Talk:Trema micranthum

Epithet ending

I moved it back to the scientific name, which is much more commonly used than the vernacular, but noticed on POWO that it's ending in -um instead of -a (Trema micranthum). I haven't looked into it further and wanted to drop a note. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 04:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 1 November 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Rough consensus to move; editors tentatively believe that the scientific consensus has moved on regarding the name of this species. However, not all sources have moved on, and if the trend reverses editors should not hesitate to open a new move request proposing that this move is reverted. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 00:54, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

---

Trema micrantha → Trema micranthum – Latin gender error for this plant species. PoWO says it's micranthum. Could not move it myself. Abductive (reasoning) 08:08, 30 October 2023 (UTC) This is a contested technical request (permalink). Polyamorph (talk) 12:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment per the discussion at RM/TR, the majority of sources, including those currently cited in the article, use the micrantha form. Polyamorph (talk) 12:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - per my comments at the RM/TR discussion, the ngram on this shows a very large lead for the micrantha variant in books sources, all the way up to 2019, when the ratio was 899:18. And when one drills down, we can see that these are serious books being analysed, mostly not pop culture or anything less high brow. The assertion made is that PoWO somehow "trumps" all other sources when it comes to plants, but that notion would really be anathema to the guiding policy of WP:COMMONNAME which applies across the project. WP:NCFLORA also does not particularly say we favour any source over any other. The only scenario that might persuade me to change my mind is if there were strong evidence of a WP:NAMECHANGES situation - i.e. if there's a recent move towards using the micranthum form, not reflected in the above ngram. I'm slightly sceptical on that point, given that micranthum has seemingly been in minority use for more than a century, but if the evidence exists for that then please present it. Otherwise, I favour the status quo. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 16:21, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: POWO and IPNI are fairly authoritative surely and if you check other databases, such as CoL, AOFP, GBIF, WFO in Q10384488, you will see that they have been converted to T. micranthum. IMHO the "guiding policy" of WP:COMMONNAME is highly flawed: especially in the case of less well-known plants, insects, etc.: which vernacular name do you propose using in this case (there are others besides the 2 in the article)? Brgds. Roy Bateman (talk) 21:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

• Question: Where's the gender error in Trema micrantha? Surely they are both 1st declension? YorkshireExpat (talk) 16:37, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@YorkshireExpat: see my comment below; it's derived from a Greek neuter noun. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead Fair enough. I have no Greek. Isn't mixing languages usually a no-no though as well? YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@YorkshireExpat: well, note that Trema is derived from Greek, not actual Greek. However, the usual convention is to maintain the gender of the original; Stearn's Botanical Latin, p. 256: "Greek nouns taken into Latin retain their original gender". What is frowned on is mixing Greek and Latin within a word. So Chrys-o-dendron ('golden tree') is ok, because both parts come from Greek, whereas "Aure-i-dendron" would not be; aure-i-flora ('golden flower') is ok, because both parts come from Latin, whereas "chrys-o-flora" would not be. Such mixed Greek/Latin derivations have been described as "a bastardised admixture" by purists. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:28, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead. I see. Thanks. This makes sense actually, because the example I had in my head was Australopithecus, which I'd read about being contentious somewhere or other. Clearly 'austral' is Latin, and apparently 'pithekos' is Greek for 'ape' YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@YorkshireExpat: (last point) zoologists traditionally aren't as fussy about 'correct' Latinization as botanists. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:18, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I've been noticing some problems with POWO. They've made a species (Taraxacum officinale) a synonym of a section, which just doesn't fly. I've now found two cases where they recognize a recently described subspecies, but deviate from the publication where the new subspecies was described in terms of what other previously described subspecies are recognized. IPNI says Trema is neuter, following Nicolson 1994. Trema_(plant)#Species_names_with_uncertain_taxonomic_status has a whole bunch of species with feminine endings, and Tropicos's list of Trema names has almost entirely feminine endings. The Wikipedia articles Trema lamarckiana and Trema tomentosa currently have feminine endings and should be included in this move discussion. I am inclined not to follow POWO's interpretation of the gender of Trema. Plantdrew (talk) 16:28, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  Can genera be plural? If it's plural then I suppose it could be neuter. YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:42, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  I also just noticed the Taraxacum issue when I was working on my Draft:Flora of Colorado. I am mostly using POWO, but in some places I let other sources correct it. I'm probably going to cite World Plants in the case of the common dandelion. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:18, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Support, but cautiously. Trema micranthum is also how it is listed in World Plants. On the other hand World Flora Online still has it as Trema micrantha (L.) Blume. These are the big three of classification, as I understand it. Possibly we should wait until there is more consensus though? This seems to be a frequent problem with plant taxonomy. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:10, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Support Trema is derived from the Greek τρῆμα (see here), which is definitely a neuter noun. Unfortunately, the only species Loureiro listed was Trema cannabina where the epithet can be a noun in apposition, so there's no direct evidence of the gender that Loureiro intended. As the IPNI entry notes, botanical sources have used both neuter and feminine, so the ICNafp isn't a great help because it's not clear that there's a definite nomenclatural tradition for Trema (see Art. 62.1). I believe that we should follow IPNI, which has neuter endings where the epithet is adjectival (see here). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• Cautious support: I see that the editors of GBIF also moved the name to Trema micranthum in August 2023. As Plantdrew points out, POWO is not infallible, but I think considerably more authoritative than most ... or do we have any Cannabaceae specialists here? I have updated and added Q5694996 to the taxonbar - these need merging in WikiData please. Roy Bateman (talk) 11:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Roy Bateman: it's never been clear to me whether there should be separate Wikidata items for what are effectively orthographic variants. Given that Wikidata's so-called "taxon" items are actually "taxon name" items, what makes a taxon name sufficiently different to warrant a separate item? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello Peter - as I understand, the policy is to merge Wikidata items when they refer to synonyms - but in practice it often takes time, due to pessure of work. Until I edited it a couple of days ago Q5694996 described T. micranthum as the "misspelling". Also worth noting that T. micrantha uses the same IPNI link. I think that redirects and the "from2" construction in the taxonbar make Wikipedia a powerful tool for 'navigating' these variants and conflicts, but agree that we should always prefer the latest authoritative taxon names. Roy Bateman (talk) 09:17, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"blume"

The source discussing the detection of CBD refers to the plant as "Trema micrantha blume," and currently the text of the article reproduces it that way. But isn't the source just mistakenly appending the classifier's name to that of the species? Or is the name of the species correctly three words? --DavidK93 (talk) 03:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

That's a mistake. Plantdrew (talk) 16:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Blume is the name of botanist who named this plant : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ludwig_Blume 83.22.71.194 (talk) 16:33, 2 November 2023 (UTC)