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Latest comment: 3 years ago by Leo Breman in topic Plant-based societies and organisations - usable as sources?
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Zanthoxylum ovalifolium

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I was considering making an article on Zanthoxylum ovalifolium, but there appears to be a Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Wight, 1839, and a Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Tutcher, 1905. The confusion extends into the usual databases. The species is widespread and has articles in 6 other Wikipedias. What do? Abductive (reasoning) 00:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Tutcher is not validly published. In a paper on new species and other Chinese plants (from Hong Kong) Tutcher wrote a paragraph on a plant which he assigned to Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Wight, but noted some differences from the type. Flora of China says that Zanthoxylum ovalifolium (distributed from India to north east Australia) is not known from China, so we can infer that Tutcher's plant represents a different species. Flora of China doesn't explicitly say so, but it seems very likely to be Zanthoxylum dimorphophyllum Hemsl. (1895), which would make Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Tutcher, if it had been validly published, a synomym.. I guess that at some point someone referred to Zanthoxylum ovalifolium sensu Tutcher, and it got corrupted in passing.
Tropicos has both names; IPNI only the Wight; TPL accepts the Tutcher, but POWO accepts the Wight.
What you need to do is work out which species you want to write the article on (ovalifolium or dimorphophyllum - I presume ovalifolium), and be careful to ensure that sources are referring to that one (it's possible that the error in Tropicos hasn't propagated into the general literature, but just the databases).
In general the principle of priority applies - the earlier name is the correct one and the other one would be a nomen illegitimum later homonym. But that isn't always the case - if the earlier name was not validly published, or the latter name is conserved - so unfortunately you can't just apply the principle blindly, but have to check the literature, especially the initial publications. (In this case POWO linked me to Tutcher's paper at BHL, which answered the question, and implicitly pointed me at Flora of China to work out what Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Tutcher applied to.) In principle, if Wight's name was a nom inval, Tutcher's name could have been validated by a subsequent author, in which case it would correctly be written as Zanthoxylum ovalifolium Tutcher ex Someone. I haven't directly confirmed the Wight's name was validly published, but it's implicit in Flora of China. Later homonyms have gotten into widespread circulation on occasion - e.g. the recent Brazilian checklist uses the wrong name for a species of Helicteres. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. Abductive (reasoning) 00:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Warnstorfia exannulata

Latest comment: 4 years ago17 comments6 people in discussion

There is an open discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#February 22 on Warnstorfia exannulata which may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. See there for the gory details; contributions welcome.

Leaving entirely to one side the issue of the desirability or otherwise of soft redirects to Wikispecies, it seems to me that a good solution to this particular XfD would be to write up Warnstorfia, which already exists in several non-English WPs. There is, however, a problem: WP:RS sources seem to suggest that Warnstorfia is currently placed in two different families; which means that research and writing may not be easy, and that the {{taxobox}} would be problematic. However, if anyone would like to have a go at it... Narky Blert (talk) 19:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Narky Blert:   Done I have created Warnstorfia and the associated taxonomy templates. Feel free to de-stub or adjust the taxonomy, I'm not a moss-guy. I'm also tempted to stub out Warnstorfia exannulata, but not tonight. --awkwafaba (📥) 04:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Awkwafaba: Thank you! Are you sure it's in family Amblystegiaceae though? Some sources say it's in de:Calliergonaceae. Narky Blert (talk) 09:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Narky Blert: I’m not sure, but I had to pick something. --awkwafaba (📥) 12:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't help with the family assignment but the British Bryophyte Society has species pages for this moss and other British bryophytes. They were previously published as a field guide and might help with the article. list of species pages, e.g. Warnstorfia exannulata. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
I would go for family Calliergonaceae. This family was split off from Amblystegiaceae by Vanderpooten et al (2002). The Warnstorfia were included in family Calliergonaceae in Goffinet's Bryophyte Biology (2008) and is still placed there on the website based on that book, Classification of extant moss genera. The downloadable genus list was last updated on 7 January 2020. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: Feel free to update {{Taxonomy/Warnstorfia}}.   --awkwafaba (📥) 18:13, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Bryophyte taxonomy

As far as I'm aware, there has never been any effort to make mosses consistently following any particular system of classification (and if there has been, there doesn't seem to be any effort to keep it up to date). I'd like to implement automatic taxoboxes for mosses with a consistent classification scheme at some point. I haven't done so yet because I haven't taken the time to research what classifications schemes are out ther, and which is the best accepted. I have a slight COI with regards to Goffinet; I had him as a professor and am better acquainted with him personally than any other taxonomist whose work I've cited on Wikipedia. I don't want to go with Goffinet's classification myself without input from other editors that Goffinet is a good source to follow (or suggest a better source?). Plantdrew (talk) 17:58, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Is there a good alternative? I've being reading up on "bryophyte" taxonomy and phylogeny and I don't see a clear alternative. The web pages by Goffinet (with Jan 2020 genera checklist) and Crandall-Stotler (not sure if stil updated) seem well supported by the literature (albeit you can't escape their influence there). The Cole bryophyte phylogeny poster is also a convenient consensus phylogeny (again with Goffinet).
I was considering setting up the higher level structure in the taxonomy templates. If people agree with following the Goffinet classification I will start doing so. —  Jts1882 | talk  18:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
I did make a start on this using the Goffinet web source, which is based on the 2008 book but has some revisions. I have since managed to get a copy of the book so I can compare the two.
  1. The book uses five unnamed superclasses (I-V). Stech & Frey (2008) in their taxonomy used three subdivisions with a broader Bryophytina for three of the Goffinet superclasses. Goffinet adopted the subdivisions but used five corresponding to his former superclasses.
  2. The book has two monotypic orders in class Sphagnopsida while the web version has a single order for three families (including one described since the book).
  3. The book uses three monotypic classes (Polytrichopsida, Tetraphidopsida, Oedipodiopsida) alongside Bryopsida in superclass V (=subdivision Bryophytina). The web version uses an expanded Polytrichopsida with three orders. This one is more problematic as the phylogeny in Liu et al 2019 depends on the analysis. A Polytrichopsida sensu lato is their favoured result but is paraphyletic in other analyses.
  4. Many other changes within Bryopsida.
Overall, the web version is more up to date and incorporates changes based on recent phylogenetic studies, but I can't find published descriptions for some of the changes in the taxonomy. Is the web site a suitable source for the taxonomy templates? I think it is the best source, but am not sure it meets all the Wikipedia requirements. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:21, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and started updating the moss taxonomy and taxoboxes. I have largely followed Goffinet. All articles outside Bryidae now have automated taxoboxes, with a couple of exceptions listed below and probably a few I missed.

Bryophyta in automated taxoboxes update summary

I can't think of any other well-known group of organisms that is as sparsely covered as the mosses. Many orders and families were completely missing and I have created stubs for many of these. A lot of other articles are older bot generated ones with either no genus or species listings or listings that are obsolete. I've being using WFO for genus and species listings but these are largely out of date. I'm not sure of a good modern checklist or resource for mosses below genus level (Goffinet's website has a genus listing update in Jan 2020).

One other thing that might be of help is addition of some moss terms to the plant glossary. I struggle with peristomes, nematodontous and arthrodontous, diplolepideous-opposite and diplolepideous-alternate, haplolepideous, acrocarpous and pleurocarpous. Anyone able to help out here? —  Jts1882 | talk  14:26, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jts1882: did you get these terms sorted out? Some are in the glossary to E.V. Watson's British Mosses and Liverworts, which I have, but most aren't. Bryologists do seem to use highly specialized and rather obscure terminology! EncycloPetey is the only editor I know of that seems to have serious knowledge of mosses, but he hasn't been around as much lately. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Getting there, although its like a foreign language. I've got hold of Goffinet's Bryophyte Biology (2008) and some useful reviews (notably Huttunen et al, 2018). A good extensive glossary would still be helpful. Most of Watson's glossary is available through Amazon preview, but it doesn't cover the peristome types. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:54, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Bill and Nancy Malcolm have published a couple of illustrated glossaries of bryophyte terms (in book form). Their coverage is a bit moss-heavy and hepatic-light, but I can't recommend a good liverwort glossary. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
I've finished the conversion of mosses to automated taxoboxes, at least those I could find using search (Petscan is down). There were only a few hundred in the end, which shows how poor the coverage of mosses is on Wikipedia. There are dozens of families and hundreds of genera without articles. I plan to create stub articles for the families with genus lists.
One thing I noted is that many of the species articles are not well connected to the higher taxa. Most were created based IUCN assessments (mainly by bots) or from regional flora lists, and many of these lack articles on the genus or family so are orphaned if you approach mosses from the higher taxa. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:45, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, Goffinet has been updating his classification as of the last I worked with the moss classification on Wikispecies. He still responds to email queries. But my area of expertise is in the Marchantiophyta and Anthocerotophyta. A major world checklist and classification was published by Söderström et al., 2016, and it has been implemented in both Tropicos and ITIS. We've also implemented it down to genus listings on Wikispecies, but there have been some updates published since the initial 2016 paper. E.g. Long, David G., Laura L. Forrest, Juan Carlos Villarreal, Barbara J. Crandall-Stotler. 2016. "Taxonomic changes in Marchantiaceae, Corsiniaceae and Cleveaceae (Marchantiidae, Marchantiophyta)". Phytotaxa 252 (1): 077–080. Which merged Preissia and Buegia into Marchantia, synonymized Stephensoniella into Exormotheca, among other changes. So there will be some places where the initial 2016 paper differs from Tropicos, ITIS, and Wikispecies because of the updates.
And to answer your earlier questions, no, the Crandall-Stotler online classification is not being maintained nor updated. Ray Stotler has passed away, and Barbara Crandall-Stotler (a morphologist) has not been maintaining it. There are no currently active hepaticologists running teams at SIU anymore; all of them have left, retired, or moved to emeritus status. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:16, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Of the 1141 taxa (genera and above) listed in Goffinet's Alphabetical list of general of extant mosses, about 277 have wikipedia articles (24%). More accurately this is those without redlinks, as the positives include redirects and some will link to other organisms (spider and moss genera have a surprising overlap), while some disambiguated pages will be missed. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:49, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Missing genera article count

Latest comment: 4 years ago15 comments5 people in discussion

So, I used the list of all plant genera from The Plant List to see how many have an article or at least a redirect on en.Wikipedia. Presently they list 17,083 Accepted Genera. Of these, 5,323 are redlinks, or just over 31%. Of the bluelinks, 1015 are redirects, 617 are disambigs, and 7 are redirects to disambigs. Of course I did not check all of these to make sure that they all lead to an article on the plant genus by that name. Presumably most do. The Plant List also lists 6,748 Unresolved Genera. Of these, 4186 are redlinks, or 62%. Anyway, this is just for informational purposes; perhaps this can be revisited from time to time to track progress. Abductive (reasoning) 01:04, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

POWO gives 13772 accepted genera, but it doesn't seem to be easy to get a list in a convenient format. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:49, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Got them, by using the pulldown menu to get 480 to a page, selecting list, then editing the URL to 4800. Three pages. I'll make an estimate. Abductive (reasoning) 11:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Okay, of the 13,773 I scraped from POWO (I must have a stray word in there), 3416 are redlinks which is 24.8%. Abductive (reasoning) 11:46, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
I made a user subpage at User:Abductive/missing genera from POWO (with authorities) and added it to the See also section of WP:WikiProject Plants/Article requests, if anybody want to take a look, and maybe work on them. Abductive (reasoning) 12:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
The next question is how many plant genera articles are for genera not accepted by POWO? (There should be quite a few for ferns, where WP is using PPG 1 and POWO a lumper's classification.) Perhaps an easier question is which genera accepted in TPL have articles, but aren't accepted by POWO? - those genera are perhaps ones we should take a second look at. (Or can we get a list of plant genera articles from the taxonomy templates? paging @Peter coxhead:.)
Skimming the list, Dendrosida is a genus which might well disappear when the taxonomy of Sida and allied genera is sorted out - the cladograms place it well within Sida. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:50, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
You can easily get the fern genus list from the dropdown box at Checklist of Ferns and Lycophytes of the World, which mostly follows PPG I. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
There aren't yet taxonomy templates for every genus with an article. I've been meaning to post a link to my notes on which articles are still using manual taxoboxes (which I guess I'll do in a separate thread). There hasn't yet been a systematic effort to set up taxonomy templates for genera in the following groups: Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Orchidaceae, Rubiaceae, Rutaceae, Aizoaceae, liverworts, Apioideae and Cactoideae.
Drilling down through Category:Plant genera would give a better picture of which genera have articles than taxonomy templates. But there will still be some genera that haven't yet been placed in that category tree (I'd guess uncategorized genera are mostly in Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Orchidaceae, with a smattering in other families).
When I've been converting manual taxoboxes to automatic, I usually skip the conversion for genera that I notice aren't accepted by POWO. So outside of the groups above, a genus with a manual taxobox is often not recognized by POWO. However, I have skipped converting some genera for other reasons (e.g. in Poaceae and Apocynaceae, the sources I used for infrafamilial classification didn't mention several genera that POWO recognizes; I've left those with manual taxoboxes). Plantdrew (talk) 19:39, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
I dunno guys, I think that it is easier to just create two-sentence stubs like I did at Fitzalania and Capparidastrum that admit that they might not be good taxa. Wading through the databases and literature is more work, and waiting for the databases and literature to catch up would mean that the readers will just get a redlink forever. Heck, creating these stubs might even spur the databases to action. Abductive (reasoning) 23:27, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
If I have to pick, I think creating articles for red-linked genera should be a higher priority at present than checking existing articles against databases and merging no-longer accepted genera (although my personal editing behavior doesn't really reflect that priority). Abductive, thanks for creating the list of missing genera; that is very useful.
Longer term, it would be good to have a way to regular run a check of whether Wikipedia's accepted taxa are accepted by various other databases. That could be roughly done with a Wikidata query for now; database identifiers usually aren't present when a given database treats a name as a synonym (absence of a POWO ID is for a taxon is a good indicator that POWO doesn't recognize it). But that's a separate subject from identifying articles that are missing now. Plantdrew (talk) 00:11, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Should new articles be getting species lists from The Plant List (as not updated since 2013)? World Flora Online should be better, although it currently shows the same 22 species for Capparidastrum as TPL, while Tropicos now only recognises five.
Seems to me that Tropicos is even less up to date than TPL on Capparidastrum. Abductive (reasoning) 19:23, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Tropicos doesn't have a mandate to be up to date for everything. First and foremost, it's a resource for Missouri Botanical Garden's research. It's useful to the broader community, but it's strengths mirror the Mobot's research program. When a treatment for a garden floristic project (e.g. Flora Mesoamericana) has been deemed ready for publication, there may not necessarily be further updates. Tropicos isn't a particularly good resource for European and Australian plants, since Mobot has never had significant research programs on those continents. Plantdrew (talk) 20:33, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
POWO says it aims to cover all seed plants by this year, but also includes some ferns. As mosses aren't included I did a rough count of moss taxa coverage. Of the 1141 taxa listed in Goffinet's Alphabetical list of general of extant mosses, about 277 have wikipedia articles (24%). More accurately this is don't have redlinks, as the positives include redirects and some will link to other organisms (spider and moss genera have a surprising overlap), while some disambiguated pages will be missed. I didn't separate the genera as they make up most of the list and its a rough estimate only. I would assume overage of the green algae will be even lower. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:46, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Just a reminder to anyone who reads this thread: do not use PoWO for ferns. We agreed to use the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification for ferns, but PoWO uses a much more lumped approach for some families. Use the Checklist of Ferns and Lycophytes of the World (aka World Ferns). (If you have problems extracting species lists, please let me know, as I have a method that works.) Peter coxhead (talk) 07:53, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I can also help with the species lists, if any one needs it. I created a checklist from the dropdown boxes.
An annoyance with CFLW is the lack of permanent links for citations. There don't seem to be a hidden methods like with Catalog of Fishes. There might be hope, though, as there is now a message about a new website with complete world flora, which will presumably include the CFLW content. That might allow permanent links to the relevant material and easier access to species lists. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:02, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Monotypic genera

Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion

I'm not too familiar with botanical nomenclature so perhaps the title is a misnomer, but in a related vein to the prior section about missing genera I've started working on turning the some of the list blue. However, I realized a few genera contain just a single species, for example Quivisianthe and Quezeliantha. I'm not familiar with article creation for genera, so would a species article with a redirect for the generic name suffice for these genera containing a single species, or would a genus and species article be preferable? Thanks, Pagliaccious (talk) 04:08, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The former - see Wikipedia:MONOTYPICFLORA. Lavateraguy (talk) 05:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
@Pagliaccious: actually neither. As per Wikipedia:MONOTYPICFLORA, the article on a monospecific genus should be at the genus (unless it needs a disambiguating term) with a redirect at the species. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
My question is, if The Plant List only lists one species in a genus, does that mean it is okay to make a redirect to the genus article? What if there are other species in the literature or other databases that The Plant List seems to be ignoring? Abductive (reasoning) 07:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
@Abductive: do not use The Plant List as a source. It is obsolete. Plants of the World Online or the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families are more up-to-date (but don't use them for ferns, as noted above).
The accurate answer is that you have to do some research if reliable taxonomic databases disagree. Are the species listed in one treated as synonyms in another? If so, what do other sources say (e.g. monographs)? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:54, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
I generally do excessive research. I was hoping that there was an easier way. Look how the databases massacred my boy Fritzschia. Abductive (reasoning) 09:04, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Since the genus is endemic to Brasil you can use Flora do Brasil, which recognises 12 species. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:55, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
That data is supposed to be in GBIF? Abductive (reasoning) 23:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
It's in GBIF's catalog of datasets. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:44, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
So then just use GBIF? Abductive (reasoning) 10:21, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Needed--a PoWO template

Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

It would be nice if a source template like Template:APNI or Template:ThePlantList could be created for Plants of the World Online. Abductive (reasoning) 01:56, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I've being working on a modular system for taxonomic references, which wrap to the CS1/CS2 citation system templates. You can use it POWO for a simple title + id citation using {{BioRef|POWO}} as follows for Prunus (using short or full id):[1][2]
 
*{{BioRef|POWO |title=''Prunus'' L.|id=urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:30003057-2 |access-date=24 June 2020}}
*{{BioRef|powo|title=''Prunus'' L. |id=30003057-2 |access-date=24 June 2020}}
For other databases it has options for other parameters (genus+species, family, etc) but I don't know if POWO allows this. It accepts any parameters used with CS1/CS2 (including mode). Suggestions welcome. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:31, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I tried it out on Goniolimon, but it didn't fill in the fields. Abductive (reasoning) 22:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
You didn't give a |title= value. By default it uses the id. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:55, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: the template doesn't italicize genus or species names. It's easier to have separate parameters to get this right, e.g. {{BioRef|POWO |genus=Prunus |authority=L. |id=30003057-2 |access-date=2020-06-25}} would yield the title "Prunus L.", but {{BioRef|POWO |family=Rosaceae |authority=Juss. |id=30000200-2 |access-date=2020-06-25}} would yield the title "Rosaceae Juss." Peter coxhead (talk) 06:28, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
The title can be formatted with wikitext in the |title= parameter. There is a question about whether the |title= should include such formatting as it populates the COinS metadata (see Template:Citation#COinS). This way the editor can decide whether to use formatting (for presentation) or not (for metadata purity).
That said, I've added |family=, |genus= and |species= parameters to handle family,[3] genus[4] and species[5] with formatting.
*{{BioRef|powo|genus=Goniolimon |authority=Boiss. |id=32146-1 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
*{{BioRef|powo|genus=Goniolimon |species=africanum|authority=Buzurovic, Bogdanovic & Brullo |id=77178919-1 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
*{{BioRef|powo|family=Plumbaginaceae  |authority=Juss. |id=30000293-2 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
Any other suggestions? —  Jts1882 | talk  07:55, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
Re COinS, when a journal article title or a book title contains formatting, we include it, so why not for web pages? You could argue that we should italicize all taxon names that are titles of PoWO web pages, because that's what PoWO does. It seems more natural to apply our formatting rules, and only italicize genus and below. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:50, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Prunus L." Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
  2. ^ "'Prunus L." Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
  3. ^ "Plumbaginaceae Juss." Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  4. ^ "Goniolimon Boiss." Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  5. ^ "Goniolimon africanum Buzurovic, Bogdanovic & Brullo". Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Category renaming

Latest comment: 4 years ago26 comments5 people in discussion

Just to note that there are discussions going on at WP:Categories for discussion/Speedy concerning taxonomic categories. The view of "category editors" is that whenever an article title is disambiguated, then the category should be too. Thus because there is an article Dracaena (plant), there should not be Category:Dracaena, but Category:Dracaena (plant). In some cases, this may be the right thing to do, but I think that individual cases should be discussed in a forum where relevant Wikiproject members can participate. Long-standing and hitherto undisputed category names, like Category:Dracaena, should not be changed just for the sake of some blanket desire for tidiness.

Such changes make it necessary to set up the categories for individual species awkwardly, e.g. as "Category:Dracaena (plant)|draco" rather than the natural "Category:Dracaena|draco". In some cases this may be necessary, because there are equally well-known uses of a name as a taxonomic category title, but each case should be properly discussed. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:32, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

  • It's a great pity that @Peter coxhead chooses to misrepresent what's happening. The situation has been explained to Peter several times, so it's hard to AGF that this sustained misrepresentation is a good faith error.
  1. There are not discussions going on at WP:Categories for discussion/Speedy. The speedy page is where categories are listed for renaming if they meet certain strictly defined criteria. If they meet those criteria, the renamings go ahead. This is a long-established process to allow some basic and consistent principles of category naming to be applied with minimum bureaucracy.
  2. This is not a matter of singling out taxonomic categories. The speedy principles apply to all categories, and the current flurry of speedy nominations is result of some analysis I did of some huge lists, part of which was identifying categories named after disambiguation pages: see WT:WikiProject_Categories#Non-disambiguation_categories_with_eponymous_disambiguation_page_in_article_space.
    I and other editors have been nominating lots of categories from that list at WP:CFDS, and there is no singling out of taxonomic categories. I have been working alphabetically through the list.
  3. These speedy renamings are being applied through WP:C2D, a speedy criterion which is about a decade old. Throughout that decade, hundreds of categories have been renamed every week through C2D. There is nothing new or exceptional about this.
  4. The whole point of the speedy process is to provide a streamlined way of applying established naming conventions, to minimise the bureaucratic burden on editors. There are about 2 million categories, and having an individual discussion about every single one of them would take waaay more editorial time that is available: that is why WPCFDS was established in the first place, back in about 2007.
  5. Per WP:LOCALCON, WikiProjects don't have authority to override community-wide consensus. If Peter or anyone else wants to open an RFC proposing a change to WP:C2D, then they are free to do so ... but they are not free to demand that their own area of interest be exempt from the standard naming conventions and processes. Unless and until there is consensus to change the speedy process, it stands ... and it stands for all topics.
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
  • PS It is quite bizarre that Peter coxhead has chosen Dracaena (plant) as a hill to die on; he has courted a block by reverting the actions of admins without even attempting to discuss the matter with them. (I summarised the history at[1])
Just take a look at the disambiguation Dracaena: it's a highly-ambiguous term. If Peter wanted to make a case for some tree-of-life categories having an undisambiguated title when their head article is disambiguated, this is a very poor choice. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:44, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
As I've noted elsewhere, I asked for a discussion before the speedy move took place of taxonomic categories without disambiguation to titles with disambiguation. As I had asked for discussion, and the move was made without discussion, it seemed to me that the principles of WP:BRD applied: the change which I had asked to be discussed was made, I reverted, and now we should discuss. However, it seems this does not apply to WP:C2D.
(To me this is yet another illustration of the two tier system of wikiprojects. Editors involved in wikipedia-wide wikiprojects, such as those concerned with categories or the Manual of Style, constantly invoke consensus at their wikiprojects to prevent discussion at content-based wikiprojects, where I see there being important expertise. Neither kind of wikiproject should feel able to ignore the other; consensus requires a wide discussion.)
Anyway, there's clearly no point in this wikiproject discussing the matter. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead, that's yet more nonsense:
  1. Like any XFD page, CFD is not a WikiProject. So your complaint about a supposed two tier system of wikiprojects is bogus.
  2. The change which you reverted was made by admin who used their admin tools in what they believed to be a correct application of established process. BRD does not give editors the right to unilaterally overturn admin actions. The procedure is to discuss with the admin, then if you are not satisfied, take it to a review process (in this case WP:DRV).
  3. Please read WP:Consensus. It does require that every action to implement long-established guidelines be subject to prior discussion just because one lone editor in one topic area has unilaterally decided that their particular topic area should be subject to different rules. If you want to propose that tree-of-life categories be exempt from WP:C2D, then WP:RFC is thataway. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:00, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Article titles

One 'take home' from the above is that it matters even more that the title of an article is carefully chosen and discussed, since it's clear that whatever I might think, a taxonomic article at "X (plant)" will have to have a corresponding category "Category:X (plant)" even if there is no category at "Category:X". There are cases where the primary use of the genus name, for example, is clearly the plant, so we should probably be using the non-disambiguated name. I would argue that this applies to Alsophila (plant) – try a Google search. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

That explanation of naming principles is correct: the category name follows the article name, except in some rare cases where the category needs more disambiguation (e.g. article Birmingham, but Category:Birmingham, West Midlands).
So if the article is disambiguated, then the category will be.
As to the example of the ambiguous term Alsophila, I struggle to see how readers would be well-served by intentionally creating avoidable ambiguity in scientific terminology. But that is a matter for a WP:RM discussion, if you choose to open one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:06, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
There is a case for arguing that almost all potentially ambiguous titles should be disambiguated. As a resident of Birmingham, I think this title creates far more confusion than using "Alsophila" for the fern would, given the number of readers from the US and the relative interest in the city and the fern genus. (I regularly get caught out by Google searches that respond with "Birmingham, Alabama" when I meant "Birmingham, UK", including searches for shops and businesses, although I note that in the English Wikipedia, Birmingham has had 15% more page views in the last month than Birmingham, Alabama.) However, we have clear contrary guidelines at WP:AT:
If the article is about the primary topic to which the ambiguous name refers, then that name can be its title without modification, provided it follows all other applicable policies.
"Alsophila" follows all other applicable policies and is, arguably, the primary topic. So if "Birmingham (UK)" is at Birmingham, Alsophila (plant) can perfectly well be at "Alsophila".
Of course, BrownHairedGirl is perfectly free to open a discussion about WP:AT's approach to disambiguation.
The problem for me about insisting that the category for taxon "X" is "Category:X (DISAMBIG)" because the taxon is at "X (DISAMBIG)", even when "Category:X" is unused, is that it unnecessarily differentiates the category hierarchy from the taxonomic hierarchy (including taxonomy templates). Peter coxhead (talk) 10:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead, have no problem with WP:AT, so I have no need for a discussion.
However, you clearly do have an objection to WP:C2D. The problem here is that you have chosen to act disruptively by pursuing your objection as an attempt to stop the application of C2D to a whole topic area, rather than by seeking a consensus to change the guidance in the way that you would like.
And you really still don't seem to get the simple principle that category names follow article names. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:47, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: the simple principle that category names follow article names – perhaps now we might begin the discussion I was trying to have. "Simple principles" are fine, but they have to be considered in relation to particular cases and categories of cases; the devil is always in the details. I could say that you still don't seem to get the simple principle that taxonomic categories should follow taxonomy. The taxonomic hierarchy for Dracaena draco is shown in its taxobox, and a reader or editor could reasonably expect that the taxonomic categories would match. "Simple principles" are here in conflict. When "X" is a taxon name, and "Category:X" is unused, I see no reason why the plain category name can't be used. Insisting on total uniformity to rules, regardless of particular cases, is certainly not how the English Wikipedia normally works! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:00, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead, of course taxonomic categories should follow taxonomy. Your suggestion that I believe otherwise if a classic straw man, which is an obnoxiously manipulative style of discourse. Please do not do that.
The reason that the plain category name is not used in cases of ambiguity applies to all topics, and it is so very very very very very very very very very very simple that I am astonished you have not grasped it: ambiguous category names lead to miscategorisation.
Your choice to characterise this issue as some case of an inflexible rule is based on your stubborn refusal to understand this very simple issue.
You also seem to overlook the fact that WikiPedia is not restricted to taxonomy; it covers every other topic too. So while a particular taxonomic name may be unique in taxonomy, we do not have a separate namespace for taxonomy. The namespace is shared with every other topic under the sun, and our use of that namespace requires disambiguation in many cases.
So yes, of course we follow taxonomic names ... but in some cases the taxonomic name is ambiguous with another topic, so we may need to add a parenthetical disambiguator. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:15, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
Sigh. I wish you would discuss the issue, and not either accuse me of creating straw men or create them yourself. Of course we have to have disambiguators for taxon names. Why would I possibly dispute this? All I have said is that if the category name does not need to be disambiguated because the plain category name does not exist, there is a case for using the plain category name because this means the category hierarchy matches the taxonomic hierarchy. Now you can argue that this case is not strong enough because such names would confuse editors, which would be a sensible discussion point. I would respond that categories like "Category:Dracaena" and "Category:Alsophila" have been around quite a while, and don't seem to have caused any problems. But if you're not going to discuss the issue, there's no point in my trying to. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:26, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
For goodness sake, @Peter coxhead, you did create a straw man.
As to the substance, you appear to attempting to prove the dictum that the internet is a write-only medium.
This is very simple. The category name needs to be disambiguated for two very simple reasons:
  1. Category names consistently match article names so that editors can reliably determine the category name without guessing.
  2. Ambiguous category names lead to miscategorisation. I took the time to explain this to you 30 minutes before the post to which I am replying here[2], but you appear not to have even had the courtesy to read it before firing off again.
As to your final point ... Wikipedia is a work in progress. We don't preserve errors just because they haven't been fixed already. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
(1) is a restatement of the general principle, which we all understand. As for (2), I read your post, but I don't see any evidence for the claim that categories with non-disambiguated taxon names in them will lead to miscategorization. What articles were misclassified in "Category:Dracaena" or "Category:Alsophila"? We are going round in circles, because you insist that one principle fits all, and I want to at least consider whether this is the case.
No more from me unless someone makes a new point. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:42, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
Nobody retains any central log of fixed miscategorisations, so your demand for evidence is an impossibilist test. It's a sad addition to your straw men and failure to read replies.
As I noted to you before, there are about 2 million categories. Your want us to collect evidence on the usage of each one of them before applying a simple principle of clarity. I choose to assume that you are being intentionally absurdist, because the other interpretations are much less friendly. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:29, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
hang on a minute @BrownHairedGirl:, aren't you (at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Categories#Non-disambiguation_categories_with_eponymous_disambiguation_page_in_article_space) using the same arguement that Peter Coxhead uses to suggest Category:1300s remains where it is in apposition to 1300s (decade)? And similarly at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_June_23#Category:Goodwood you're proposing a category be renamed to that of a nonexistent article (Goodwood, West Sussex). Or am I reading this wrong? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:20, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi Cas Liber. It's sad to see that you are available as muscle to pile in on request.[3], ready to muddy the waters with a few extraneous issues.
Those are not equivalents. The issue with the decade categories is that disambiguating them would break the category navigation tools ({{Navseasoncats}} etc) used on hundreds of thousands of chronology categories. That does not apply here.
The issue with Goodwood is that we don't have a head article which covers the scope of the category. If there was such an article, they I would have speedied the category per WP:C2D rather than opening a discussion.
But hey, sling some muck about extraneous issues in the hope that some if it sticks. It's an old tactic, but I am sad to see you sinking to it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
Ultimately in this case I think BHG is correct regarding the genus Dracaena due to the term being used for both plants and lizards, though the plant term is the most notable by a long stretch. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Cas Liber, you get to the right answer, but for the wrong reasons. Like Peter, you miss the point here: the titles are decided in article space; per WP:C2D the categories follow. That ensures consistency and saves repeating the same discussion in another namespace. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:25, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
O-kay, I just wondered about the inconsistencies and asked about them - I even said you were right, and I get this as a reply. Fine, I have no further questions. @Peter coxhead: it might be worth looking at some disambiguation pages with plant genera. If it were not for the lizard genus, there'd be a good case for the plant genus being well and truly the most notable and hence in the primary slot. Recommend looking at article pages first then. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:41, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
My thoughts are in line with Cas's, for all that that's worth. - Dank (push to talk) 12:19, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Back to the issue

I've deliberately left this thread for a while, since it has got quite out of hand.

The major point I would like to make about the underlying issue is the following. Suppose I find an article on one of the 275 species of the fern genus Alsophila that is not categorized (or perhaps I have just created the article). If the article is Alsophila geluensis, say, then I would expect its main taxonomic category to be set up as Category:Alsophila|geluensis. Nowhere in the visible text of the article will I see any evidence that the category should be set up as Category:Alsophila (plant)|geluensis. If the move is made (or has already been made) then when all the Alsophila species articles exist, 275 articles have to be placed in Category:Alsophila (plant) just so that the one genus article at Alsophila (plant) can be put in a category matching its name. Now sometimes this may be necessary. Category:Alsophila may be preoccupied by a topic that has a better claim to use this non-disambiguated category title. But if this is not the case, as it isn't here, why will editors have to categorize at least 99.6% of the potential Alsophila articles in a clumsy way just to meet an abstract general principle? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@Homunculus: the point is that there isn't a category for the moth genus Alsophila. With only 13 species according to the article, it's sensible to categorize the genus and species at the subfamily Category:Alsophilinae as has been done (or even at the family).
If there were categories for both genera, then it would indeed be right to disambiguate them. I would never dispute that. But there aren't. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't matter, whether it exists or not. Someone could still add moth species to the plant species category, because it's ambiguous. Armbrust The Homunculus 13:13, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Since there is a taxonomic genus for ferns which shares a name with a taxonomic genus for moths, the scope for confusion is high. It is very odd to see a prolific contributor to a scientific topic defending easily-avoidable ambiguity.

Any editor who wants to categorise an article on a fern in the Alsophila plant genus can find the category name very simply, because it follows the name of the article. If they use WP:HotCat (which they should, because it makes categorisation much easier), then:

  • if there is no other category beginning with "Alsophila", HotCat will auto-complete the category name
  • if there is also a Category:Alsophila (moth) , then HotCat will display a menu to let the editor choose.

This is how category names are set up for every other topic: the category name is disambiguated to match the article name. Hundreds of other taxonomic categories are disambiguated in this way. I see no reason why taxonomic categories should be named less precisely than other topics, and many reasons why they should be more precise.

And it's notable that despite Peter raising this at multiple venues, no other editor has expressed any support for Peter Coxhead's desire for ambiguous category titles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Category search question

Latest comment: 4 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion

I would like to be able to find all articles down from a given category (Category:Plants say) which are categorized in any lower category and one of its parent categories. For example, to find any plant genus articles categorized in the genus category and the corresponding family category.

Does anyone know if this is possible? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:15, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

WP:PetScan? Abductive (reasoning) 04:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Maybe I'm just being dumb, but I couldn't see how to get PetScan to do what I wanted. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:57, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Not sure I understand exactly what you want, but does this search help: Category Poaceae (2 sublevels) AND Grasses (a parent, no subcategories)? —  Jts1882 | talk  12:22, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't think there's any efficient way to do it through PetScan. Searching different categories depths a la Jts1882 might work, but you'd need a separate query for every (sub)family (we are basically talking about genera that are in both a genus category and a subfamily/family category, right?). It'd be easier just to look in the family categories directly instead of running 100s of PetScan queries. I've thought of some other approaches via Petscan, but everything I've thought of requires some consistency that is currently lacking (not all genera are yet placed in "Fooaceae genera" categories, nor do all genera use automatic taxoboxes).
Maybe somehow via Wikidata? I'm not sure if there's any tool that could connect a search of category contents on en.wiki and a Wikidata query (Wikidata seems promising at least because it should be possible to search for categories that correspond to a particular taxonomic rank).
Removing species and genera from (sub)family categories when there is an existing category for the genus has been part of my work flow when converting to automatic taxoboxes. There shouldn't be very many genera in family categories instead of genus categories outside of the groups I haven't done automatic taxoboxes for (Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae, Rubiaceae, Rutaceae and a handful of smaller groups). However, I'm sure a few cases have emerged since I went through (fixed a case yesterday where somebody had just created a new genus category, but hadn't added the genus article to the eponymous category). Plantdrew (talk) 01:20, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: genus articles not being added to the eponymous category is a common issue. I am doing a big AWB run adding articles on all topics to their eponymous categories (~4,000 done already, ~3,000 still to do), and that has included many dozens of genus articles. Naturally, that work got the usual load of complaints from Peter Coxhead, who seems to complain about any changes relating to taxonomic categories: see my talk (permalink). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:01, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
The issue I was trying to highlight is not whether genus articles should be placed in the eponymous genus category if it exists – of course they should. The issue is whether they should also be placed in the next higher taxonomic category. The consensus written up and illustrated diagrammatically at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Categorization#Taxonomic categories says that plant articles should be placed in only two taxonomic categories: one 'classification' category, e.g. the genus or family category for a species, and one 'rank' category for taxa above species, e.g. 'genera of X' for genera. So plant genus articles should not be placed in both the eponymous genus category and another taxonomic category while this guidance stands. (As it happens, my personal preference would be slightly different from the consensus guidance, but we should all follow it until there is agreement to change it.)
BrownHairedGirl's addition of the eponymous genus category is indeed useful. I merely pointed out that when adding the eponymous genus category any parent taxonomic category should be removed, as in Plantdrew's action of removing species and genera from (sub)family categories when there is an existing category for the genus. It seems that it's difficult for BrownHairedGirl to do the removal because of the (semi)automated nature of the edits, so I wondered if we could find such dual categorization and fix it. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:26, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
The exceptionally verbose and convoluted page at WP:WikiProject Plants/Categorization does not address the question of eponymous categories, as outlined at WP:Categorization#Guidelines_for_articles_with_eponymous_categories.
That page at WP:WikiProject Plants/Categorization is almost entirely the work of Peter coxhead. I see no evidence that it is anything more than Peter's unsuccessful attempt to describe the category structure; there is no evidence that it has any wider support even as information page, let alone as a project guideline.
It would help a lot if Peter would take the time to read WP:Categorization#Guidelines_for_articles_with_eponymous_categories and understand why eponymous categories raise different issues to other categories, and see how mechanically applying a one-cat-per-article rule to articles eponymous categories impedes navigation:
  • If a category contains a set of articles on genera, then that category provides editors with a handy navigational tool: a list of all those genus articles.
  • If each genus which has an eponymous category is removed from the parent category, then the set of genera is broken up. A reader who wants to navigate between the articles on those genera can view each article only by first opening its eponymous subcategory. That's a nuisance.
Peter has not attempted to show any evidence that there is any consensus to remove articles on eponymous genera from the parent category, or that there is any navigational benefit in doing so. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:55, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
As BrownHairedGirl continues to choose to denigrate me, and imply that I did not seek consensus when writing up the project guidelines, I see no point in my continuing any discussion of this topic. I have removed this page from my watchlist for the present. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:31, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
If Peter coxhead has evidence to support his assertions, the collegial response would be to link to that evidence, instead of taking offence at the fact that his assertions are contested. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedians can choose to disengage from any conflict at any time, more or less (except as noted at WP:ADMIN); there's no requirement that they provide requested evidence, or even keep talking. (Of course, it can be hard to completely disengage.) There's nothing "uncollegial" about disengaging, and sometimes it's the smart choice. If something's worth fighting over, someone will fight for it, eventually. (Apart from that, I don't have anything to offer here, I'm well outside my areas of competence, such as they are.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
The tree structure on the WP Plants Categorization page is in pretty widespread use among those of us active in creating/editing plant and other taxon articles. It makes sense to me, doesn't appear to be in violation of anything at WP:EPON (where it's just listed as one of three potential options), and I really hope people's time isn't spent trying to change it on any mass scale... ⁠—Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:03, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Herbarium Voucher Reference Template

Latest comment: 4 years ago17 comments7 people in discussion

Hi All - I was wondering if there is a standard Wikipedia reference template (similar to Template:Cite journal for journal references) for herbarium specimen vouchers? If not, would someone who is more wiki-talented than me like to create one? Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 13:17, 27 June 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1

Can you give an example of what you want to cite? It seems to me that you would actually be citing a source referring to the voucher rather than the voucher itself. Assuming it is on the web then {{cite web}} could be used. There are also others like {{cite report}} and {{cite document}}. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Sure {{cite web}} could be used, but I was thinking that a "cite voucher" might be more useful. First, there are times when a web page has multiple vouchers displayed and it becomes cumbersome to reference a specific one (it's like trying use "cite web" for a journal's website rather than citing a specific paper). Second, it would allow the collector and/or person who made the identification to be referenced and properly credited. As you say, if such a template were created the source of the voucher, along with the other essential information should also be captured - something like
  • Genus species name
  • voucher number
  • collector
  • collector's number
  • collection date
  • determiner (i.e. the person who made the taxonomic identification)
  • determination date
  • source (e.g. Kew Garden Herbarium)
  • url

Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 13:05, 28 June 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1

@Gcopenhaver1: I can make something along those lines. But I will need an example (with url link) and the formatted output you want for that example. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:32, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Given that a herbarium voucher is a primary source, why would one ever be cited at all, let alone used on a regular basis? Abductive (reasoning) 16:14, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
@Gcopenhaver1: what information in the article would you actually reference via the voucher? I can see that a link to an online scan of a herbarium sheet might be useful in the list of external links, but as Abductive says, it can't really be used to support article content without either running into problems with WP:PST or WP:OR more generally. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:20, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
The guideline says All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors. If a primary source is stating something factual like geographical distribution, colour and shape of leaf, or any other purely descriptive element, then it doesn't fall foul of the guideline. —  Jts1882 | talk  19:32, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: Thanks for helping! Yes, I'm familiar with the primary/secondary guidelines and as you suggest, my interest was in referencing the factual data recorded on the voucher. My suggestion for the information that should go in the template is the following but, I'm all ears in terms of other suggestions.
Template: Cite Herbarium Voucher
  • Taxa name - Rosa arvensis
  • voucher number - K000730241
  • collector last1 - Gandoger (the template should allow for multiple collectors, like cite journal allows of multiple authors)
  • collector first1 - M. (the template should allow for multiple collectors, like cite journal allows for multiple authors)
  • collector's number - 320
  • collection date - August 1879 (not sure what the best way to handle dates is, sometimes d/m/y is given, others just m/y, others just y)
  • determiner - n.d. (in this example, not listed)
  • determination date - n.d. (in this example, not listed)
  • source - Kew Royal Botanical Gardens
  • url - http://apps.kew.org/herbcat/detailsQuery.do?barcode=K000730241
Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 20:47, 30 June 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1
@Gcopenhaver1: can you give an example of the factual information you would source to the herbarium sheet? If it's identified as the type specimen, then the collector's name and date, I guess. I have seen editors source things like leaf shape to illustrations or specimens, but this is widely agreed to be unacceptable. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: Hi. My interest was in referencing factual information typically recorded on the voucher label. An example of this could include the collection site (for older vouchers this might be a nearby village or a geographic feature like a named mountain, for newer ones it might be GPS coordinates). Another possible example could be habitat data recorded on the label such as the soil type the specimen was observed growing in. I was NOT interested in using the template for primary interpretive purposes like the leaf shape example you give. Is that the clarification you were looking for? Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 21:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1
Coordinates are inappropriate in article on a species. I personally removed some from the five millionth article. The kind of detail you're talking about would be useful for a Master's thesis project. But if secondary sources don't care about the collection site or whatever, Wikipedia shouldn't either. Abductive (reasoning) 04:09, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Abductive: Apologies. I was careless in how I wrote my reply. You are right that specific GPS coordinates would most likely be too fine grained for the typical article describing a species. I meant rather that if one wanted to put information in a Habitat and Distribution section (a common section in articles describing plant species), and wanted to say that it had been observed growing in Peru (just to pick a random place) one could reference the collection location information on the voucher label. In any case, perhaps this conversation is drifting a bit from what to include in the potential citation template (a topic that is probably manageable here), to policing uses that haven't even occurred yet (a topic that maybe isn't manageable here)?Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 12:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1
The concern is that introducing a way to make citing a primary source easier will get users believing that it is good to put primary sources in articles, when in fact it is bad. Abductive (reasoning) 14:45, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Abductive: With respect, I disagree. I see no difference in creating a reference template to cite facts recorded in a Herbarium voucher and a reference template to cite facts recorded in a research paper. I agree that interpretative analysis (like the leaf shape example used earlier) is outside of Wikipedia guidelines, but that type of misuse is not unique to the proposed template - it can happen with any reference source. In any case, I've suggested the template and given possible template elements. If the WikiProject Plants community thinks creating such a template is a step on the road to perdition who I am to say differently? I'm happy to leave the idea in the hands of others at this point.Gcopenhaver1 (talk) 18:09, 1 July 2020 (UTC)Gcopenhaver1
I can't swear I haven't been tempted into doing this myself, but I generally think a citation that has to be made directly to an herbarium voucher, e.g., to establish its distribution in a certain area, is a bad idea. If you have a voucher for Folius anthropophagus from Peru but there's no secondary source that describes it as occurring in Peru, it's possible that a) the specimen was misdetermined, or determined using a taxon circumscription that is no longer current or b) the specimen was mislabeled and the locality was not accurate. The same would apply to some of your other suggestions—e.g., someone mistaking serpentine bedrock for limestone in the field could cause a misinterpretation of substrate preferences. (I refer here to some of Willard Eggleston's collections in Vermont.) Secondary sources, of course, can get it wrong, too, but philosophically we find it safer to rely on the judgment of the professional author of a secondary source than the judgment of an editor; presumably, too, that author has reviewed many specimens in compiling their work and hence is in a better position to judge whether a particular specimen is worthy of closer scrutiny. Do you have a concrete example of a fact you need to establish based on a voucher rather than a secondary source? Choess (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. Voucher specimens fall into the realm of scientists and them summarizing what they are with their expertise in secondary sources. We as anonymous editors can't really do anything with voucher specimens directly (even WP:EXPERT editors don't get special privileges in that regard). This level of detail seems to be outside the scope of the encyclopedia in terms of WP:NOTCATALOGUE. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:37, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Hmmm. I've used herbarium specimens as references dozens, if not hundreds of times. I use them for lots of info, including vetting databases/secondary sources, especially regarding biodiversity in Central and South America, or just to provide a link to the holotype for the completeness of the article. I used cite web to cite a specific specimen in a database of an herbarium/museum, for example an iguana stored at the MNHN, but for some GBIF records or database sets I have just c&ped the template given there. Am agnostic of the belief that when info, like the name of a collector, is repackaged it suddenly becomes kosher. Sure they need to be used very carefully, but there is often very useful info found in herbarium vouchers, and it can be quite hard to find info otherwise on certain organisms in certain countries. Sure collectors make mistakes, but as often as not I find that secondary sources make mistakes, especially regarding spelling or distributional records, or USA people getting Hispanic/Portuguese names wrong. While we might want Wikipedia to be devoid of mistakes, it will happen anyway, and as long as everything is referenced properly, does it really matter if a mistake is in an article came from something we call a primary or a secondary source? And insofar something is called "secondary" has long been fuzzy and uncomfortable to me regarding Wikipedia: we cite data directly from the results of some study, accept taxonomic changes on the strength of a single article, etc.? Leo Breman (talk) 22:25, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Protea

Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments3 people in discussion

An editor who appears to be Dtt1 appears to be creating a large number of articles on species of the genus Protea that do not have infoboxes and are in need of editing. On the one hand, we would like to have articles on all of the million or so species of organisms. On the other hand, these articles appear to need work. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:53, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

See also AN/I thread here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass-deletion of blocked user. It galls me to have three dozen of these uglies sit in mainspace now. Could project members comment on whether it would be preferable to nuke & repopulate as stubs, or to turn each of these messy info-drops into something with structure? That would require near-complete scrapping of text due to grammar issues, checking through all refs, taxobox, sections, cats. My take would be mass delete and start over. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:14, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
The articles appear to have been translated, word for word, from Afrikaans Wikipedia. I can read Afrikaans fine. How about I fix grammar, check translation and references? A brief look at the references and they seem fine. Someone else can do the taxobox and cats? Leo Breman (talk) 08:36, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Great, if you want to go to that trouble! I can see to boxes and cats then. If the provided sources are consistent enough across articles to know which contains which type of info, maybe you can even turn them into inline cites? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:33, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Just finished Protea glabra. I already changed everything to inline cites and put in the taxobox myself. Unfortunately each source needs to be checked because I found two mistakes, so this is more work than I figured. I didn't do cats. How about I write the ones I complete on my talk page to save clutter here? Leo Breman (talk) 14:59, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Sounds good. Thanks. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
@Leo Breman: Should these be moved to/set up for common name article titles? Presumably these names are sufficiently in use. Otherwise, if we stick with scientific names, the lede should probably be the other way round (bolded italics, followed by "commonly known as" bolded common name). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:20, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm personally a fan of Latin. I think I like your suggestion more, so I'll change the lede -it fits better with the rest of Wikipedia. One of the quirks of South Africa is that there are officially mandated vernacular names for plant species in the main languages. ...Funnily, whomever translated this included grammatical curiosities from Afrikaans like a double cupola (i.e. "the plant is tall is"). Leo Breman (talk) 16:32, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Eish :p --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:22, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Eh, what should I do if I come across text which was translated from Afrikaans wiki, appears correct, but cannot be cited to any of the given sources? Leo Breman (talk) 13:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Remove, I'd say - even if it seems correct from your experience. Follow the sources and all that. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:29, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Nylandtia

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I decided to try to expand the article Muraltia. I eventually found this. How should I cover this former genera? Username6892 03:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Nylandtia is already a redirect. I'd don't see any pressing need for any more coverage beyond what's already at Muraltia. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:39, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Recent edits at Gomphia saw the article being tagged for red links and then all red links in the species list removed. This doesn't seem right: the guidance at WP:REDLINKS emphasises redlinking articles likely to be created and preventing orphans. Given that many other plant genus and list articles have lists with all red links, I wanted to hear what others think of this. In case there are further "cleanups" of this kind. Thanks Declangi (talk) 17:54, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I quite agree, species redlinks should be kept in genus pages. When I wanted to expand the Bouteloua genus, I used the redlinks to find articles that needed pages. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
I've reverted the removal of redlinks. All species are potentially notably articles. —  Jts1882 | talk  19:53, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Kale in Scandinavia

Latest comment: 4 years ago15 comments5 people in discussion

Hello, Wikiproject. I was looking at Kale, and noticed it had no articles in Swedish, Danish or Norwegian (Icelandic, though). This seemed a little odd, and after some clicking I decided that Grönkål/Grønkål was close enough, and tried to add them. This led to Wikidata, but there I'm told that no, these belong to a different Wikidata item Brassica oleracea var. sabellica (Q61676627), which doesn't have an English WP-article, but several in other languages.

So I come here, seeking experts. Should some sort of merging be done, or is this how it should be? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Kale is Acephala Group. According to commons (on Brassica oleracea) this is divided into smaller groups of which one is Sabellica Group (aka var. sabellica), which is curly kale. I know nothing of Danish or Swedish vernacular usage, so I can't help you any further. Lavateraguy (talk)
Edit conflict. Hi there. The recent use of English word "kale" is a bit ambiguous -it's basically a headless cabbage which isn't a broccoli, as such American collards and East African sukuma would be "kale", but the "kale" commercially popularised recently are basically the (non-traditional) short-stemmed, autumn-harvested, curly-leaved varieties long grown in Europe under a variety of local names: grönkål/grønkål/boerenkool/krulkool/grünkohl. Traditional cultivars were more diverse; smooth-leaved forms exist and tall, winter-harvested varieties were more popular before mechanical harvesting became feasible. Regarding the taxonomy; most kales (Russian kales belong to Brassica napus) could be classified as B. oleracea var. laciniata and/or B. oleracea var. sabellica, or be classified as Acephala group or convariety. Should these first two be seen as synonyms, both laciniata and sabellica were published in the same 1753 work by Linnaeus, but laciniata has priority as it was published first by dint of being a few lines up from sabellica. Linnaeus refers to the large savoy-like cabbage cultivar described in this 1611 work as sabellica, with laciniata Linnaeus originally meant a tall, red-coloured, mostly smooth-leafed kale cultivar as described by Bauhin and Cherler in the 1650s here or Dodonaeus in 1644. Modern Italian kales were placed in var. palmifolia by De Candolle after being developed in the 18th century. My vote is to forget about all that and place all kales, collards and similar in the Acephala group as advised by Kew. Leo Breman (talk) 22:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Kale in Swedish is grönkål, and there is an article on the Swedish wiki but for some reason it's not linked to the English article. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:34, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
The linking to other language Wikipedias is done through Wikidata and the data model requires a one-to-one correspondence between names and articles, unlike real life. So the Swedish article is linked to kale (Q61676627) while the English one is linked to kale (Q45989). So in the end kale articles are split between those using the scientific name (Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, etc) and others using the common name (kale in English, Chou kale in French, Grünkohl in German). Not ideal but nothing we can do. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:07, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
We could merge the two wikidata entries (kale (Q45989) and kale (Q61676627)), but given the discussion above, I'm not sure that is the right thing to do. Can the plant taxonomists weigh in on whether a merge would be correct? AFAICT, there is no wikidata entry for B. oleracea var. laciniata. There is, however, Acephala group (Q4673093). Please advise whether any of these should be merged: I'm happy to do the merge/cleanup. — hike395 (talk) 13:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
At first glance I'd merge with Acephala group (Q4673093), classifying cultivar groups as botanical varieties is passé. Except I read up on the USA kale industry a day or two ago and it seems I've made some wrong assumptions in what I wrote above. In the USA, as of 2012, only two cultivars made up all most all production, and one of these, 'Siberian Dwarf', is actually not a real kale but B. napus, a type of canola! So in this case I would suggest merging with (kale (Q45989). The other cultivar is a modern short-stemmed kale of Scottish origin, forgot the name. (Also it turns out to my surprise that in the USA harvesting is not done mechanically (the process is called maaien, mowing, in Dutch), but leaves are picked by hand by farm labourers. Cheap labour!) Leo Breman (talk) 14:07, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, kale (Q45989) is a food product that arises from multiple species. To me, that means that it should not be merged with any one species or variety. Instead, I think we need to figure out which of the articles in many language is about the food (or food plants), and which are about specific species or varieties, and then sort them into the correct wikidata entity. Does that sound good? — hike395 (talk) 04:11, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
It looks like the English Wikipedia Kale article is connected to the correct Wikidata item (kale (Q45989)). Both are about the food item. The Kale article doesn't even mention the species or variety in the text. This is only in the infobox, which mentions Brassica oleracea and acephala group.
The acephala group article implies that the groups apply to all Brassica species without a central head (opening sentence), not just those of Brassica oleracea. The next sentence says These are included within the species Brassica oleracea, such as Kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala)., which is unclear to me. Is it saying all acephelas are in this species (it seems to) or that those within the species are kales. Leo Breman's comment above says Russian kale is another species and I interpret this to mean it would be Brassica napus var. acephala.
The section on "Groups of cultivars" suggests that the groups apply across species, listing Mabberley's and Kew groups. The Kew reference reads as if the groups only apply only to the oleracea species
Overall, I'm confused, which is not uncommon when I read about varieties and cultivars. The English wikipedia articles also don't explain where B. oleracea var. sabellica fits in. Leo's comment suggests to me that this is an alternative naming system, which is being used in a number of other language Wikipedias. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:18, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's all very confusing, but 1. YES: kale (Q45989) is a word which represents a food product that arises from at least two species, at least in American English. 2. BUT: in many northwestern European countries words like kail (Lowland Scots), boerenkool (Dutch), grönkål (Swedish), etc... these words really only represent the Brassica oleracea Acephala group cultivars in local usage. 3. cultivar groups taxonomically separated as botanical varieties should be discouraged, as the delimitations are fuzzy. For example: sukuma (East Africa), tronchuda or couve-galega (Portuguese) and chou cavalier (French) have all been placed in either var. tronchuda or costata, as well as all the general taxonomic varieties for kales/collards in general. There is also the variety viridis, which is also used for kales/collards in general, only collards in general, or the above mentioned cabbages specifically. Brussel sprouts, which are a recently developed cultivar group created by hybridising two other varieties, have also been given a taxonomic ranking, which makes little scientific sense. 4. Dodonaeus specifically states that sabellica is a savoy cabbage (which he says has white flowers (???) and in his time was not a closed cabbage). 5. That a cultivar group applies across species is something I've never heard of before -I'm down with Kew's interpretation. Russian kales/leafy canolas have been classified as B. napus var. pabularia. 6. The usage of some English words is taxonomically challenging... I get the idea that if my mother ate a smooth-leaved Acephala in the USA, it would be called a collard, but if my dad ate it, it would be kale!

How this is to be organised into a taxonomic database is a difficult problem! Leo Breman (talk) 10:29, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the confusion over whether the cultivars groups applies across species may be due to species splits since Mabberley. It looks like his cultivar groups include the eight currently assigned to Brassica oleracea by Kew and seven others. According to the RHS at least two (Perviridis and Rapifera groups) belong to Brassica rapa and B. rapa also has varieties corresponding to japonica and pekinensis. The Brassica rapa article has perviridis and chinensis as subspecies and rapifera as a variety. The article on Rutabaga has it as species Brassica napus and cultivar group Napobrassica and the rapeseed article mentions that siberian kale is B. napus var. pabularia.
So my guess is that Mabberley's cultivar groups are now spread across at least three species. So who has a copy of Mabberley? Peter coxhead? —  Jts1882 | talk  13:01, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
On further reflection, I think the information in the Acephala group article is wrong. Mabberley (1997 googlebooks, p99-100) has the same eight groups in B. oleracea as Kew does now in POWO. The Napobrassica and Pabularia groups are in B. napus, the Chinensis, Pekinensis and Rapifera groups in B. rapa, and there is no mention of Japonica or Perviridis groups. Am I reading this correctly? —  Jts1882 | talk  16:08, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
I think you're reading it correctly, this classification is quite acceptable to me. Leo Breman (talk) 22:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to fix Acephala group, but I've made an attempt at fixing Wikidata. Reading through the translations of the articles, I've associated da:Grønkål (Danish), hsb:Zeleny kał (Upper Sorbian), nds-nl:Mous (Dutch Low Saxon), nds:Gröönkohl (Low Saxon), nl:Boerenkool (groente) (Dutch), no:Grønnkål (Norwegian Bokmål), ru:Кудрявая капуста (Russian), sk:Kel kučeravý (sabellica) (Slovenian), sv:Grönkål (Swedish), uk:Капуста Кейл (Ukranian) with kale (Q61676627). All other articles are associated with kale (Q45989). Some of these were ambiguous stubs, so per Leo Breman, if the language was in NE Europe or Scandinavia, I erred on the side of kale (Q61676627). I hope this is ok: let me know. — hike395 (talk) 06:42, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I found a table in Vegetables of Canada linking the varieties and groups (which predate Mabberley). Most groups have a one-to-one relation with a variety, but the Acephala group includes var. sabellica (Scotch kale, curled kitchen kale), var. viridis [=var. acephala] (kale, collards, borecole) and var. medullosa (marrow-stemed kale). It seems the type of kale is important for the variety assignment. The vegetable I (in UK) associate with kale seems to be Scotch kale (var. sabellica) rather than North American style and might fit with the other European varieties being sabellica. However, the table in the Brassica_oleracea article has a picture of Boerenkool described as var. viridis in the kale row. I think it probably should be sabellica or have both varieties mentioned for kale. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
Look, these varietal names are just not being applied consistently. Boerenkool is being classified as lacinata in the Dutch article. medullosa looks like another synonym for Portuguese-type kales with thicker midribs. Note GRIN is following Song, K. et al. (1988, 1990), that's likely where that Canadian book got it from. Not only that, it's conceit to give a group of cultivated crops varietal status. I'd stick with the Group stuff, lower bar. Leo Breman (talk) 18:29, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Reference Error on Article Suggestion

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello team - I am not familiar with your templates, but on this article Limosella acaulis it comes up with a reference list missing. The reason being is that there is a <ref> tag attached to status_ref in the template 'Speciesbox'. I am not sure how to correct this, so I wanted to bring it to your attention. Please feel free to ping me on how to fix this so if I run into in the future, I won't need to bother you. Thanks, Bakertheacre Chat/What I Baked 23:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

  Done --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:39, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Old article

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello again and sorry to bother you. I came across this one as reference list missing - it was created on August 27, 2007, was not touched by a human until September 30, 2008 (bots had done some minor things) and then a couple sporadic edits since then (about 2-3 a year). The article is pretty much blank. Here is the article.

Malleastrum

Thanks, Bakertheacre Chat/What I Baked 23:26, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I've added the list of species from POWO. The one species with an article was listed as a synonym in POWO and was last assessed by the IUCN in 1998, so the genus is not just neglected on Wikipedia. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:25, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

List of Protea species

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Redundancy?: List of Protea species and here. Leo Breman (talk) 07:47, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Progress report on missing genera from PoWO

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It has been one month since I created the list of missing genera from POWO. In that month, 69 stubby articles have been created, mostly by me. That is 2% of the 3416, which means that at this rate the list will be finished by September 2022. I am considering improvements to the list to make it easier for people to choose ones to work on. Abductive (reasoning) 20:35, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

PoWO

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Is there any way to download or otherwise obtain the entire PoWO dataset? Abductive (reasoning) 19:07, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

There is access to their API using Pykew. Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with python so am not sure if it can do what you want. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:24, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Lists of specific epithets

Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion

I'm ready to start moving my lists into article space, starting with this one (but it still needs a lead section). Happy to take any questions, and I've got a couple myself:

  • Does anyone object to the English nouns in the third column offered as translations of Latin adjectives? Latin generally doesn't allow using a noun to modify another noun attributively like English does. (See wikt:Category:Latin relational adjectives to see how Latin changes nouns into relational adjectives.) A lot of English nouns don't usually take suffixes before other nouns ... we say "whip saw" (or whipsaw) and "iron ore", not "whip-like saw" and "ironic ore", so I've translated flagellaris and ferreus as "whip" and "iron".
  • Also: any objections to using very short translations, usually just one word? I'm following the approach that's used in List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, as well as in Coombes's book (aside from parenthetical comments). This approach is also used generally for quick translations in lead sections, tables, infoboxes, and anywhere else in Wikipedia where people are trying to be succinct. I don't have anything against careful, nuanced definitions ... I just think that the relevant articles are the right place to have those debates (if there are debates). - Dank (push to talk) 22:22, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
A technical point: for botanical binomials, the second part is a "specific epithet". "Cyrtanthus falcatus" is the species name or the specific name, "falcatus" is the specific epithet, and is not a name. (For zoological binomials, the second part is a name.) If the list is only for ICNafp names, then call them "specific epithets"; if it's for ICNafp and ICZN names, then "specific epithets or names" is the best, I think.
Another well-discussed issue is what is meant by "Latin and Greek" in this context. All scientific names are (neo)Latin. Some such names are of Greek origin and have been Latinized. So if your list is for plants only, it is a "List of specific epithets of Latin or Greek origin".
Be warned that some editors (not me) have argued against giving meanings for specific epithets removed from the context of the full name. Personally, I think that this list is useful and very well sourced, but it may not be totally uncontroversial for this reason. An interesting example I noticed in your list is fenestralis. So far as I am aware, for plants this does always mean "windowed" in the sense of some part of the plant, usually the leaves, having or appearing to have openings like windows. However, for at least one animal, the spider Amaurobius fenestralis, it means "of windows" in the sense of occurring on or near windows. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Very helpful, thanks! You're right, I wasn't careful enough; the fourth column does have species names (such as Sarcochilus falcatus), and I'll rewrite to be consistent on this point. Btw, for each epithet, I checked all seven of my main sources and also skimmed every English Wikipedia article of more than 200 words with the "Taxonomy/Plantae" template that had that epithet in the page title, to see if there was any (sourced) evidence that I needed a different translation ... and that process did affect my choice of words, more than a few times. If someone objects to the notion of offering translations from Latin and Latinised Greek, then I'd invite them to tell me which translations don't seem to fit so that we could weigh the pros and cons. I think the arguments in favor of doing something are solid. - Dank (push to talk) 13:31, 3 July 2020 (UTC) ALso changed the section title. - Dank (push to talk) 13:37, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
With the caveat that there might be some tweaking necessary as discussed above, I personally would find this an enormously helpful resource. Gcopenhaver1 talk 13:19, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks kindly. I absolutely want people to edit if they see something that looks off ... I'm not saying I won't complain, but I won't be a jerk about it. :) - Dank (push to talk) 13:31, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm planning to try to get these lists through the Featured List process. The big question there will be ... which entries should show up in these lists? I think there's a straightforward answer ... all the non-proper, non-synonymous adjectives and nouns from Stearn's Dictionary and the Harrison and Coombes books. I don't see how it could be less, or more ... Gledhill is indiscriminate, Brown covers a lot more than plants, and the glossary in Stearn's Botanical Latin is labelled "vocabulary" (and that's what it is). I'm aware of some sources I'm not using, but AFAIK I have good reasons not to use them ... Quattrocchi's CRC World Dictionary, for instance, costs around $1400, which would be a problem for me as well as the reviewers. If you guys or future reviewers disagree, I'm totally open to changing the rules for what to include ... but if so, then please disagree sooner rather than later. - Dank (push to talk) 18:22, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm going to put Common-adjective plant epithets (E–H) and similar pages up at WP:FLC soon ... all comments are welcome. If FLC doesn't work out, then I'll add some material and use WP:GAN instead. In general, it's hard to get lists of words through review processes ... if you stick too close to the words the sources use, reviewers can object on the grounds of copyright infringement, or close paraphrasing, or just generally not producing something of value. If you deviate, people can object that you're not accurately representing the sources. I think what saves us in this case is the quality and consistency of the best sources, along with Lewis's 19th-century corpus of Classical sources. Still, reasonable people can differ on what approaches to take, and I'll try to adapt to any comments you guys or the reviewers want to offer, as long as we can come up with a consistent approach, and as long as you tell me what you want early in the process. (There's a lot of work involved ... I'll be open to new ideas for a while, but later on, not so much.) It's also up to you guys what we do with the results ... I'd be perfectly happy to never, or sometimes, add words from these lists to existing species articles, but I do plan to use these words in species lists that I create, eventually. - Dank (push to talk) 13:42, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Just noting that I got a request at Talk:Common-adjective plant epithets (E–H) to put everything into one huge list. Thoughts are welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 13:10, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Moved to List of descriptive plant epithets per a reviewer's suggestion. If the page moves again, I'll include a redirect from this link. - Dank (push to talk) 13:39, 14 July 2020 (UTC) Residing temporarily at User:Johnboddie/List of descriptive plant epithets (A–H) ... he wants to work on A through D in his userspace. - Dank (push to talk) 15:00, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

New flora list for Utah

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

I've created List of flora of Utah. I know there are other plants that need to be added, and I'm working through a couple lists I have and adding appropriate entries. Anyone who wants to help is appreciated. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:43, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I've being playing with pykew (accessing the POWO API) and managed to get a list of 2926 accepted species for Utah. I can't guarantee the search is accurate (I'm very early on the learning curve), but the few I checked seem to be correct. Would the list be useful? —  Jts1882 | talk  09:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
I hadn't realised you can search locations in POWO. A search for accepted species in Utah gets 2927 results. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:32, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that list would be helpful. I've been mainly going through some cats here that are related, checking possible entries against the USDA plants profile if the article here doesn't say anything about Utah (and we have some things they don't), and then adding any that appear to be in Utah because of those things (either a mention her in an article or listed as being in Utah on the USDA profile). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
If you haven't already seen this - Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Utah (excluding grasses and allies)
The USDA Plants Database gives a list of 15690 names, but that includes genera, synonyms and infraspecific taxa, and the number of species in the list will be far lower. It still gives quite a few taxa that you don't have. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
I've been checking individual plants, but I haven't looked at those lists specifically. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Notability

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi, is there a written notability criteria for plants? I come across cultivar articles like Tillandsia 'Wo' and wonder whether it's even worth having an article on them. Zindor (talk) 20:05, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  • This has been discussed and the answer seems to be that a cultivar must pass the WP:GNG to have an article. Regular species can have a one-sentence stub like that, but such cultivars should be redirected to a "List of Foo cultivars". If such a list doesn't exist it's because nobody wants to take on the work involved. Abductive (reasoning) 23:26, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

New vascular plant list

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A preprint announcing a new vascular plant list.

https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3230396/component/file_3230397/content

If you follow links you get to a 145Mb text file. (It might be a TSV file.) I don't see a web interface. There is an R interface if anyone knows R. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

The Checklist of Ferns and Lycophytes of the World website has has the intriguing message "COMPLETELY NEW WEBSITE WITH COMPLETE WORLD FLORA AVAILABLE IN 3-4 WEEKS, THEREFORE UPDATES TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED" since April 1st. Could they be referring to the same project? —  Jts1882 | talk  06:11, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Are these fruit trees?

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to ask whether it is correct to add Jackfruit, Syzygium samarangense (Java apple/Jumbu) and Annona squamosa (Custard apple/Nonang) into the Fruit trees category. I was recalling some fruits common to Malaysia that grow on trees, but most of them seem absent from the category, so I would like to double check first.

Aaronshenhao (talk) 12:51, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Technical point - lists and categories are different things on Wikipedia; fruit trees is a list. (Should it be renamed as list of fruit trees?)
Annona squamosa is already in the list, as sugar-apple. There's an argument that Annona squamosa should replace that, but perhaps that argument can be taken to Talk:fruit tree.
In general fruit tree in this context is a tree that bears a fleshy fruit (or false fruit) that is used for human consumption; anything that fits that definition would seem to be appropriate to be added. The relative absence of Malaysian fruit trees is likely to be an artefact of the geographical distribution of editors. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Neurada

Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion

I just created a stub on Neurada, and PoWO says the author is B.Juss. but the citation is "C.Linnaeus, Sp. Pl.: 441 (1753)". What gives? Abductive (reasoning) 23:30, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

POWO is based on the International Plant Names Index [4]. All genus names in Species plantarum are treated as having been validly published on 1. May 1753, although the descriptions were published later. In Genera plantarum (ed. 5, 1754, and ed. 6, 1764), follow the descriptions of the genera. IPNI cites a nomenclatural note: Gen. Pl. ed. 5. 199. 1754. And here, Linné attributes the authorship of the name Neurada to B. Jussieu. --Thiotrix (talk) 09:28, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
So, as long as I copypaste what PoWO says, my articles will be correct? Abductive (reasoning) 09:56, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
No. POWO is not free from errors.
The botanical community settled on the 1753 edition of Species Plantarum as the starting point for botanical nomenclature. (Thiotrix above points out a detail that I was unaware of.) For a considerable period people would occasionally cite earlier uses of names. Those names are no longer considered validly published, but some might have gotten in the databases.
I can see two alternatives for this particular case - either Linnaeus was citing a pre-1753 work by Bernard Jussieu, in which case the correct form would be L. (or B.Juss. ex L.), or that Bernard Jussieu was a collaborator who provided the description for Neurada, in which case the correct form would be B.Juss. In the latter case Linnaeus having used the generic name earlier in Species Plantarum muddies the water. Genera Plantarum doesn't seem to be specific as to what work by Bernard Jussieu is being cited, so I have gotten any further in clarifying the situation. (Lots of other names in Genera Plantarum has citations to earlier works, but Linnaeus is the authority for the genus, e.g. Linnaeus gives Lavatera Tournef. A.G. 1706, t. 3, but IPNI ascribes the name to Linnaeus, with records for both Species Plantarum of 1753 and Genera Plantarum of 1754.)
The assignment to B.Juss. in IPNI could be an error; we could ask their nomenclatural expects. The first question is should Neurada B.Juss. be Neurada L. The second is about inconsistencies between citations of genera to Sp. Pl. (1753) and Gen. Pl. (1754). I'd want to check what the code says before contacting them about the latter. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:36, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Google Scholar finds a paper "Karyological aspects of the genus Neurada L. (Neuradaceae JG Agardh)", etc. Numbers are 26 hits with Neurada L. and 2 with Neurada B.Juss. The latter two are duplicates, but there may well also be duplicates among the 26. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Maybe Linné cites his 1742 work Caroli Linnaei medic. & botanic. in Acad. Upsallensis Profess. Reg. & Ord. Genera plantarum Gen. ed. II., page 185, where Jussieu is named too (as author for Tribulastrum). But in Species Plantarum, Linné cites "Hort. ups. 117".--Thiotrix (talk) 13:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
That's possible. I think that would make the Gen. Pl. attribution to Jussieu a misattribution - as in Jussieu may have described the taxon, but apparently didn't author the name Neurada. BHL doesn't offer any pre-1800 usages of Tribulastrum, unless you start looking that OCR errors such as Tribulaftrum and worse.
Hort. Ups. (1748 edn.) doesn't mention Jussieu at all. Neurada procumbens has a citation to the phrase name Chamaedrifolia tomentosa mascarienis of Pluk.(enet) and Schaw.
I'm 90% sure that Neurada B.Juss. is an error, but I don't have a proof. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Back on the 18th of July I pulled a list of genera authored by L. from PoWO, and Neurada was on it. Now the same search doesn't have it, which means they changed it to B.Juss in the last few days. Abductive (reasoning) 00:50, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
I come to same conclusion as Lavateraguy. After a few tries I still can't figure out who Schaw. is, but he must have gone to Arabia based on Linnaeus. In 1696 Plukenet describes Chamaedrifolia tomentosa mascarienis being sent to England from Egypt by one D. Alexander Brown. The word mascarienis likely refers to Mascara, Algeria, then part of the Ottoman Empire. B.Juss almost has to be a mistake by Linnaeus, perhaps he is referring to the private correspondence the two had together? In the 1759 work by Bernard de Jussieu published after his death by his cousin, he classifies it, spelled as Nevrada, in his Rosaceae. The German wikipedia has a pretty complete list of his publications, there's nothing in there which looks promising from before the Hortus Upsaliensis. In that work Linnaeus says hospitatur in vaporario, semina missa a clarif. Jussiaeo, which if I read it correctly means the plant grew as an accidental in the greenhouse at Upsala, and that he sent seeds to de Jussieu for clarification, so it is clear the two men at least corresponded about it, and furthermore that it was likely de Jussieu who identified it for Linnaeus. Linnaeus also says a plant being called Dryadis is certainly a synonym, so that name could be researched as well... Leo Breman (talk) 16:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Rescue the page for Gastrodia gunatillekeorum.

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This page may be deleted. Here's why.

 
Article life cycle

Help me upgrade this page to class C or it has a high chance of being deleted. Vihaking277 (talk) 09:57, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

If it's a valid species then it meets notability criteria and will be kept even if only a stub. The question here is whether is is accepted as a valid species. There is a primary source and some media coverage, but none of the usual authorities seem to recognise it yet, at least according to the empty {{taxonbar}}. If it gets mentioned in any of the databases (POWO, WFO, etc) then that will ensure the article is safe from deletion. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:24, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Has anyone else suggested deleting it?
The fact that it got past Articles For Creation implies a fairly high bar for deletion. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

FA article has a cleanup tag

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Salvia yangii has gotten a cleanup tag placed on it since the article was moved from Perovskia atriplicifolia without changing the body text. Could someone help out? I'm not a botanist so I don't know if some of the historical references should remain in the old name or not. PS: What about just naming the article "Russian sage", the overwhelming common name? That's what is done with Rosemary, which is in the exact same boat, having been taxonomically renamed a salvia at the same time as Russian sage? Softlavender (talk) 03:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Perovskia needs a cleanup as well (and also a move to Salvia subg. Perovskia - I presume that to be preferred to a redirect to Salvia). Lavateraguy (talk) 12:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
Google's corpus finds only one mention of Perovskia scabiosifolia (but omits the RHS plant trial of the (sub)genus), in a Polish blog (which may well take its information from the RHS). Grasp the nettle and just delete the mention for the article? Lavateraguy (talk) 12:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
I've (hopefully) dealt with Perovskia. Rosmarinus needs attention as well. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

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

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 

Hello,
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Move discussion at Lychnis chalcedonica

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See discussion on the talk page regarding moving the article Lychnis chalcedonica. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Low-res images

Latest comment: 4 years ago31 comments7 people in discussion

I think images are important to illustrate meanings at List of descriptive plant epithets (A–H) and List of descriptive plant epithets (I–Z), and the more the better ... the trouble is, if I keep adding similar images, both lists will go over Mediawiki's file limits and crash. What would be perfect would be some nice, tall, lower-file-size illustrations ... they don't have to be perfect, they just need to illustrate some of the epithets. Can anyone point me to a good source for low-res illustrations of species? (Commons is kind of hit and miss, but I wouldn't mind pointers to Commons.) - Dank (push to talk) 16:09, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Dank: Are you sure it will crash? I'm on a slow connection right now but those pages load fine for now. Doesn't mediawiki load a thumb sized version rather than the full size image which is rescaled on the fly? If you really do need low resolution images, then it wouldn't be too difficult to write a script to pull them from commons, resize and reupload. SmartSE (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Jonesey ran a test for the file sizes here, working off an earlier estimate. The tests seemed to indicate that we need to be careful; OTOH, the lists are slightly smaller now. - Dank (push to talk) 17:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
The test was for combining all the lists and the file size was only 15% of the allowed total. If you partially transclude a template, the whole template size counts towards the post expand include size, but images must be handled differently. Many pages use thumbnails of large images and the 2MB limit would soon be breached if the whole image size counted. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 10:54, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Why not just break the lists up further, A-C, D-H, I-P, Q-Z or whatever? Abductive (reasoning) 12:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
That's certainly an option. The second half of the list will be up at WP:FLC in a day or two, and I really have no idea how that's going to go ... if FLC doesn't work, then I'll be chopping these up into smaller pieces and adding enough narrative (about the people and the process, say) so that I can get them through WP:GAN. FLC reviewers would prefer as few pieces as possible. - Dank (push to talk) 13:05, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Can a List be a Good Article? Abductive (reasoning) 13:34, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Probably, if it reads like a Good Article before you get to the list. Btw, I don't have any strong preference on images ... anyone who wants to pick some illustrative images for the list is welcome to go for it. - Dank (push to talk) 13:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

== World Flora Online ==¾

What's the current sitch with World Flora Online? Abductive (reasoning) 03:52, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Eh? It works for me. Or do you mean the quality of the info? Working on Protea, I'm not impressed. They are taking their info from TPL (which had problems), including recognition of subspecies which are no longer recognised in PoWO or, since the 1970s, the regional floras from Africa. Leo Breman (talk) 18:21, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, the quality of the info. It seems to me that they only have a subset of what PoWO and TPL have. But I could be wrong. Abductive (reasoning) 03:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
It's a work in progress, although possibly behind schedule (2020 target?). It's supposed to be a successor to TPL. Given some known problems with the TPL it's probably best that they haven't imported everything and are doing it selectively. Plantdrew gave a useful rundown of the plant databases and made the intriguing comment that "Kew got impatient and decide to release POWO on their own". Not sure what that means about the collaboration or if it has implications for WFO, which is the broader ranging project. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
WFO is intended to fulfill goal #1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, which has 2020 as a target date for the goals. #1 is the easiest to achieve, so I would've expected some announcement signed by Kew, Mobot, et al. before December 31st that WFO was at least ready to use (if not complete). But with COVID, I'm not sure what to expect now. I don't have any deep inside knowledge about Kew and WFO vs. POWO; from what I understand, Kew remains committed to WFO, and isn't employing anybody to develop the POWO database further. An update to The Plant List was certainly needed, and POWO fulfills that need for now. Plantdrew (talk) 19:24, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
People tell me, "just use PoWO and nothing else", and now it's not going to be maintained? Abductive (reasoning) 12:05, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
@Abductive:, I asked somebody at Mobot who goes to WFO meetings, "what's the deal with Kew and POWO"? That would've been sometime prior to the thread Jts1882 linked above; at least 2 years ago. POWO has stayed up and running. It's maintained, but I wouldn't expect any new features to be added (the programming team that created the database probably got paid quite a bit more than most horticulturalists and botanists employed by Kew; no need to keep them on once the database does what it needs to do).Plantdrew (talk) 17:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
So, new taxa are added and corrections are made? Abductive (reasoning) 21:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes it's updated regularly. Issues I've pointed out to them are usually updated within a week. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 22:21, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
What do they need to make a correction? The right answer from you, or just a query about something looking wrong? And how does one ask? Should I ask you and you ask them? Abductive (reasoning) 00:24, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
You can provide background/references, then they make an independent assessment. The contact email is bi@kew.org. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 03:23, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
So, too soon to put it on taxonbars? Abductive (reasoning) 07:15, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
It is already on taxonbars. Perhaps Wikidata isn't getting updated. Have you an example where it is not appearing in the taxonbar where there is a WFO entry? —  Jts1882 | talk  07:25, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Sure, I just went to my List of Prunus species and the second one down, Prunus aitchisonii is on WFO but the WFO link is not on Wikidata. Ditto with Prunus amplifolia, Prunus annularis, Prunus argentea, Prunus brachypetala.... So it is safe to assume that it is not completely updated on Wikidata. Abductive (reasoning) 11:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Prunus aitchisonii has status ambiguous on WFO and isn't listed on the Prunus page. Similarly for Prunus amplifolia, Prunus annularis and Prunus argentea. That might be why they haven't been entered on Wikidata, if the bot only adds accepted taxa. You can add them manually as the information is still valid. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:42, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
You should have kept going, Prunus brachypetala is a regular species. In any case, the bot should put all WFO entries into Wikidata because it is important that they think a species is ambiguous. It's data. Abductive (reasoning) 20:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
And Prunus brachypetala has a WFO entry in the taxonbar. I note that the Wikidata claim was added on 30 July by SuccuBot, so that would be the place to request other names get added. —  Jts1882 | talk  05:54, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Nah, nobody does anything they're asked to on Wikidata. There's no policy over there, just independent operators. Abductive (reasoning) 12:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Succu seems reasonable and does a lot of this work (hence the bot). There are a few others who see their role as a priesthood guarding the flame of the sacred identifier. The discussion over adding POWO online comes to mind, where resistance included phrases like over my deadbody (embellished slightly). Reason eventually prevailed but I haven't checked the body. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
There was resistance to adding PoWO data to Wikidata? Please explain. Abductive (reasoning) 12:23, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
POWO uses the IPNI identifier for consistency across databases. The identifier gods at Wikidata considered this the same identifier and not worthy of its own claim. The identifier had a value, which was considered the important thing, even though it is used to point to different items on different databases. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:31, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Cart before the horse thinking, typical. It's strange how Wikidata claims that anyone can add any structured data to Wikidata, then says data is bad and can't be added. "Heaven forfend that disgusting data gets added to our database of everything, maybe if we ignore those pesky users they'll go away." Abductive (reasoning) 12:42, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Hederopsis maingayi / Macropanax maingayi

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Hello ! It ssems that the article Hederopsis maingayi needs to be updated and renamed Macropanax maingayi. TED (talk) 00:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

  Done Good one! It looks like the IUCN is making a really stupid mistake here, and Polbot, well, is a bot. I'll get rid of the conservation status template too, as that is obviously spurious... Leo Breman (talk) 08:25, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
The IUCN assessment is 1998, so maybe when they next assess it. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:08, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Regarding those 1998 IUCN assessments trees in Peninsular Malaysia, this is not the first time they've made a mistake due to taxonomic confusion. Also most of the conservation status was rough guesswork based on known habitat. The Malaysian Forestry Department came out with its own regional red list which is much better done, but never seem to have published more than a few families. Leo Breman (talk) 11:48, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

"Page not found" on PoWO

Latest comment: 4 years ago19 comments4 people in discussion

I've come across a few instances of a taxonbar link to PoWO that leads to a page that says, "Page not found". An example is http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:158652-1 for Silene viscaria. The IPNI page still exists; https://www.ipni.org/n/158652-1. Presumably this indicates that PoWO thinks that there is a more serious problem than merely saying "This is a synonym of Viscaria vulgaris Röhl." or "This is a synonym" or "This is an unplaced name". In any case, is there any automated way that such instances of "Page not found" could be made into a list? Just asking Wikidata to remove the linkrot would be a solution, but I would rather see a list of Wikipedia articles with the bad PoWO links first. Abductive (reasoning) 21:31, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Given that there's still an IPNI entry, my guess is an oversight at POWO rather than an intentional suppression of the name. (There are occasional entries at IPNI that are not "real" names—i.e., a name attributed to X who was really just using, and perhaps misapplying, that name as earlier published by Y—and those do get suppressed when brought to the attention of the staff. The identifier persists, but they don't come up in the search.) I'd run them through POWO feedback as you come across them. Choess (talk) 22:34, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Typically these are in cases where a taxonomic change has been made recently. So the evidence supports a deliberate deletion of the PoWO page, with Wikipedia and Wikidata not keeping up with the change. That's why I want a list, not be forced to deal with this things one at a time. Abductive (reasoning) 00:02, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
It seems just as likely that it's a software tooling issue with POWO, where formerly accepted names are getting deleted instead of put into synonymy when a new name is accepted instead. If the example you gave was really a deliberate change, it's not getting reflected by IPNI, so there's a problem there. I think it would be better to send this (and other examples you may come across) to the POWO feedback address. If it's accidental, the problem will be fixed upstream where it needs to be fixed; if not, the staff at Kew will presumably tender some rationale for having done so. But I'd like to see confirmation from them that this is deliberate before we start tackling the issue here on Wikipedia (rather than pushing it back towards POWO). Choess (talk) 02:21, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Let us know what PoWO says when you tell them about this one. I want to fix errors on Wikipedia, and these PoWO pages are clues that taxonomic errors exist on Wikipedia. If all the errors are corrected by PoWO, then they will have to be accidentally discovered and maybe fixed of the next decade or two on Wikipedia. Abductive (reasoning) 06:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
The POWO claim was only added to Wikipedia on 19 June 2020 and the Wayback machine failed to find a POWO entry on 21 June 2020 and has no earlier entries. So why did Succubot add the claim then (is this the source of error) and why did the Wayback machine looked when it did, when it had never looked before? I see no evidence that the POWO page ever existed. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Okay, here's one created by User: Peter coxhead on Oct 13, 2019 and explicitly cited by him, only to disappear from PoWO. Abductive (reasoning) 07:41, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Strange. The Wayback machine failed to find the page on the day the citation was made.
POWO does have a current entry for Botrychium lanuginosum but with a different ID number. The current functional number is 17291050-1, the number in the taxonbar is 17061220-1, and the number added in the citation is 7291050-1 (the current number without the leading 1). —  Jts1882 | talk  08:02, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Thusly was an error on Wikipedia found. Do you see why I want a list? Abductive (reasoning) 08:58, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The Botrychium lanuginosum problem was a combination of two different issues. Firstly, my old typo, now corrected. Secondly, IPNI and POWO using different IDs. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:41, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I have queried before with Succu on Wikidata whether the bot assumes that IPNI and PoWO use the same ID and (as I remember) been told that it doesn't, but I've seen cases like this before where the Wikidata item has links with the same ID, but either the databases are using different ones or the entry doesn't exist in one of them.
My understanding is that Kew staff have been furloughed and so are not legally allowed to work on PoWO or IPNI, so PoWO has not been maintained. However, there are IPNI editors in the US (like Kanchi Gandhi) who are able to work, and I have had IPNI issues fixed lately. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:11, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
I think there may be a (temporary) PoWO issue. See my post at Succu's Wikidata page. I've found some more discrepancies, all affecting 2019–2020 names. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:51, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
That one is (sort of) an IPNI problem. While the entry is incomplete, B. lanuginosum Wall. probably comes from Wallich's numerical list, a catalog of specimens without validating descriptions which created a pile of nomina nuda. Some of these were validated by later authors, which is why POWO links (correctly) to B. lanuginosum Wall. ex Hook. & Grev. The former name should really be annotated as a nomen nudum in IPNI.
I think the staff may be back from furlough now; the site notice has come down, anyway. Choess (talk) 17:49, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
@Choess: yes, but the real point is that IPNI uses ID 17061220-1 for the authorship "Wall. ex Hook. & Grev." whereas PoWO uses this authorship with ID 17291050, which is the one for which IPNI just uses "Wall.", so it's PoWO that is using the wrong ID, albeit the right authority. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Ah, interesting. But in "other data", they link through to 17291050-1—they should probably just be using 17061220-1 in POWO. That is interesting. Choess (talk) 18:49, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Here's another anomaly: the PoWO page for Crataegus says there are 264 accepted species but the list actually contains 311 if you copy and paste it into Excel or just count them. It appears to not count the hybrids. Abductive (reasoning) 22:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
I'd noticed that as well. If you were using excel to format a species list you could use {{format species list|PASTE LIST HERE}} and substitute it on the page {{subst:format species list|PASTE LIST HERE}} . It will substitute wikitext on the saved page (preview isn't helpful, so you must save it) and that wikitext can then be edited normally. —  Jts1882 | talk 
It's also another reason not to state an exact number of species in a genus article. Abductive (reasoning) 09:04, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Going back to the missing PoWO entries, Succu at Wikidata confirms that the bot created entries based on a dump of PoWO as it existed then. It seems pretty clear that new 2019 names have disappeared. As another example, the taxonbar at Inversodicraea koukoutamba shows a PoWO ID in Wikidata but the entry is not now in PoWO. Also look at the PoWO entry for Coleus species: they've obviously entered the transfers from Plectranthus up to C. decurrens and not got any further, and there are none of the new combinations that are in the original paper (and at List of Coleus species). So it's not worth trying to make a list of missing entries right now, as I'm sure PoWO will be put right when they are back to full time working. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:23, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
I have noticed a long term trend of taxonomic work trailing off alphabetically. Probably goes back to Linneaus. It's one of the reasons I proceed reverse-alphabetically most of the time. Heck, I'm sure you've all heard that faculty hiring committees have been shown to have a bias towards earlier names in the alphabet. Woe betide Ulrika Younggren as she tries to beat out Brian Aldaine and Carlos Bristed for the position. Abductive (reasoning) 09:02, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion for gooseberry

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

This is a pretty popular article; see the move discussion I opened here: Talk:Gooseberry#Requested move 12 August 2020. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 03:05, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Some open category discussions that affect plants too: Castanea and Fagus. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 13:09, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 16#Achillea ambrosiaca

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Just a pointer to a redirect deletion discussion. - Dank (push to talk) 20:09, 16 August 2020 (UTC) (I've been told that we don't generally redirect from missing species pages ... but I see there's some disagreement, so a discussion might be helpful. I don't have a preference.) - Dank (push to talk) 22:16, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I note that the species list in the Achillea article has a number of other redirects back to itself (e.g. magna, setacea, squammosa, tenuifolia). There is also Achillea maritima, which redirects to another genus article, adding an inconsistency. I think this redirect is correct, as it is to a monotypic genus, and the species list is from TPL, which raises the question of whether it should be removed or not (this list follows the source, but is outdated). Quite a few other species links in Mount_Olympus are redirects to large genera.
The point of the redlink is to highlight a potential article. With these large genera how much potential is there for articles? Perhaps the redlinking should be more selective. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:34, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, accepted species redirects should definitely be removed, though the common conclusion of these redirect discussions is that someone ends up creating the article... :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 12:05, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Progress report on missing genera from PoWO, August

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It has been two months since I created the list of missing genera from PoWO. In that time 128 stubby articles (and 2 mistaken redirects) have been created, mostly by me. That is 3.7% of the 3416, which means that at this rate the list will be finished by November 2022. Abductive (reasoning) 21:54, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Species or genus template

Latest comment: 4 years ago22 comments8 people in discussion
Previous discussion: User talk:Basilicofresco#Denying FrescoBot

Would a template be useful to link to the species where an article exists or its genus otherwise? I've mocked one up in a sandbox. For missing articles I've suggested the format [[Genus]] [[Genus species|species]], e.g. Viola aetolica, but that could easily be changed, for example to Viola aetolica* as used in List of descriptive plant epithets (I–Z). The template adjusts automatically if an article is created or deleted, like {{ill}} etc. Certes (talk) 22:28, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Hiding redlinks of species is not something I would like to see more often; I see it all the time. Users, often in articles on national parks, discover that there is no article on a species found in the park. Embarrassed, they pipe to the genus to get a bluelink, basically guaranteeing that nobody will ever write the article, and then years later, even when the article has been created, nothing links to it. Redlinks encourage article creation, and they also appear in "What links here" report (example). Abductive (reasoning) 08:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Agreed, the redlinks have an important purpose. However, I think that is the idea behind only blue linking the genus and leaving the species epithet as the redlink. It both provides the most relevant link and leaves the "article needed" message. I only wonder if it might be a bit confusing with the the name parts linked separately. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:16, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
If only there was a way to get a bot to find all species piped to genera, then insert the proposed template with blue for the genus, red for the species.... Abductive (reasoning) 08:19, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi Certes, thanks for the thoughts about this. I have to agree completely with what Abductive said. Anything that hides species redlinks or encourages people to do so should be discouraged. I've also seen the same often in articles about parks... annoying. If only there was some way to search these incorrectly piped links. I do understand that maybe some people might want to quickly check the genus if the name is unfamiliar, so your two-colour suggestion is not without merit. If the link to the genus disappears after an article is created, I am not adverse to this. Leo Breman (talk) 10:10, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
The bot idea sounds feasible. It could work through a list of genera (is that available?) doing the API equivalent of WhatLinksHere and checking the text for [[Genus|Genus something]] or [[Genus (qualifier)|Genus something]]. I'm not sure how it would work out whether "something" is a species. Perhaps we can assume that if it's linked to a genus and isn't a species then the link is already wrong and that's not the bot's fault. Certes (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Unfortunately the search facility doesn't allow you to use regex captures (or I couldn't get it to work), which could find links of the form GENUS|GENUS SPECIES. It might be possible with AWB. A tool that might help find such links in passing is to colour the redirects using custom CSS (see WP:Visualizing redirects). —  Jts1882 | talk  11:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Am not very technical. Don't really get what Jts1882 -well, it sounds hard. But even I can understand Certes's bot suggestion, only it is likely that the piped link GENUS|COMMON NAME would occur. Leo Breman (talk) 11:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
The common name is a complication and makes it very difficult to find, unless there is some category to latch on to. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:43, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Take a look at List_of_sequenced_plastomes, which does something like this manually (but not completely consistently). Lavateraguy (talk) 10:40, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's the format I had in mind. It seemed far too obvious to be novel but I hadn't found examples myself. Certes (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) One problem there is the linking to the genus when there is a species article (e.g. Marchantia polymorpha). You can't see two links so might get the genus article when you're expect the species article. While the proposal above with the redlinked species epithet doesn't have this problem, it would after the species article was created. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
This is the main problem; the link to genus should disappear when there is a species article to link to. The link to genus should be conditional. Doesn't {{ill}} do that? Leo Breman (talk) 11:26, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Now I look at the sandbox template, I don't think this is a problem. It looks to see if the page exists. If it does it links the binomial, if it does not exist it creates the two links. When the article is created it would then output one link to the species article, as desired. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:43, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, this might be a pretty good idea. Leo Breman (talk) 11:57, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Just to clarify: I'm not proposing that any redlink be hidden. All current redlinks would continue to appear though they might, depending on the chosen format, be shorter (i.e. link less text to the same target). Certes (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Bluelinkgenus + redlinkspecies is visually messy to me, and makes the species appear to be two things, when really it is one taxon. Even with the asterisk design, if it were automated in any way, that could be a whole lot of unhelpful asterisks, e.g. on a page like List of Syzygium species. I probably wouldn't use the template myself since I'm mostly editing within pages about taxa already rather than other pages that link to taxa. But interested to hear other perspectives. —13:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
What would you prefer to see? A simple redlink to the species with no genus link? That is certainly appropriate in many cases and doesn't need a template. Another option, which I avoided earlier as I presumed it might be unpopular but should perhaps mention, is a single link which diverts to the genus until the species article appears: {{Species link|Salvia|azurea}} → [[Salvia azurea]] but {{{Species link|Salvia|rosa}} → [[Salvia|Salvia rosa]]. Certes (talk) 14:16, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes I'm okay with the status quo as the default. :) I wouldn't support an option that hides redlinks to potential species articles. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 14:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Links from a binomial to the genus are a total pain. They hide the fact that a species article is needed, and just go round in a circle to confuse readers who click on a species link in a genus article. WP:REDLINK applies. Since all species are inherently notable, red links to species are correct. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Just a quick note to say: I didn't intend the Viola aetolica* format to be used any place other than that one list ... I'm inexperienced at FLC, I know they don't like large numbers of red links, and I wanted to have a ready defense if someone complained. The asterisk probably won't be necessary in future lists. Also: what would be wrong with re-coding how red links to species work, so that we don't need to do any editing to fix this problem (or perceived problem)? That is, if MediaWiki somehow detects that a user has clicked on a red species link, it would bring up the usual page prompting them to create the species page, but it would also give them a link to the genus in case that's where they want to go. - Dank (push to talk) 15:28, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to all who took the time to comment so quickly. If consensus prefers a redlink with no route to the genus, which is already handled perfectly by the basic link syntax, then there's nothing to fix. However, the idea and rough implementation are there if anyone has a use for them.
As for improving piped links to genera where a species article exists, WP:Bot requests may be able to help. Quarry can't find cases for improvement, as it can only access the link target, not the link text. A simple search can check an individual genus, but that's a lot of searches. Certes (talk) 20:25, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
My initial concern was about the blue-genus and red-species epithet being confusing, but I think this was just the unfamiliar appearance. It's the only way of both providing the most appropriate link (to content on the genus) and indicating a potential article (the redlink).
One possiblee addition is an optional |authority= parameter. Species lists often include the authority in the small template, so one template for genus species authority would simplify the coding. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:18, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Schefflera

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

 Template:Schefflera has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 03:09, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Identifying line art

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

As before, a fruit whose name begins with 'P'. Based on the leaves, is this more likely to be a peach, a plum, or something else? DS (talk) 17:08, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

 
A rounded, grooved, fruit, would suggest a peach rather than a plum (plums are usually somewhat elongated). The leaf also matches; plums have the lateral veins directed more forwards. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:32, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Redirect discussion re: Vernonia fasciculata

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 31#Vernonia fasciculata may be of interest here. Along the lines of the above-mentioned Achillea ambrosiaca discussion. Declangi (talk) 23:55, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

It seems to me that the Royal Horticultural Society pages on species are relatively stable, and take a standardized URL form such as https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/94868/i-Dianthus-myrtinervius-i/Details. Should these pages (or the ID number) be added to Wikidata so that they appear as links in the Taxonbar? It seems preferable that only existing Wikidata items on species should be given the links, since I am sure there are examples of RHS retaining old horticultural names, and there are certainly gobs of cultivars and hybrids that don't have Wikidata items. There are probably less than 10,000 species listed by the RHS. Importantly, they are not always in agreement with Kew, providing some extra value to their listing. Abductive (reasoning) 19:48, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Info about horticulture not found elsewhere. While you're at it, how about Manfeld's, that has lots of unique info on economic botany. For that matter, the Belgian Tervuren also has tons on (African) ethnobotany (Dr. Duke's is/was similar). Another website/database with unique and trustworthy horticultural info, and stable urls, is PlantzAfrica (only South Africa though). Leo Breman (talk) 12:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Isn't PlantzAfrica the same as the SANBI identifier already in {{taxonbar}}? —  Jts1882 | talk  13:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Seemingly not. The redlist and pza entries are different: http://redlist.sanbi.org/species.php?species=799-77 and http://pza.sanbi.org/protea-longifolia. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Descriptions

Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

I am not a botanist but occasionally create/expand articles on plants. My interest is not on the plant's taxonomy but on its general interest. While creating Mucuna urens, I could not find a decent botanical description, so I looked to foreign language Wikipedias and found that the Spanish Wikipedia had a description, which was referenced to Tropicos. When I looked there, I found there was no general description, but that each of the herbarium specimens had a size indicator and few words of text. Is it permissible when writing articles to write descriptions based on images, and extrapolate from the herbarium specimens as to dimensions? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:17, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi Cwmhiraeth. People discussed this here not too long ago, consensus was not to use specimen vouchers. I protested because I do it all the time, hehe. Especially with obscure tropical plants there is often little online, and there is often cool info on the sheets. I got altitude ranges or tree heights from going through all the specimens on GBIF, for example. It's basically how floras are written anyway. In this case though I can type up a description for you from Fruits of the Guianan Flora... actually, I'll type up the whole piece on your talk, then you can put it in your own words. Leo Breman (talk) 10:53, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The problem is with WP:PSTS. Herbarium specimens are very "primary". Yes, it's how Floras are written, but Wikipedia policy is to reproduce what secondary sources say, not what primary sources say, so we can use information in Floras, regardless of where they got it. If you extrapolate dimensions, then there isn't even a written primary source. (Don't shoot the messenger!) Peter coxhead (talk) 15:39, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I am unlikely to hit. Yeah, measuring dimensions yourself is maybe too much, but linking to types, or using some info from the labels should be okay when done carefully? I just finished doing that here Protea intonsa. Collection locality should be fine. I'd like to have a better source for the involucral bracts colours as these may differ among pop.s, but I don't right now. Hopefully in the future a better reference will come along and this reference can simply act as back up for verifiability. If people want to delete it I wouldn't complain (well, I will), but right now it is more useful to have cited info about these things then nothing, no? Leo Breman (talk) 17:25, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
@Leo Breman: I can only repeat "don't shoot the messenger" and leave you to draw your own conclusions as to my views and/or actions. There is of course WP:IAR... Peter coxhead (talk) 09:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
OK, I see from the page that Peter Coxhead linked that a herbarium source is a primary source. It's a pity though! In this instance, Leo Breman has provided me with a secondary source for my description. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia's primary policy is verifiability, that information can be verified. Non-controversial stuff doesn't even need a source. I don't see that the policy preferring secondary sources over primary sources overrides this basic policy. I think if a voucher provides the information to satisfy Wikipedia:Verifiability then it should be used as a source. If it says the plant has green pointy leaves, it doesn't need a secondary source to say that. It's when the information is controversial or has conflicting sources that secondary sources are necessary. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:34, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: well, I would agree with that view, but you need to be aware that the first pillar, WP:5P1, has been interpreted by many as underpinning the detail of WP:PSTS, i.e. an encyclopedia is a compendium of information from secondary and tertiary sources. Fierce debates and edit wars over WP:PSTS issues seem to have died down at present, but were very active when I started editing, and some of my editing was firmly "corrected" in the past. So I don't assume that the present degree of tolerance will continue.
It's important, I believe, exactly how the information is written up. Saying that a given specimen has petals that are yellow or about x cm long may be acceptable; saying this about the species based on the specimen definitely not. (Worst of all is saying things about the species based on a Commons photo whose identification is unverified – and I have seen this.)
There's also a loophole in the apparent contradiction between "All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors" (in WP:PSTS) and Wikipedia:About valid routine calculations. I would certainly support the view that determining a measurement on an image based on a scale bar is a "routine calculation". (As an example, I used "routine calculations" in the past to defend, successfully, presenting the total data for "banana" and "plantain" production in the table at Banana#Production and export.)
Anyway, enough from me. I think we all understand the issues; I'm just recommending caution. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:08, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Alstroemeria pulchella

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There seems to have been some confusion at Alstroemeria pulchella, mixing content related to Alstroemeria psittacina and Alstroemeria pelegrina. Help in sorting this out would be appreciated. See Talk:Alstroemeria psittacina#Merge. Klbrain (talk) 20:00, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Progress report on missing genera from PoWO, September

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It has been three months since I created the list of missing genera from PoWO. In that time 165 stubby articles have been created, with the two mistaken redirects fixed. That is 4.8% of the 3416, which means that at this rate the list will be finished by November 2025. Abductive (reasoning) 19:16, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

World Plants, World Ferns and World Orchids

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Michael Hassler's new database is now online at https://www.worldplants.de/. The World Ferns section is essentially an updated version of CFLW, which has been teasing the new site since April. I assume World Orchid is an update of his orchid site. These are now integrated into a single site for all vascular plants. It says it covers 349,230 species including 335,339 angiosperms so looks fairly comprehensive.

You can search the database interactively with dropdown lists for order, family and genus, as with CFLW. One advantage of the change is that a url to the record can now be made with an ID, which was impossible with CFLW and made convenient citations difficult. Alternatively the site can be navigated from the plant, fern and orchid checklists of genera. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

  • How long do you reckon it will take to be ready for it to be used on Wikidata? For example, I note that on its front page, the "How to Cite" says "Version x.xx; last update xx.xx.xxxx. Last accessed dd/mm/yyyy", which looks like it is under construction. Abductive (reasoning) 11:14, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
Now I've looked a bit closer, it's clearly under construction. Apart from missing sections, the search function doesn't work (at least for me). The interactivity in the order, family and genus articles is nicely done so it already works as an upgrade on CFLW.
As for Wikidata, I'm not sure it will. I spoke too soon mentioning the IDs. While changing the genus does change the anchor number in the URL box of the browser, the numbers are not consistent, and the links don't work. As there was no linking in CFLW, I'm now not sure it will be added. On the other hand, those anchor numbers must have some meaning, so it could be a first step towards developing specific links.—  Jts1882 | talk  12:07, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: it already works as an upgrade on CFLW – not at present, at least in my view, since if you search for a species of fern in the new website, you can't get beyond a complete list of species for the genus, whereas CFLW will display only information on the species. Furthermore, the lists are very dynamically generated, so if you look at the page source, you don't see them, whereas in the original CFLW, you can extract information from the page source for further processing, which I do in order to prepare a list of species by genus, for example. It's true that one advantage of the new website is that you can copy a list, which you can't do in the old one, but extracting a list of species names and authorities for a genus like Hymenophyllum looks like a lot of work. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:05, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: There are differences. As you say, you can't get the checklist from the page source, but you can copy the species list for a genus and sort it in excel. All the species plus authority rows group together. You can split on the semi-colon to remove the reference. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:24, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
A few updates have been made. The search function now works and some of the background pages have been filled in.
One thing I hadn't realised is that the World Plants database is not new and has been supplying CoL since 2012 and provides about 60% of the flora data (see here and here). It seems it provides the families not covered by WCSP. It's availability on the web is what is new. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:24, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Glossary work

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just a quick note to acknowledge that I'm doing something annoying: fixing formatting problems at Glossary of botanical terms. What makes it annoying is that it's hard to tell with a quick diff whether I've broken anything ... I really don't like to make a lot of edits all at once on important pages, but there's no way around it here. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries says "In template-structured glossaries, hatnotes, images, and other such content must be placed within the definition", so what we were doing with {{ghat}} was "breaking" the glossary markup (whatever the heck that means). It's also nearly impossible to be consistent with image captions (fixing links, punctuation, etc.) unless the image files are grouped together at the start of each section. So anyone trying to figure out if I'm screwing things up is going to have a very messy diff to look at ... sorry about that. I'll be careful, and I'll finish up the formatting work today. I'm working in one section at a time, in order, so it should be easy to avoid edit conflicts. - Dank (push to talk) 14:12, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Eutrema

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
On the subject of Eutrema, Wikipedia has an article for Eutrema penlandii, which POWO treats as a synonym of Eutrema edwardsii. We can't just do a redirect, as the article is specifically describing the Colorado populations. FNA doesn't recognise this either, and furthermore contradicts the article by recognising a 3rd species, whose range moreover extends to the lower 48.
Also the Eutrema article has one misspelt epithet, and one obvious duplicate (orthographic variation) species. (Those errors are sourced to Tropicos - someone, somewhere, treated the genus as female rather than neuter.) POWO treats these correctly, and has about 10 additional species. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:38, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
It's okay to discuss that sort of thing within the articles, "some authorities consider it to be a synonym of..." Abductive (reasoning) 19:23, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
The point I intended to highlight was that there is an article for a species which is not in the list of species in the genus article. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:18, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
From my editing I can attest that that is true for every large genus article and the Lists of Foo species articles too. And the templates? Whew. Abductive (reasoning) 06:21, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Dodonaea

Latest comment: 4 years ago21 comments6 people in discussion

In the article it states that "Dodonaea is recognized as the largest genus of Sapindaceae." Isn't the genus Acer larger? This looks to be a bit of information from prior to inclusion of Aceraceae in Sapindaceae, and perhaps it should be reworded as "the largest genus in Dodonaeoideae" (subfamily). Refiner (talk) 16:25, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

No takers? Dodonaea viscosa, interesting plant, one produced fruit last year, but it doesn't like Northern European winters indoors (I had both sexes from seed, but the males died). Yes, it's probably a sentence stemming from pre-APG taxonomy. I don't see that particular sentence in the reference provided. I will correct the info. Cheers, Leo Breman (talk) 18:45, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
APWeb has 126(-150) for Acer and 70 for Dodonaea. However it also has 230 for Serjania and 220 for Paulinia, and a confusing 1-255 for Allophyllus. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:46, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
I thought there were more Acers. Guess I was wrong. I changed the sentence to "one of the most" numerous, that should hold true. Leo Breman (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
What does 1-255 mean? A genus split by some authorities? Anyway I took this as an opportunity to test the new World Plants website, which gave 131 species and 5 hybrids for Acer, 71 species for Dodonaea, 249 for Serjania, 184 for Paulinia, and 187 for Allophyllus. Easy to use and quick. It will be interesting to see how it gets assessed for quality of data. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Interesting to compare with PoWO: Acer – 150; Dodonaea Mill. – 72; Serjania – 252; Paullinia – 193; Allophylus – 209. The differences are why I think a list of species should always be headed "As of DATE, DATASOURCE accepted ...". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Regardless, it seems that Dodonaea as the largest sapindaceous genus was never right. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:32, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) And WFO: Acer 168, Dodonaea 67, Serjania 208, Paulinia 167, and Allophylus 212. Agree about the lists. I always add a dated reference, sometimes stating the source in text, but rarely the date. The trouble is people often update lists without updating the reference or just add another reference so you don't know which. Perhaps explicitly writing "As of DATE, DATASOURCE ..." would make people more aware of the need to say where they got the updates from. A little bit of nudge psychology. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
All these numbers going all over the place is rather a reason to view databases with mistrust. The number 150 for Acer in APWeb is cited to this 2019 paper: Maple phylogeny and biogeography inferred from phylogenomic data. This an update from Li's 2016 phylogeny paper (link broken). There is Suh from 2000 (also ~150 spp., this paper is unimportant, just quoting others), de Jong from 1976 (111 to 150 spp.), 1994 (~150 spp. in the classic Maples of the world), and 2004 (156 spp. (+ new discoveries)), Delendick 1990 (?), and earlier there is a monograph by Murray 1970 (120 spp.) and Ogata 1967 (?). The low count in Murray is apparently mostly a number of "micro-species" not being recognised in the USA, A. floridanum & A. douglasii, and in Europe different forms of A. campestre.
Li (2019) is the most trustworthy with regards to research techniques, and his data corroborates de Jong nicely. So where are the other numbers coming from?
In the case of WFO it is likely due to the recognising of synonyms due to non-rational meshing of the Tropicos data ... 126 spp. in APWeb is likely from Murray + the 6 new spp. But why World Plants would have 131? Leo Breman (talk) 18:26, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
I don't see why a database should be distrusted any more than a checklist or a primary source. It depends on the quality of the curation. While having different databases to choose from presents some problems, it also means that no source has be relied on absolutely. I've done a comparison of recognised species for Acer in POWO, WFO and WP.
  • POWO recognises 158 species (including 8 hybrids which don't get counted in their stated total)
  • WFO recognises 164 species (including 6 hybrids)
  • WP recognises 136 species (including 5 hybrids)
However it not just the numbers that are different.
  • Combined, POWO and WFO recognised 201 species
  • 121 species are recognised by both POW and WFO (with minor differences in authority, e.g. Maxim. ex Miq. instead of Maxim).
  • Add in WP species and the total number species recognised by one of the databases is 211
  • 111 species are recognised by all three database.
So if we take those 111 species as certainties, WP recognises an extra 25, POWO an extra 47, and WFO an extra 53. I'm not sure Li et al (2019) should be taken as a source for the number of species (152) as they just use the numbers from Xu (1999). A lot can have changed since then. I think these large differences in numbers and choices mean that Peter coxhead's suggestion of using "As of DATE, DATASOURCE recognises xxx species" should be adopted as policy for species listings by the project. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:42, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
The really dangerous thing is if editors combine species lists from different sources, without thorough checking, since usually the "extra" species in each source contain a large proportion for which different synonyms are being used, so following red links in the species list will lead to the creation of multiple articles on the same species under different names. This used to be a real problem – I think when there were more inexperienced plant editors around. (It was, of course, a major problem with The Plant List, which imported multiple synonyms, particularly from Tropicos.)
If there's a choice in the scientific literature between a single large monophyletic genus and many smaller monophyletic genera, whether the curators of the database are by nature "lumpers" or "splitters" can be relevant. It seems to me, for example, that the curators of PoWO are inclined to be lumpers in this situation.
I also think that responsiveness to queries and corrections matters. The curator(s) of the database underlying PoWO and WCSP are, in my experience, very responsive, although PoWO is only slowly updated from this database whereas WCSP normally updates rapidly. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Peter Coxhead's formulation and intent, no doubt. Where editors just don't know "the following is a list of selected species" is acceptable, to me. But Jts1882, respectfully, the different numbers I think prove why one should distrust databases -A species exists if the majority of relevant people agree that it does. A monograph is an expert spending a significant portion of his career studying a genus. A database should be getting their taxonomic decision -the subjective existence of a taxon or not- from a source, and this is totally opaque in almost all databases except WCSP. Personally, Li et al (2019) looks like the good source. If you dig around a bit, you see he/she has been working on maple phylogenetics for a quite long time, with dozens of papers on the subject. It's actually sort of funny, in more than one paper the intro introduces the subject as if it is going to be useful for the herbal supplement industry, then immediately veers off into phylogenetics -funding is a b%^&*! You say "just use the numbers from Xu (1999)", as far as I can tell, both are mostly following de Jong in Maples of the World (1994). At least initially, de Jong relied highly on floral morphology to differentiate taxa, and Li basically confirms his stuff with DNA, So Maples of the World + Li's works is what I would find the most trustworthy authority, as opposed to just a name in a database.
Admittedly I did go to a reading 20 years ago at the nursery (I got some more maples there last month ...A. buergerianum, looking good!) where many of the seeds were sent in preparation for that book. Apparently the authors travelled the world to see each of the 150 species in situ. So my opinion might be coloured... Leo Breman (talk) 11:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'm clear about what you are disagreeing with. There is a significant disagreement between the number of Acer species recognised by different database sources. You take this as a reason to distrust databases in general, whereas I take it to mean there isn't a good recent authoritative source for the them to follow. I think everyone would agree that a monograph by a taxonomic expert examining up to date evidence, including morphology and molecular evidence, is what is needed.
You seem to be suggesting Li et al (2019) as a suitable source (I can't find a Li et al, 2016). However, that work is not making taxonomic assessments on what are valid species. It states a number of species (152) in the abstract and introduction, citing Xu (1999), but that is it. The paper is on the phylogenetic relationships between different sections and series within the genus. While these findings might have reasonable agreement with de Jong (1976), they don't say anything about the validity of the species recognised in the older work. That work also has uncertainty in the number of species, assigning to 111-157 species to various sections and series (the uncertainly is due to possible synonyms). Coincidently the 111 is the same number as seen in all three databases (see above), but unfortunately the overlap is poor. De Jong plus the three databases recognise a total of 246 species with only 88 recognised in all four sources.
This leaves us with a problem if we want to list the species in the genus. All we can really do is describe the uncertainty and choose a source for the listing. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:16, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, didn't see this. Maybe 'disagree' is too strong. My distrust with databases is I usually can't see what's going on: they should be following someone, but who? Are they making taxonomic decisions themselves? Okay, you're right: the most verifiable thing we can say is that there are a number everyone agrees on, and likely more people don't agree on. Regarding Li and species validity, what I'm saying is that if Li is using Xu or de Jong (we should be using the latest from 2004, but I can't find it online, or at least the book from 1994), then Li is a secondary source. So we both agree a monograph is the most authoritative source, if we cannot reference it directly because it is a primary source, we could maybe use Li to get around that? Leo Breman (talk) 23:11, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
I agree that we can use Li et al (2019) as a secondary source for 152 species stated by Xu (1999), which I can't find at all on the internet. It's wiki-compliant (WP:PSTS), if not less opaque than the databases. However, this doesn't help with listing the species in the genus. The databases seem the only modern sources with global species listings. The alternative seems to be de Jong (1976), which does give a revised classification with species listing, but that is almost half a century old and doesn't consider any molecular data.
I note that List of Acer species uses TPL, which was following WCSP (as it was in 2012) and accepts 164 species. WFO accepts the same 164 species, although rather than citing TPL (or WCSP) it cites Flora of China (99 species). The latter links to this 2008 listing, which could be considered a modern taxonomic treatment. Its says there are about 129 species worldwide, but only treats the 99 Chinese species.
To add further to the confusion, Sapindaceae doesn't seem to be a selected family in the current version of WCSP. TPL actually uses "WCSP (in review)" as its source in 2012. Seems the review is taking some time. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:09, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: the "in review" has been overtaken by events since TPL – PoWO has all the data which was in the unpublished "in review" data. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:35, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: I went to the library at the university and the book store at the national herbarium down the road to find Maples on the World, but everything was closed on Sunday due to corona or something. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, do you know this Chinese database? It's the most up to date one as far as I know for China. Now 95 Acer species in China!
No, that's a new one to me, too. It looks like it's an independent Chinese Catalog of Life, as its different from main Catalog of Life project in Chinese (141 species globally).
My count is 99 Chinese Acer species. 97 of them match the Flora of China, which also has 99 species in total. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:09, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Right, my count was off! I couldn't find that book by the way, but apparently there's a 2001 edition of it -if I get back to Boskoop I'll look there (if I remember). The China sp2000 Node is what the GBIF use as backbone for their China species, which is how I found it. It's changed since two years back, urls and look. I can't read Chinese so I just clicked on things till I figured it out. Still: as this is updated to 2020, it seems quite useful. Leo Breman (talk) 14:44, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
@Leo Breman: however, like it or not (and I don't always), you have to take into account WP:PSTS. Policy is clear that we should avoid using primary sources except to support information in secondary sources. However, sometimes there is no alternative but to use a monograph or other primary source for ranks not covered by secondary sources, such as subfamilies, tribes or sections. The nature of the source then matters; e.g. using the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group paper with 90+ listed authors for fern classification overall (and hence for subfamilies, etc.) is different from using a paper by one or two individuals. But I don't see that primary sources can be justified in terms of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for a genus like Acer where good secondary sources exist.
A list of "selected species" cannot be in line with policies and guidelines, since such a list, as a whole, cannot be sourced. It usually amounts to a random set of species with no source to clarify whether members of the set are synonyms of each other. (Sourcing each member of the set separately doesn't solve this objection, because it doesn't ensure that the sources are not using different names for the same species.) In any area that I'm particularly working on, I would always replace such an unsourced list by a properly sourced one, which would be fully justified by WP:RS. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:15, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Peter, if we simply choose a secondary source database out of the many named above, and each has a different number of species, isn't it all arbitrary? Why choose the 150 spp. one instead of the 200 spp. one? And if the sourcing to the database is off/missing, how can we be sure the data is trustworthy? Why are the numbers so radically different? If anyone actually knows how many species there are (or at least has the most educated opinion on the subject), it would be an expert, not the guys doing data entry, no?

And if we are referencing Li who is referencing de Jong, bam, secondary source.

While I agree with you in principal about the "selected species" sentence, there are just very many people who don't know enough about taxonomy and the different sources out there, so I cannot really fault people for using this construction. These type of lists often came about organically when Wikipedia was new and people just added the species for which there were articles. I don't use the construction myself, of course, but it's just not a sentence I feel is so incorrect that I need to start editing a page where it occurs if I come across it. Unlike misuse of the word 'endemic', for some reason that really bugs me. But sure, 100% agreed, eventually, all this must go. In the meantime, there is still much genera/species/botany which isn't even covered at all yet, so this is all still a bit triage. Leo Breman (talk) 16:41, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  • Chiming in, it seems to me that no Wikipedia article should be comparing sizes of genera against each other or stating exact numbers at all. The reason is that most readers don't care or understand why a genus being speciose is interesting or important, and if it is interesting or important, then the reason why it is speciose should be explained and cited, not the raw number. My take on why any reader is even looking at a genus article is that they hope to find a species, either one they can't remember the name of, or perhaps exploring species related to one they are familiar with. For instance, two of my most viewed genera articles are Armoracia and Eutrema, which I guarantee is because readers are coming from the Horseradish and Wasabi articles, looking for related species that they can eat or buy or plant in their gardens. Abductive (reasoning) 08:18, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Hydropteridum?

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

I was looking at Christensens' Index Filicum[1] and noticed that the subtitle includes Filicum et Hydropteridum. The name suggests that it refers to aquatic pteridophytes of some form or possibly mosses (included in Linnaeus's concept of ferns), but a search of the volume only finds it in the title. Google mainly just finds references to Christensen's work.

So what does this name refer to? Is it an archaic term for aquatic ferns, a synonym for a another taxon, or what? —  Jts1882 | talk  09:50, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Christensen, Carl (1906). Index Filicum, sive Enumeratio Omnium Generum Specierumque Filicum et Hydropteridum, ab Anno 1753 ad Finem Anni 1905, Descriptorum adjectis Synonymis Principalibus, Area Geographica, etc. Hafniae [Copenhagen]: H. Hagerup. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.402.
I'd also guess that it refers to aquatic ferns, but can't offer any proof. You can eliminate other candidate taxa (such as mosses) by demonstrating that they're not covered in the work, but the absence of a table of contents makes that less easy that it might otherwise be. (However a search for Hypnum, Brya and Marchantia in the work comes up blank, so it's unlikely to be a term for mosses in general.)
Also, since it's dated 1906, I would not expect it to be using a larger scope than the modern conception of ferns (±horsetails). Lavateraguy (talk) 10:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
I found a book from 1836, Herbarium Pedemontanum suggesting it was already obsolete then. There is a subclass with the name "Monocotyledoneae seu Exognae cryptogamae" that contains four sections: Rhizocarpae, Filices, Lycopodineae (sp?) and Gonyopterides. Rhizocarpae contains three orders that were previously parts of Hydropteridum (but its unclear if there were other parts). These "orders" are Isoetaceae, Salviniaceae and Marsileaceae, which are now recognised as fern families. The latter two now make up Salviniales and Hydropteridales is a synonym. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:53, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
On the rare occasions "Hydropteridum" crops up in 19th-century literature, like the one above, it seems to be an emendment of the "Hydropterides" proposed by Willdenow in his "Bemerkungen über einige seltene Farrenkräuter" and used in the 4th ed. of Species Plantarum to encompass aquatic vascular cryptograms in general (water ferns and quillworts). Christensen doesn't inclue Isoetes in his index, so he was presumably using it to refer to the modern Marsilales, notable, of course, for their heterospory and often segregated from the terrestrial ferns in historical classification at some fairly high level. Choess (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
I found it in Christensen, at last. He divides his "Filecales Leptosporangiatae" into Eufilicineae (with 8 families) and Hydropteridineae (with two families, Salviniaceae and Marsileaceae. It's odd that a grouping nested so deep in the ferns is mentioned in the subtitle, but I assume this was because of the time and its previous usage (a bit like us using ferns and horsetails). —  Jts1882 | talk  17:09, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
That originates with Engler & Prantl's Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, whose system Christensen was following. It does seem a little odd, but maybe there was a trend at the time to use "Filices" in a sense exclusive of the water ferns. (Similar to the contemporary question as to whether we need "monilophytes" to distinguish pteridophytes s.s. from pteridophytes as "ferns and fern allies".) Choess (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Point of having stubs for infraspecific taxa - do we have a policy?

Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion

I noticed this new article pass by: Pinus torreyana subsp. torreyana by @NinjaWeeb:. As I understand it, recognition of subsp. insularis is questionable, and P. torreyana is probably a synonym/relict pop. of P. douglasii. None of that is important. But in this case it is a rather redundant article, see Pinus torreyana. Either way, some sort of policy could be useful. I was looking at Centaurea, having articles for all these subspecies and varieties which change every few year with a new publication would be unrealistic. Leo Breman (talk) 15:41, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I found this subspecies from [[5]]. What I normally do is create the stub and then expand it over time. NinjaWeeb (talk) 15:57, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Edit conflict: Right, totally no criticism. It just seemed a waste to me to create articles which will likely get merged soon (or not?), thus if this project had a policy on the matter, it would be better, it seems to me... Especially considering the vast amounts of full plant species lacking articles! Leo Breman (talk) 16:10, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
AFAIK, the approach is the same as for all taxon articles: we stop at the species level (and treat subspecies there), unless there is an unusual amount to say about the subspecies (e.g. Panthera leo melanochaita). This normally argues against establishing subspecies stubs; based on normal procedure, Pinus torreyana subsp. torreyana (and Abies delavayi subsp. fansipanensis for that matter) should be redirected to the species article and only split off if there is sufficient material for a non-stub standalone. - None of that is "policy", however, it's Tree of Life-level consensus. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:05, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Okay, and I agree, but it might be handy to spell out such consensi/consensuses for new users. Save NinjaWeeb some effort and all. Leo Breman (talk) 16:10, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I was not aware of the consensus. NinjaWeeb (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that could be better advertised. I think only WP:WikiProject Paleontology has a corresponding section on their page. (This is everyone's cue to tell me that I'm wrong about all of this, BTW :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:04, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
I think it would certainly be helpful to have such a guideline and I agree that this should be long the lines suggested by Elmidae. However, we ultimately have to consider WP:GNG and the presence of an IUCN assessment for the subspecies could be a start for making the case. The Santa Rosa Island Pine also has an IUCN assessment (VU).[1]. I note that the main Torrey pine article taxobox uses the IUCN assessment for the mainland subspecies[2] rather than the species assessment.[3] A this stage it seems a better use of resources to focus on the main species article. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:06, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
I too agree that guidelines as suggested by Elmidae are the right approach. A regular problem with subspecies articles is that when a subspecies is created after the publication of the species, it can become unclear whether previously published information applies to the species as a whole or to the automatically created nominate subspecies. This also applies to synonyms. Keeping subspecies in the same article is helpful unless they are well known in their own right. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:44, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
I might add that nobody will be reading articles on these subtaxa. The pageview stats are grim. Abductive (reasoning) 11:08, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Eichhornia crassipes

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

What is the correct name for this species? The page title is Eichhornia crassipes, but the article lead says that it is called Pontederia crassipes. Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 16:12, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

There's been a name change; the article was moved to Pontederia crassipes last year, and moved back in January. I was about to do a move myself, but saw the move log, so I thought I'd better look in more detail, which includes checking how Wikipedia handles the genus - off to do that. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
There is an Eichhornia article, but it looks as if it should be titled Pontederia subg. Eichhornia. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:37, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Suggested Merge Chanki Tree / Samanea saman

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello, There is a discussion suggesting the merging of articles relevant to this project Chankiri Tree and Samanea saman, it would be great if you could contribute your opinion at Talk:Samanea saman § Merge Discussion. Thanks, --Paul Carpenter (talk) 10:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

New Phylogenetic study leading to reorganization of the family Hypericaceae - additional input welcome

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Hello all, Hyperik just found a 2016 paper that established a major refactoring and reorganization of the family Hypericaceae and genus Hypericum. We've started to talk about reflecting those changes in the family over at his talk page, but we would certainly welcome any additional insight or input on how to proceed if anyone is interested. Thanks, Fritzmann2002 T, c, s, t 16:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Note that it's the adoption by reliable secondary sources, like PoWO, that supports making the changes here, not a single journal paper. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:18, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Do POWO or WFO recognise sections and subsections? —  Jts1882 | talk  07:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
@Jts1882: no. So we do usually have to rely on primary sources for these ranks. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
To clarify, I didn't just find this paper - we've been using these names locally for a while now. (Also, I'm not a man :) ) Happy to discuss—looks like at least one of the moves will require a move discussion anyway!—but I think it should be pretty uncontroversial to move these species to their new names. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 15:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Night of the Living Line Art

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Again, it would be appreciated if anyone could identify these plants for which the only information provided is the first letter of their name.

  •  
    T-plant
  •  
    O-plant

Thanks. DS (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

'T' is a Trillium, perhaps Trillium grandiflorum? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Could the 'O' plant perhaps be Cartrema americana, previously known as Osmanthus americanus and also as the 'wild olive' ? (See the second image down on this page, which looks simlar to the line drawing). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:53, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion at Talk:Toxicodendron radicans (--?--> poison ivy)

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

FYI Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 21:18, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Speciesbox support for ranks between species and genus

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

At present, {{Speciesbox}} allows only one rank, subgenus, to be directly specified (i.e. not via a taxonomy template). All other such ranks need a taxonomy template to work with {{Speciesbox}}. Please see Template talk:Speciesbox#Ranks between species and genus for a request for comment relating to this. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:20, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

"Seidenforchis" listed at Redirects for discussion

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

  A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Seidenforchis. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 October 15#Seidenforchis until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:04, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

In Plants of the World (2017), there are two genera starting with "Seidenf" in Epidendroideae, but neither is Seidenforchis. It is indeed listed as a synonym of Crepidium in POWO (online). - Dank (push to talk) 23:22, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Suaeda fruticosa

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Our article Suaeda fruticosa says that Suaeda vera is a synonym. However, we have a stub at the latter title, and sources like PoWO treat the two as different species. In agreement, sources such as Stace (2019), New Flora of the British Isles, regard the European species as S. vera, like PoWO. Other sources are somewhat confused, but the current Suaeda fruticosa article seems mostly about Sueda vera. Does anyone have an interest in the genus and would be able to sort out the articles? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:52, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Suaeda fruticosa & S. vera were originally named for plants growing in Yemen and Egypt by Forsskål. According to Petteri Uotila, writing for the EUR+MED flora project in 2011, the name S. fruticosa has consistently been misapplied to S. vera in Europe. Both species are valid, only S. fruticosa does not occur in Europe, North Africa or the Near East, according to this source. In other words, S. fruticosa Auct. is a synonym of S. vera, not the other way around as stated in English Wikipedia. Confusingly, the Chenopodium fruticosum of Linnaeus in 1753 is a synonym of S. vera, but not S. fruticosa. Forsskål calls S. vera the 'true' sáu'da of the Arabs, as this was the species used by them in the production of ash for superior glass. The authorship attribution in Wikipedia is wrong: it should be 'Forssk. ex J.F.Gmel.'. See also the Flora Iberica from 1990. Stace 2019 appears to have copied the same text from the 2010 and 1983 editions =he's untrustworthy here, I can only assume the text is outdated... Frankly, he's probably just plain mistaken, see Nomenclatural changes in the list of British vascular plants from 1969. And here's another two guys repeating this info in 2001. Leo Breman (talk) 14:28, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
So I think the best thing to do is simply move all the text in the S. fruticosa article to the other one, and leave it stubby. Three sources from Pakistan/India may be the real deal, I'll double-check that, maybe this part can stay. I'm getting rid of the Plant for a Future website as reference almost entirely (common name can stay), as Mr. Fern is clearly confusing species here. Doing this now. Leo Breman (talk) 17:03, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Correcting tense in sections on Indigenous people's usage of plants

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

I'm not a botanist, but I spend a lot of time on the Wikipedia pages of different plants, particularly those native to North America, due to personal interest. I've found that a lot of them have sections about Native people's usages of plants for food/medicinal/fiber/other purposes, which I think is really good. However, it seems to be the default that those discussions are written in the past tense (i.e. "the Haida used its berries to make a purple dye"). While there might be a few cases where these usages truly are no longer practiced, a large number of them still are, so past tense shouldn't necessarily be the go-to. I think it would be worthwhile to go through and change all of these sections to use present-tense or time-frame-neutral language (i.e. "the Haida use its berries to make a purple dye" or "the Haida have traditionally used its berries to make a purple dye"), unless there's solid evidence that the relevant practice is no longer done. I've posted this on Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America as well. Thanks all for your help. Aquaticonions (talk) 01:47, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi Aquaticonions, it's great you're interested in plants and their uses. Regarding your concern about past/present tense, the burden of proof is in the sourcing. If a statement "the Haida used its berries to make a purple dye" is referenced to a source from the 19th century, changing it to the present tense would be unverified. I am part Arawak, my great great grandmother still used Socratea stilt roots to grind cassava, but that is quite definitely past tense. Great granny Trudi got a grinder. 'Indigenous' people have cars, TVs, emigrate, are epidemiologists, all the modern stuff... Indigenous English people used to hand over their daughters to the local lord to break them in before marriage, separate their society into economic castes, and drown elderly women as witches when they had a bad harvest, but these practices have largely ended over there, I gather. Native American cultures are likewise not static. Furthermore, especially in the USA and the Caribbean, many, if not most, Native American cultures have unfortunately largely been destroyed. If your sourcing proves a usage is contemporary, go ahead. If the sourcing is historical, which it will be in very many cases, then the only verifiable statement one can make is that the usage was historical. Leo Breman (talk) 06:46, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
For historical references the form "the Haida have traditionally used its berries to make a purple dye" would cover it. It states the tradition and makes no assumptions about current usage. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
I agree with the above that neutral language in the vein of "has been used by" or "is traditionally used by" is best in the absence of evidence either way about current use. Another point though in the same vein - a lot of articles talk about use by Indigenous people in a separate section/sub-section from other uses. I don't think this makes much sense and seems rather exclusionary. I think it makes a lot more sense to give all the information about how it is and has been used for e.g. food by anyone, followed by information about use as medicine, and so on. Somatochlora (talk) 13:40, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
I would agree and I suspect that's a manifestation of a common Wikipedia phenomenon, where someone approaches a series of articles from a very narrow lens ("does this plant have a traditional use?"), infodumps into each article from some compilation of same, and moves on without looking to see if they've duplicated information or trying to integrate that section properly into that individual article. That said, since you mention medicine, I think it's good to point out that in accordance with WP:MEDRS, we should be very careful in framing our statements about the medicinal value of plants. It's also best to avoid what I think of as the "everything-is-artemisinin" genre of information; there are an enormous number of papers out there where someone extracts a particular chemical from some traditional remedy, shows that it has some sort of in vitro bioactivity at high dosage, and encourages the reader to infer that the traditional remedy was clinically efficacious, most of which add (IMO) no value to the article about the plant from which they derive. Choess (talk) 17:18, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

This has to be the silliest edit I've made yet

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have long suspected Wikipedia as being the most important source of logogenesis in plant names in the modern era, finally I got impeccable proof. Leo Breman (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Royal Horticultural Society plant ID

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A Property has been created at Wikidata; Royal Horticultural Society plant ID, P8765, which was discussed here back in September. Abductive (reasoning) 02:52, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

 
Wikidata has the property:
I've added it to the {{taxonbar}}, e.g. for Quercus robur. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:35, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Chikadoma Plant

Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments7 people in discussion

Hello all--I need some of you to have a look at this article, and please comment on the talk page--you'll see why soon enough. In short, the article is alleged to be a hoax (by User:Nomen ambiguum), the plant non-existent and the text a mish-mash (by Leo Breman, as well as a blatant form of resume-building (me). Leo Breman, perhaps you can also explain the accusation you made on my talk page, "The common name/title is apparently invented by the seller of the herbal products who is being referenced 20x". Before we take further steps I think it's worthwhile getting a few more pairs of eyes, since the remedy, in the end, will be deletion and an indefinite block if these allegations are correct. Thank you all, Drmies (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Second sentence: "It is named for Nigerian pharmacologist Chika Ohadoma, who researched the plant in the rainforest of Southern Nigeria." Get it? The name is a portmanteau. Then check out the references: +/- 35 are all referenced to Chika Ohadoma. In the last reference, no. 49 dated to 2020, Chika Ohadoma apparently coins the brand name Chikadoma after himself. Then further, the name Chíkà is Igbo, and translates as 'God is supreme' =see who wrote the article, a guy calling himself "God is supreme".
Then botanically: Lupinus arboreus is a plant from California which grows in temperate climates (I have one), not Nigerian rainforests. The photos are of Boscia senegalensis, I'm pretty sure -at least this one grows in Nigeria, but not in rainforests, it is a typical sahel species. I could go on... Leo Breman (talk) 15:36, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't think the etymology of "Chika" is particularly germane here, but other than that, I would agree that this doesn't appear to be Lupinus arboreus (it does not look to me like a legume) and the article appears to be self-promotional. I wonder about the quality of some of these journals; in any case, I have argued previously that "extract from [plant X] has [biological activity Y] in vitro" papers of this sort are generally unencyclopedic. I would favor deleting the article. Choess (talk) 18:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, yes, the editor in question calls himself "MrGodspower". Leo Breman (talk) 21:37, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Seems this is mainly a case of self-promotion (I assume) with an article that doesn't meet standards (notability, secondary sources, etc). It seems that there is a pharmacologist called Dr. Sylvester Chika Ohadoma at the University of Calabar who has published papers on bioactive compounds from certain plants. At best, if mentioned in a secondary source, this might merit a one sentence mention is an article on whatever plant it is. This article on the plant relies solely on primary sources by the person who the plant has been named after, which all seem to be on pharmacology. There seems nothing on the taxonomy or botany of the plant. It could be moved to Draft space, but I seriously doubt it could be brought up to standards. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:45, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't inspire confidence in the University of Calabar if they employ a pharmacologist who cannot correctly identify the plant they are supposed to be working on. I doubt that any plant has been named after the person who wrote this article, unless you count existing named taxa that someone has decided to add their own name to, but that would be nonsense science. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 10:39, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all. I am going to delete the article, seeing plenty of consensus for it, and I'm placing this note here as a gloss. Elmidae proposed speedy deletion per WP:A10, and that is a good enough reason. In addition, it seems clear to me (also after article edits by Kevmin and Hardyplants) that plenty other elements are problematic, including a hoaxy quality and the use of predatory journals--and thus of resume-building and promotion, which would suggest the author could be blocked per WP:NOTHERE, or per WP:COI, or per WP:NOTWEBHOST, etc. But maybe MrGodspower would like to comment here, before such a judgment is made. Drmies (talk) 18:20, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Oops - was not aware of this discussion when I placed the CSD request, sorry. I was going by provided taxonomic info - it did not occur to me that that might have been made up. Well, looks like the article would have been headed for the slot in the wall in any case, for a variety of reasons :p --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:27, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you all for your discussions on the page I had created. I was not the researcher but found the research worthy of having a page on Wikipedia. Let me first and foremost tackle the aspect of saying that the name Chíkà, an Igbo name was coined by the author to raise himself equal with God, anyone can bear it. He was named such by his parents, I think as no one can possibly name himself. Please that alone is wrong, no one has the right to question the name you bear, knowing that traditions and culture differ. What's obtainable in the USA is not in Nigeria or Ghana. Secondly, the same editor who countered the name of the author of the articles/researcher also countered my name by saying; (Sorry, yes, the editor in question calls himself "MrGodspower"). Let me make something clearer here, that's my name, and there is nothing wrong with name-giving as such. I have seen a situation where some White guys bear "Jesus" and no one questions them. I am offended at this juncture, I could tag this act with any meaning I may wish to, as it appears "offensive and link to racism."
I believe that Wikipedia is for all, but you guys are trying to limit some people, me or others with your mode of decisions and tackling of issues. One must not speak directly against you before you understands his/her inner thought.
Consider this and revisit your decision: Those journals are not African nor Nigerian based but outside African continent hence no issue of financial conflict of interest. It is noteworthy to emphasize that journals have Board of Editors who assess the suitability of articles for publication, not only that, articles are usually sent out by the Journals to external reviewers before a final decision is taken. Acceptance of articles is peer-review dependent. It is not a one man show. Please, download online the articles and see the merits behind the acceptance after peer-review by the Journals. The content of the article does not show duplication! Please take your time to discover this. There are other sources to Chikadoma Plant that are secondary, which are also cited in the page.
Finally, someone mentioned that I needed to comment here before the page is deleted, which is the right thing to do, but that wasn't considered, and the page was deleted without my comment (notice) here. Totally unfair, we all need to note that we strive to become the best we can, we are not perfect. Therefore, I humbly and reasonably requesting for the page to be restored, considering my submissions here. Thank you.MrGodspower (talk) 05:30, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
I agree that you should have been informed of this discussion and that some of the comments above are unfair and don't assume good faith (WP:AGF).
In my comments above I pointed out that Chika Ohadoma was a pharmacologist at the University of Calabar who has published some papers on bioactive compounds. I made no judgement on the quality of the papers, other than to state that they were primary sources. However, none of them seem to describe the plant that the article is about and I didn't see any other reference describing the plant as a variety or hybrid of Lupinus arboreus and naming it after Dr Ohadoma. For a Wikipedia article on the plant to exist it must have been formally described and subsequently referred to in secondary sources so that it meets WP:GNG. This is the reason for the deletion. None of this questions the credibility Dr Ohadoma's publications on the pharmacology of bioactive compounds from the plant, but this article is on the plant not the compounds and their pharmacology. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Mr. Godspower, please don't be so so touchy. I thought the name was evidence of someone promoting their own herbal products with this wikipage. Your wiki name and Chíkà have some similarity -as Choess pointed out, this was not good evidence on my part. You are offended because I pointed out your names are similar? You seem to assume I'm white and from America, both not true! Accusing me of racism doesn't make the botany in your article any better, which is what we are actually talking about. Please look carefully at this picture:
 
Lupinus arboreus kz9
The flower colour is yellow, not purple. Lupine has beans, not round fruit like the plant in the picture you added. Lupine has leaves which split into many leaflets like a hand, not single leaves. The pictures you added appear to be of three different species. I have never been to Nigeria, although I have always wanted to visit Calabar, but I have spent some time in Benin and Togo, with similar climates, and one cannot grow lupine there! (well... maybe on mountains) Both you and Dr. Ohadoma are obviously wrong with the identification of your plants.
Furthermore, there already is an article on Lupinus arboreus, what you should have done is added any relevant information about this plant there, not make a whole new redundant article based on a newly invented name.
Admittedly, I should have tagged you at the beginning so you could have followed this discussion, but you had the opportunity to respond to what I left on the talk page of your article. So I am sorry that you have taken offence, sorry you were not properly notified of this discussion, and sorry your work has come to naught -it was just not good enough, but I can truly understand why you are annoyed all your work has just vanished. Indeed "we are not perfect", me included. But let us all be serious about plants!
Please let me assure you we are all here because of a love for plants, and sharing what we know, and I cannot speak for all of us, but I for one would be very happy to help you add any relevant botanical information from a Nigerian perspective, if it passes muster. Regards, Leo Breman (talk) 13:19, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Plant-based societies and organisations - usable as sources?

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

Are plant-based societies and organisations approved as reliable sources for use in articles? I recently looked at some web pages published by the Alpine Garden Society and North American Rock Garden Society and wanted to use some of the information in an article, but I suspected that - despite being written by people knowledgeable about the subject matter - they wouldn't be regarded as reliable sources? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 10:05, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't see why they shouldn't be. It's always possible that someone will decide to be a tool and wikilawyer about it, in which case a vigorous public shaming is warranted. Choess (talk) 16:53, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
It depends on the organization. If it's a scientific professional organization, then it would of course be an RS. If it's more of a hobbyist organization, there isn't always going to be a reputation for fact-checking. Especially on the subject of plants, that's more of an issue of not reaching for the bottom of the barrel when you can typically find better sources on the same subject in government, extension, etc. documents. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:12, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
I have found the Alpine Garden Society and the North American Rock Garden Society material to be quite useful, but I have not included them as sources in very many articles. Instead, I use them to find more scholarly sources that say the same thing. They point the way to what people find interesting about a given plant. Abductive (reasoning) 09:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that distinction quite cuts at the joint. There are plenty of "hobbyist" organizations, or at least ones I couldn't describe as "scientific professional", that are intensely interested in getting what they publish right; on the other hand, there are certainly others where getting things right about the nominal object of the society is secondary to using it as an opportunity to socialize. I suppose my mental breakdown for the societies listed would be that I'd consider them quite reliable on the core topic of horticulture; I'd consider them generally reliable for botanical descriptions, but would dig, as others have said, for scholarly sources if I were reviewing or expanding the article; and I'd be quite skeptical of using them to source many sociocultural claims ("this plant was used by natives..." and whatnot). I don't think the claim that "you can typically find better sources" on the same subject is necessarily warranted; e.g., to take the NARGS November 2020 plant of the month, I'm not sure the local ag extension is going to tell you how to germinate Androsace carnea, nor is it clear to me why they would necessarily be more accurate. (I'm afraid I have a burr under my saddle just now about the general shift of "reliable sources" discussion from "will this help us reflect the consensus on this subject from those who consider it" to "does this meet some generalized heuristic we invented", which is making my tone rather sharper than it really should be.) Choess (talk) 16:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm with Choess here; you don't need a degree or institution to say something useful, and plenty folks with degrees talking nonsense. Things like cultivation, cultivars, availability, marketing, vernacular names... these can all be culled from 'amateur' sources... and the line gets blurred in cases like PACSOA for instance. Some of these rock garden societies had some really experienced members when it came to plant collecting, cultivation, breeding or whatnot. Leo Breman (talk) 17:32, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm absolutely with Choess, too. (Disclosure: I'm currently the vice-chair and have been the chair of a local group of the Alpine Garden Society.) The AGS publishes a journal, The Alpine Gardener, and published the two-volume Encyclopedia of Alpines (being moved online). Many very well-known UK botanists are involved with the AGS, including Kit Grey-Wilson (botanical abbreviation "Grey-Wilson"), who has written many articles and also been an editor for the AGS. Clearly blogs produced by societies must be used with caution, but there should be no prejudice against such societies per se. Another useful source is the Pacific Bulb Society – particularly for the cultivation of bulbous species in temperate areas. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:07, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
  1. ^ Farjon, A. (2013). "Pinus torreyana subsp. insularis". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2013: e.T34013A2840313. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T34013A2840313.en. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  2. ^ Farjon, A. (2013). "Pinus torreyana subsp. torreyana". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2013: e.T34015A2840365. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T34015A2840365.en. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  3. ^ Farjon, A. (2013). "Pinus torreyana". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2013: e.T42424A2979186. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T42424A2979186.en. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
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