Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)

Monotypic taxa: A genus with a single species is treated at the article for the genus.

This rule generates errors in article pages, because links in the left panel point to articles in different languages about genus, not species. And vice versa. Articles in different languagest don't point to an English article. Here is an example article about Orthilia secunda:
Gruszynka_jednostronna
It contains links to about 20 other articles about Orthilia secunda in the left panel, no one is English. Because English description is hidden in the article about genus Orthilia. But species is species, genus is genus. Why to hide articles in different ones ?
I tried to add Orthilia secunda article (redirect) here:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q162501#sitelinks-wikipedia
but it is impossible: "Could not save due to an error. The link enwiki:Orthilia is already used by item Q1552593." etc. Perhaps it could be fixed somehow on wikidata level, by omitting redirect template, so those articles about species hidden in articles about genera could stay. But in such situation English articles about genera would not be visible in articles about genera in different languages. Darekk2 (talk) 20:21, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. Unfortunately, this is a problem with wikidata, which seems to be getting mired in various problems. I thought I could fix it by adding the Wikidata redirect template at Orthilia_secunda but it hasn't worked yet. Not sure if it might work later, after some batch process happens. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

So far this this a bug in Wikipedia. Darekk2 (talk) 11:01, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem is on the Wikidata end: Wikidata is not able to (easily) link to redirects. See bug T54564, and d:Help:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items, which describes the problem and the recommended resolution. Please read at least the second link, because it contradicts your accusations. Choess (talk) 14:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I had noticed that Wikidata is rigid. But today readers of Wikipedias other than English can't see some of articles because of hidding species descriptions in articles about genera. I think that most clear, natural solution would be if species and genera had separate articles. This is not the same as Bonnie and Clyde. Because Bonnie and Clyde are Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie is Bonnie, Clyde is Clyde, but genus is not species. And better solution would be to ommit articles about genera, not species. Darekk2 (talk) 16:40, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Menyanthes is connected to
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q156153#sitelinks-wikipedia (Menyanthes trifoliata)
So the article about Orthilia could be removed from Orthilia and connected to Orthilia secunda. But in this situation, readers of Wikipedia in other languages would not see English article about species. Darekk2 (talk) 17:20, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Darekk2: the problem is with Wikidata not any of the Wikipedias, as has been explained to you at Talk:Orthilia. It's nothing to do with genera and species particularly. A different example is that the English Wikipedia has two articles, Berry, about the general sense, and Berry (botany), about the botanical sense, since these are different in English. But they may or may not be in other languages, and certainly other Wikipedias don't all have two articles, so it's not clear which article to link to which. Restricting Wikidata to 1:1 links is just wrong.

It's completely pointless to have separate articles about monotypic taxa just because of an elementary design error in Wikidata, and we aren't going to do it. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:26, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that much better would be have separate articles about species, not genera like currently, because description are about species. So in case of monotypic species only an article about species, no article about genus. Darekk2 (talk) 13:16, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

@Darekk2: It would certainly make the rule simpler if it was "treat monotypic taxa at the lowest rank" rather than "treat monotypic taxa at the lowest rank, but no lower than genus except when the genus name is ambiguous with another Wikipedia article". I kind of wish we had gone that route, but at this point that means moving 2194 articles (that's just for plants; animals also have monotypic genera at the genus title). That still wouldn't solve the problem for Wikidata. And there are a couple reasons why using the genus title is preferable; it's more concise, and it harmonizes with how fossil taxa are treated (my understanding is that people working on paleontological taxa settled on not having articles on species first, and that played a role in the decision to have living monotypic genera at the genus title). Plantdrew (talk) 17:45, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I had noticed this issue coincidentally a day before yesterday, wrote so many messages because of strong resistance to this information. You can do what you want. Darekk2 (talk) 01:26, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

The Cebuano, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Waray and Chinese Wikipedias have separate articles on Orthilia and Orthilia secunda; Wikidata must have two items for the genus and species to accommodate these Wikipedias. Arabic, Azerbaijani, Danish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias have separate articles for Menyanthes and Menyanthes trifoliata. Scots and English articles at the genus title that are connected to the Wikidata item for the species ought to be connected to the Wikidata item for the genus (although there's no great harm in leaving them connected to the item that holds the most interwiki links). As long as at least one Wikipedia has separate article for a monotypic genus and it's species, it won't be possible to keep all the interwiki links on one Wikidata item. Plantdrew (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

If using Wikidata to do the interwiki links is causing a problem in this article... don't use Wikidata. Be creative, and find another way to do the interwiki links. Problem solved. Blueboar (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Bolding synonyms

This guideline doesn't say much about putting synonyms in bold. So I guess MOS:BOLD takes precedence. Accordingly, I did this. Okay? Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:25, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@Anythingyouwant: it's always a tricky issue. I would bold "major" synonyms, i.e. those widely used that have a redirect. Too much bold is distracting and unhelpful, in my view. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Is "scientific name" equivalent to "accepted name", or does WP:COMMON come into play?

The article at Persicaria affinis currently tells us that the accepted name for the species is Polygonum affine. Is this sufficient reason to move the article, if I judge that Persicaria affinis is much more commonly used? Ie, should the recommendation to use scientific names be interpreted as using the accepted name (backed by taxonomical sources), or the name which people are most likely to THINK is the "scientific name" (as indicated by the use in other sources, comparison of Google page counts etc).

• This flower (like so many others) is known by several vernacular names... and each of these vernacular names are “the most commonly used” in different areas of the world. However, no matter which vernacular name is used in a given area, it is UNIVERSALLY known also by its scientific name. Thus, the scientific name is actually the most commonly used. Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

@NisJørgensen:, the accepted name (as determined by consensus in recent taxonomic sources) should be used as the title. In some cases, there may not be consensus in recent sources. We don't need to wait for Google page counts for a recently accepted name to overwhelm results for a long-standing name now regarded as a synonym. However, neither do we want to rely on a single primary source; we don't immediately incorporate the nomenclatural results of every phylogenetic study that comes out; we wait for those changes to be supported by some secondary sources (this is basically the same logic that applies to changing title of articles on cities or other geographical features that have had a name change; new usage doesn't need to overwhelm old usage, but recent sources should demonstrate adoption of the new usage). Plantdrew (talk) 19:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Can we re-open the monospecific genus question, pls

I find it unsatisfactory that we treat a species as if it is a genus, if the genus happens to be (sometimes only temporarily) monospecific. There has been a discussion amongst a small number of us at WikiProject Plants and I would like to bring it up here to see if there is general support for a change in policy now. My concern is that it makes no sense to write about a genus as if it is a species. We write "Torminalis is a genus of plants" and then go on to say "It is a species that grows in Europe". That's weird. If you are linking from an external site to a species on Wikipedia, you expect to link to the species, not the genus. This is a convention that is only used in Wikipedia, and apparently only in the English language Wikipedia.

The only argument that I've seen for treating the genus as the species is that it helps slightly in the structure of the encyclopaedia, in that we don't have to write a short piece on a genus that isn't particularly interesting in itself. But we have to create redirects from the species page, which must be the same amount of work as creating a stub on a genus. Or we could make a redirect from the genus page to the species page. Anyhow, my suggestion is that we change this rule to say that all species should have articles at species level, where they belong, and that this rule can be implemented for existing articles gradually, when we feel like it, without worrying that there might be some inconsistency for a while. E Wusk (talk) 10:03, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Several points:

• We don't write "X is a genus .. It is a species that .." We write (or should write) "X is a genus with one species X y, that ..}}"
• If you are linking from an external site to a species on Wikipedia, you expect to link to the species, not the genus. That is perhaps an argument for two articles, but having only one at the species level just reverses it to "If you are linking from an external site to a genus on Wikipedia, you expect to link to the genus, not the species."
• This should not be discussed for plants alone, since the same approach is applied to animal articles, and it would cause great confusion if the two were handled differently.
• What would be done with cases like Amborella? Four articles? Or Lepidogalaxias? Five articles? I certainly would not support such a policy.

Peter coxhead (talk) 22:40, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for those replies, @Peter coxhead. I agree with your points 2 & 3. I don't know much about Amborella, but I would suggest that if it is normally referred to, in the literature, as Amborella, then the article should be at genus level, with stubs, redirects or red links as you like at the other ranks. However, if it normally called Amborella trichopoda, then the main article should be given that title. Ginkgo biloba seems to a good role model, as everyone does know it as G. biloba despite the absence of any other species. Whereas as Peony is right to have a detailed article about the genus, whilst leaving some of the species as stubs. E Wusk (talk) 05:31, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@E Wusk: so if I understand correctly, you are not saying that all four ranks currently covered at Amborella and all five ranks currently covered at Lepidogalaxias should have their own articles. Is that right?

You seem to be suggesting that instead of the current guidance, which says "the article ... should go under the scientific name of lowest rank, but no lower than the monotypic genus", it should instead say something like "... should go under the scientific name of either the monotypic genus or its species, depending on which is better known". I would certainly not support that change; it would lead to endless debates over the choice. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:33, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead that's not quite what I'm saying. I think that every article should have the appropriate title for the subject matter. If it is about a species, then the species name need to be the title. That might be "Tomato" or it might be "Solanum lycopersicum", whichever is thought to serve the subject and the audience best. Nobody else seems to be showing the slightest interest in this conversation, and as the example of the ginkgo demonstrates, the guideline isn't implemented consistently anyway. E Wusk (talk) 14:22, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@E Wusk: Ginkgo isn't a monotypic genus; the many fossil species are particularly important for this pivotal taxon in the evolutionary history of land plants. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:14, 14 February 2025 (UTC)