no policies apply, except for established editors to use against potential (again ha ha) new editors to keep content out of articles Who cares if it is an APG clade when people love some different content so well?

Of course you could not edit a word out, no matter how badly you treat other editors here at Wikipedia botany articles because that would give the appearance of continuing to ignore, insult potential (ha ha) new editor.

Go read about content disputes, new editors, and article ownership while you are trying to run me off from pointing out problems, a huge one, with this article, after everyone making it clear that scholarship be damned, the boys like one thing and so it will be

Anyone can edit, if you are a good old boy and like what you like? Reliable sources as long as I stick with old ones that have theories you favor, even if you have to contort this article and ignore its contradictions and incomprehensibilities?

No-one has ever claimed that this is a good article; it is not. It is rated at "C" class at present, which I think is actually too high. One of the sections is badly translated from the Spanish version, as far as I can tell. The issue was whether there should be two articles. Since, unlike the traditional dicots, the traditional monocots have been upheld by molecular phylogenetics, there is no case for two articles. But by all means improve the existing article based on reliable sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

No, I was never about "there should be two articles" except that the way you are determined that this article be primarily about monocots versus dicots makes it almost impossible to understand the clade from this article. I said "This is not about that monocotyledons are monocots; it's about helping someone who can't make sense of the monocot clade from this article" and you continued to show off and force your monocotyledons-fell-out-as-monocots superior knowledge and everyone freaked out and jumped me and kept repeating their superior monocotyledons-fell-out-as-monocots superior knowledge to put me down. When I tried to get help, I got put in my place but otherwise ignored by the monocotyledons-fell-out-as-monocots superior knowledge holders, but when I got a textbook and tried to improve the situation then I got jumped on and you made it all about my attempting to have two articles. I can't rewrite your pet love of monocots versus dicots as superior and more important than the monocots clade. I already said that. This article is too bad to rewrite. I can't improve your article on monocots versus dicots, especially as bad as this article is, then adding the even worse dicots article. I could have, however, written a good article on the monocots clade, which you forbid because you are worried that having an article on the clade will make it seem as if they are not or less important to the dicot monocotyledons. But, if you had talked, instead of first ignoring the real matter, then freaking out protecting your ownership of an idea while smugly asserting your superior knowledge, we could have come up with a solution that acknowledged how badly this article addresses the clade. Like clearly defining the APG clade and adding an article-sized section, since there is more than enough literature. Having two articles (OMG kill me now), but naming this one monocots and dicots, then clearly outlining in the monocots article that monocots are monocotyledons. Instead you have this which even fails in the monocots and dicots, emphasizes non-synapomorphies and does nothing other than assert your ownership and ability to keep any new editors off of Wikipedia.

Maybe I misunderstand you, but you still seem to be writing as if "monocotyledons" and "monocots" are different things. To say that a clade can be described by its synapomorphies has two consequences (1) there are features that all members of the clade have in common (the "syn" bit) and these need to be clearly described (for which APweb seems a good source) (2) there are features that distinguish the clade from the other members of the parent clade (the "apo" bit) and these need to be clearly described. It's also right to discuss the history of the monocot concept, just as articles on families discuss the historical circumscription of that family.

The ordering of the material should follow the fairly standard template for plant articles: Description, Taxonomy (including historical classification), Phylogeny and evolution, Distribution and habitat, perhaps Ecology (although this works less well for higher level taxa), Uses. I agree that the comparison with the traditional dicots is somewhat overplayed, and I would move it out of the Description section, but this material will automatically become less significant when the rest of the article gets expanded. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Really, get over it. You are not the only person on the planet who understands that monocotyledons sensual monocots versus dicots played out as a clade while dicotyledons didn't. Your inability to see this and obsession with it is tiresome. However, APG and Wikipedia taxoboxes deal with a clade that owns its own description that is almost entirely missing from Wikipedia because this article is about monocotyledons sensu "monocots versus dicots," and coupled with it being a bad article, ascribing the old differences to the new clade as synapomorphies that aren't, and the dicots article being so bad, plus your inability to believe anyone else could understand monocots and monocots sensu monocots versus dicots being the same thing make it impossible for anyone to 1) understand the APG clade from this article and 2) do anything to improve the entire situation on Wikipedia.

Good article

Setting aside arguments about autotranslation (never a good idea), the fact remains that the Spanish article is rated GA and this isn't. Therefore taking a look at how the Spanish article is organised and its contents and sources is a worthwhile exercise if we are to raise the standard of the English article. I will tag it.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 00:28, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

On reviewing both pages, it does seem that quite a bit of this page was lifted from the Spanish article, but not very well. As a preliminary step to upgrading the page I have revised and corrected all the citations and placed them in a consistent format. I have also made a start at expanding the pre-Linnean taxonomy.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 18:34, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

One amusing example of bad translation is the phrase ""o "núcleo de las monocotiledóneas" por el APW ("core monocots" en inglés)"" translated as ""or 'core monocots' by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website ("core monocots" in English)"" !! The translator seems to have forgotten they are writing in English.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

It's what you get when you use Google translate! Peter coxhead (talk) 21:17, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

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Minor edit

I don't seem to be able to edit the introduction. Please change "who" to "which" in the following sentence:

About half as many species belong to the true grasses (Poaceae), who are economically the most important family of monocots.

KC 16:15, 25 February 2017 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydstra (talk • contribs)  

 Done Plantdrew (talk) 17:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

species counts

This page has some confusing and self-contradictory information regarding the number of species in Orchidaceae and Poaceae.  Here's what we have currently:

In the introduction

"The monocots include about 60,000 species. The largest family in this group (and in the flowering plants as a whole) by number of species are the orchids (family Orchidaceae), with more than 20,000 species. About half as many species belong to the true grasses (Poaceae), which are economically the most important family of monocots."

In the section titled Taxonomy

"Of these, the grass family (Poaceae) is the most economically important, which together with the orchids Orchidaceaeaccount for half of the species diversity, accounting for 34% and 17% of all monocots respectively and are among the largest families of angiosperms.

In the section headed Cladogram 2

"Of some 70,000 species,[90] by far the largest number (65%) are found in two families, the orchids and grasses. The orchids (Orchidaceae, Asparagales) contain about 25,000 species and the grasses (Poaceae, Poales) about 11,000."

In the Wikipedia page for Orchidaceae, the number of species is put at about 28,000, and in the page for Poaceae, the number of species is put at about 12,000.

Issues:

Is the number of monocot species about 60,000 or about 70,000?

Orchidaceae is not the largest family in flowering plants. Asteraceae has 32,913 according to its Wikipedia page.

Is the number of Orchidaceae 20,000, 25,000 or 28,000?

Is the number of Poaceae 11,000, 12,000 or "half of Orchidaceae?"

65% of 70,000 is 45,500 so orchids and grasses are less than 65% of the species.

I would like to make the number consistent within this page and with the Orchidaceae and Poaceae pages. However, I am not a botanist so this would be best handled by someone from the WikiProject Plants. neals384 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neals384 (talk • contribs) 01:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Your comments are very hard to follow, but there is no inconsistency in the statistics, merely in the degree of presumed accuracy in the sources. "about 25,000" and "about 28,000" is essentially saying the same thing with a different assumption of accuracy. "more than 20,000" is entirely in line with both of those values. While you might want a single statistic to be used consistently, doing so would fail to reflect the degree of uncertainty about the number of species. Different counts are obtained using different assumptions about the completeness and accuracy of the known (and unknown) data. It is actually better to provide a range of stated values from the literature because of the uncertainty about the total number of species. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Completely understand that many taxa are subject to change as new research advances our knowledge. Agree that exact numbers are not an appropriate goal. However, I fail to understand why different number would be used within the same article. Why not "about 28,000" orchid species everywhere. It's the inconsistency that troubles me, not the precision of the estimate. I thought my other comments were quite clear, but if not - Orchids are not the biggest family in flowering plants, aster is. Let's fix that. 65% of 70,000 is 45,500. There are that many orchids + grasses. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neals384 (talk • contribs) 11:32, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Biology

Monocotyledon 154.74.127.92 (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Voice concern 102.150.133.126 (talk) 21:29, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Science

Monocots and Dicots 1.38.141.137 (talk) 16:09, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Science

monocot and. Dicot 103.181.227.241 (talk) 15:21, 3 September 2023 (UTC)