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Archive 1

Introduction

Hi everyone! I thought it would be good to get some collaboration going on the carnivorous plant articles here on Wikipedia. Thank you Veledan for suggesting this WikiProject! All the information there right now is just tentative ideas. Please suggest or implement any changes as you see fit. If anyone knows of any suitable templates, for example, please add them.

If you start or edit Wikipedia articles related to Carnivorous plants on a regular or even occasional basis, please add your name to the participants list. There is also an "adopt an article" section that you could add yourself to when you are undertaking building/improving a page. Thank you and I look forward to working together with all of you!! --NoahElhardt 21:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Borderline carnivores

I see many are listed in this project. Should I go ahead and list Stylidium there as well (my pet project)? Wondered if this was a deliberate omission so I figured I'd ask here before just adding it. Let me know what you think! And thanks for creating this project. -Rkitko 05:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rkitko and Welcome! The omission of Stylidiums was not purposeful. The list I used was a direct copy of that on the carnivorous plant page. Are Stylidiums even considered to be borderline carnivorous anymore? I wasn't aware that they were. If they are, feel free to add them. Please also add a paragraph discussing their carnivory (or lack thereof) on the Stylidium page - the only indicator currently is the image description. Thanks for joining the project! --NoahElhardt 05:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah yes, I was meaning to get around to adding that to the Stylidium page anyway. The reference I have from 2002 (Darnowski) describes triggerplants as protocarnivorous or subcarnivorous. They have the ability to trap and kill, but not the ability to digest, like many other borderline carnivores. They're still being tested for digestive enzymes, but the assumption is that they do not produce them. When I was working with Stylidium in the lab, I would find fungus gnats and fruit flies in the muscilage. Quite interesting plants all around. If that's sufficient, I'll go ahead and add it. Thanks! -Rkitko 06:40, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Well I would like this project to focus primarily on those plants known to be carnivorous (there is plenty of work to do in this area without adding other plants), but if you are willing to do the work we could definetally add a section on protocarnivores. This section would eventually include quite a few plants, including Ibicella lutea (Mameli, 1916), Dipsacus (Christy, 1923), Passiflora foetida (Radhamani et al., 1995), Paepalanthus bromeloides (Jolivet, 1998), and Geranium viscosissimum and Potentilla arguta (Spomer, 1999) (see link). Go for it! --NoahElhardt 15:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it's always hard to deal with issues of demarcation, especially when nature provides us with shades of grey. I would certainly be willing to work as hard as possible on the protocarnivores (their evolutionary history fascinates me, particularly). I'm excited about this project! -Rkitko 18:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like everyone took a vacation from this project? Hope not. Just letting you know, if you didn't see it on Talk:Carnivorous plant 1#Borderline carnivores, I left some questions that might help me in the development of another article. I'd like input from everyone! Thanks, all. -Rkitko 04:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Project aims

Hi again and well done for getting this page up so fast Noah!

I'm happy to have my name next to Bladderwort on the list of pet projects but I think we should make it clear from the start if we are attaching names that we don't own individual articles. Yes I wrote most of Bladderwort and I intend to add more to it but others are of course welcome to add stuff / hack it apart etc. I think a more productive approach is to encourage multiple editors to work on one article simultaneously rather than parcel out one article per editor - a whole article is a big job! And if I don't get round to writing up any evidence I've gathered soon enough, I'd like to be able to dump quotes and other information on the talk page of an article, and see what others can do with it. ~ Veledan • Talk 18:48, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Veledan. I completely agree. While there is some value to "adopting articles", there is also no "owning" articles and we need all the collaboration we can get. Would you prefer a "collaboration of the week" format rather than an "adopt an article" format? I think it might help us systematically get articles completed in a thorough fashion.
I didn't attach your name as a signature of ownership, but rather as an invitation for you to inform us of the status of the article there. I think it would be nice to have some sort of list that shows the status of various articles we are working on so we can see what most needs to be done. What do you think? --NoahElhardt 20:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Nepenthes articles: done

Every known Nepenthes species has its own article, albeit the majority are just stubs. Now it's just a matter of adding images and expanding... Mgiganteus1 02:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I will try work on the Natural known hybrids of Nepenthes. I've just uploaded a few pics, took a stab at x trichocarpa and am still trying to figure out how to work on this Wiki stuff. Flytrap canada 22:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)Flytrap_Canada

International issues

I added a paragraph concern international teamwork and I hope this is okay and will find a certain response. Any feedback is appreciated, Denisoliver 11:13, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

copied from main page:

Maybe somebody is interested in parallelizing efforts on any of these articles?

I would be, but I feel that I should probably concentrate on getting the last few sections of the Drosera article finished first. How would you suggest this parallel effort is done? Most english users will only be able to supply information, but not glean much from the German language pages. However, I guess that the data gathering could be done together - for example, a list of informative webpages and information from books could be posted on a talk page for both languages to use. What do you think? --NoahElhardt 22:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, teaming with you would indeed be easy, as you can read and write German. We could work together on a special subpage. I would propose to share the sections to write then, i.e. you would write the description, I would write the part on distribution and habitat, you would write the part on botanical history, I'd make the one on systematics and so on .. As we both understand each others language, we can write it bilangual, in the end we have just to translate half an article and then place it -almost finished- in our "Home-WP", where we'd customize the text relating to the specialities of our local WPs. Of course, "sharing" the sections shouldn't be to exclusive, the other one can (and should!) of course review it and might add additional information from his sources to the text, maybe as a comment (<!-- foo bar -->. On the subpages talkpage we could note the sources we've available, the other one can ask for infos then or might get access to the concerning literature too.
The basic principle would be the same in case of a team consisting of users, which do not speak all the same languages as we both luckily do. The team would either have to agree on the language to use as a lingua franca then (usually this would be English and additional translating would be necessary by the other poor guy :) ) or reduce the teamwork on all but writing (review, source-access and exchange) or teaming in writing a telegram-style version of the article, which could be a good fundament then for a full-text version of the article in any language. There are many possible ways and the exact way to teamwork should be defined by every team itself. My 2 cent, Denisoliver 07:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that this kind of project would definetaly be beneficial. The last few weeks have been rather busy for me as I was finishing up the school year, but I am free again and have more time to devote to projects such as this.
One thing that has been mentioned before was a kind of "collaboration of the week", where Wikiproject members would all work together on the same page. This could easily be done in a way that would be beneficial for more than one language, so maybe that might be the best way to go. The english Sarracenia page could definetaly use some work, so I'd love to start on that one. Is anyone else interested in a collaboration of the week project?
If not, you and I could team up and work on pages together. My biggest love among the cp's is Drosera, and so my first inclination is to work mainly on those (I just translated Drosera madagascariensis and wrote a page on Drosera anglica), but of course the genera pages should be finished first. --NoahElhardt 22:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Fine. Though I also like Drosera the most, I agree, that at first the CP-genera should be rather complete. I guess, that the state of the Nepenthes-article is rather good already in both WP's and Cephalothus follicularis is not so urgent (and not a stub anymore at least in the de-WP). So three important articles are needing some rework in both WP's: Sarracenia, Heliamphora and Roridula. Personally, I would prefer to choose Sarracenia or Heliamphora, they are simply more important than Roridula. Sarracenia' would be easier, as the plants are quite well-known, pictures are available at commons and there exists a large amount of literature. And there is already a nice start in the en-WP. Heliamphora would need to be completely rewritten, both WP's have almost nothing to offer, it is definitely the larger challenge. But we can do both too, maybe ... ;) Denisoliver 11:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Article names

Great work creating all the new articles guys. I think we should consider getting the article names consistent though, especially with ref to the question of common name vs binomial name. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Examples has a preference for using the most common name of species and genera where that doesn't cause ambiguity. So we have articles called "Bladderwort" instead of "Utricularia", and "Venus Fly Trap" instead of "Dionaea": the latin names still have pages but they are redirect pages, pointing to the main article. That part is fairly clear, but then we have to decide where to draw the line in CP articles. Should Sarracenia redirect to North American pitcher plant or Trumpet pitcher, or is Sarracenia the commoner term? Is Sarracenia rubra really better known as Sweet trumpet (the name d'Amato gives it) or do most of us just call it Sarracenia rubra? And I guess whatever name the people who have it growing naturally around them call it has a claim even if CP enthusiasts always use the binomial names. Thoughts, anyone? ~ Veledan • Talk 14:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that common names are only used when referring to whole genera. I hear "sundew" used a lot but never "Alice's sundew" - just Drosera aliciae. Maybe we should give the generic pages common names while using latin names on species pages? People likely to be looking up specific species are likely to know the specific names. People who are interested in who genera, however, often are unaware of the generic names (at the same time, they are very unlikely in experience to know "North American Pitcher Plant", or "Trumpet Pitcher" - they are likely just to know them as "pitcher plants"). Personally I think binomial names are better everywhere to avoid ambiguosity and confusion, but to follow convention it would probably be best to use common names for at least a few of the well-known genera. --NoahElhardt 15:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
You could always use the google test as a guide in most cases.
  • "Sarracenia" got 412,000 hits.
  • "North American pitcher plant" got 95 hits.
  • "Trumpet pitcher" got 772 hits.
It would appear the Sarracenia article should remain there, and it even appears that "Drosera" is more common than "sundew" (969,000 and 392,000 hits respectively). The common naming conventions are there to allow the most people to find the article where they would expect it to be. And by far, I think the largest majority of people searching for these articles will be carnivorous plant enthusiasts who know the latin name Drosera or Sarracenia. Perhaps sometimes, binomial names wouldn't be appropriate for some very well-known species. Though I would even suggest moving Cape sundew to Drosera capensis (Google hits: 949 and 54,000, respectively). -Rkitko 18:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Recategorising in progress

Some of the categories in question relate to the genera you folks work on... these are single genus categories which are being moved to families (as well as pages in order categories being sorted into families). There's a couple of us on it, so shouldn't take long.

Beautiful articles there BTW! SB Johnny 01:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! The plants were originally in family categories, but recently someone moved them to genera - I'm glad to see them moving back. Some of these categories may eventually get prohibitively large - only 200 entries will show per page, so users will have navigate through multiple pages. For now, though, I think this will work great. Thanks for doing the work! Much appreciated. --NoahElhardt 01:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
No problem... was trying to clean up one of the order cats (Caryophyllales) when I saw them. BTW, Nepenthes is indeed a 1 genus family anyway, right?SB Johnny 02:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that is correct: Nepenthes is the sole genus in the family Nepenthaceae. --NoahElhardt 02:33, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Distribution maps

Hello, I have made distribution maps in SVG for probably all genuses of CP few days ago. See Commons:Category:Carnivorous plants distribution maps (only SVG ones). Now I have add them to articles here.


I made maps in accordance to http://www.honda-e.com/A02_World%20Maps/CPWorldMap1.htm and czech book "Masožravé rostliny" from "David Švarc" and maps that was on Commons. In case of proboscidea is map on http://www.honda-e.com/A02_World%20Maps/CPWorldMap1.htm disabled (with no red colour) -> Only information I have find was http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=PRLO - only distribution in USA - so I faked the map a little.


In cases of brocchinia, catopsis and proboscidea are on map only carnivorous species (like on http://www.honda-e.com/A02_World%20Maps/CPWorldMap1.htm). I could take take the maps other species too (most likely with another colour), but I have no details.


I will be happy, if somebody check whether are those maps correct. I (or enybody else) could modificate it.

I have one question: why isn't proboscidea in list of CP like ibicella? I taught, that proboscidea is protocarnivorous too.

Hi Petr, nice to see that my invitation worked and you joined us. Many of your maps meanwhile have been integrated in the articles of my "home-WP" de, it is good to have them available for all genus. What about species maps now? ;) You are right with the Proboscidea, I'll add this. Regards from Germany, Denisoliver 21:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I can try it, if I will have some time, but I have no basics. Now I am in GB for 3 weeks without computer, so I if will have computer and time after I will try to do it. --62.121.27.37 13:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Need some help referencing

Greetings, all! I'm currently working on creating protocarnivorous plant and I decided to flush out a large part of the article in my sandbox: User:Rkitko/sandbox/ (I've only just begun). There's one part in particular that I was hoping someone could help me out with:

By this definition, many marsh pitcher plants (Heliamphora), a few North American pitcher plants (Sarracenia), and the cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica) would not be included on a roster of carnivorous plants because they rely on symbiotic bacteria to produce the necessary proteolytic enzymes

I have a solid reference for the statement concerning Heliamphora, but I've read conflicting reports on Darlingtonia and I'm not well versed at all in Sarracenia. A book I have (Interrelationship Between Insects and Plants by Pierre Jolivet) indicates that Darlingtonia does indeed produce it's own proteolytic enzymes, but relies upon bacteria as well to produce some of these enzymes. Frustratingly, Jolivet doesn't provide a specific source for that statement and everything else I've read indicates that Darlingtonia doesn't have the capacity to produce it's own digestive enzymes. If anyone could provide clarification on Darlingtonia and a specific reference (perhaps specific species) of Sarracenia that doesn't produce its own enzymes for digestion, that would be fantastic. No hurry, though. Thanks! --Rkitko 08:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

From everything I've ever heard, Darlingtonia californica is unable to produce its own digestive enzymes, and relies on a soup of bacteria etc.. I'm on vacation right now and so don't have my books handy, but will look up a reference for you upon returning.
As for Sarracenia, Sarracenia purpurea is the only species with little or no (I think its no) proteolytic enzyme production. Again, I don't have a reference handy, but can look one up in a week or so. Hope that helps! --NoahElhardt 00:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Excellent, thank you! And that's what I've come to know as common knowledge as well about both species, but can't find authoritative references. And it's not like Jolivet's book is out-dated (published in 1998). I was half-tempted to contact the man and demand a reference. I'll continue searching on JSTOR for published papers on both species. Thanks again! --Rkitko 00:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah hah! Found something. Ellison et al. (2005) report: "Darlingtonia does not possess digestive enzymes (Hepburn et al., 1927); captured prey is broken down by a food web of bacteria, protozoa, mites, and fly larvae (Naeem, 1988: Nielsen, 1990). The plant absorbs the mineral nutrients excreted by this food web." Ellison relies upon a 1927 paper on the subject of digestive enzymes. I was hoping to find a more up-to-date source on the matter (since understanding of enzyme activity has changed wildly since 1927...), but I suppose a 2005 American Journal of Botany article relying on a 1927 source should be trust-worthy. --Rkitko 04:38, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Great, looks good! For S. purpurea, check out [[1]] NoahElhardt 14:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks! I also found the following paper, which basically said that there's been no conclusive evidence on the plant-produced enzymes in S. purpurea, contrary to early 1920s claims that there were indeed proteolytic enzymes of plant origin. It also noted that S. purpurea mostly relies on its commensals for digestion of prey. Neat stuff!
  • Bradshaw, W.E. and Creelman, R.A. (1984). Mutualism between the carnivorous purple pitcher plant and its inhabitants. American Midland Naturalist, 112(2): 294-304. --Rkitko 18:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


Photographs ... your thoughts?

I just wrote the following thoughts on my personal discussion page, then realized that not everyone on the project will see it. So here it is, cut and pasted in its entirety for all to comment on:

Hi and thanks again for your kind words. You guys and the rest on this project are doing a most noble and decent effort.... so my accolades go out to all of you for organizing and getting this project off the ground in the first place.

My first question is the offering of images to everyone.

I don't really have a problem posting my photos on Wikipedia for all to use and enjoy on Wikipedia, but I have seen some of my earlier photos used on commercial sites without my permission. And one of the commercial sales sites have recently been caught and thus, blacklisted, for cheating folks on sales... so I find it unethical for some to take without contributing. I understand that once a photo is uploaded to Wikipedia, it's free for all to use, and you lose your rights...with no input where your pics may go. So I tried to limit the use via the Educational limit use and was informed that the photo would then be a sure way to be deleted. Interesting.

What are your thoughts? I have thousands of CP photos amassed over a few decades, and it does no one any good to have them all stored in shoe boxes and hard drives in my home.

Flytrap canada 16:59, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a great question and one I've asked myself before. You are right in that photos uploaded here are free for the using by anyone, and that most restrictions (such as educational use only) are not allowed. However, you can use licenses that will not allow your photos to be used in a product that is sold (book, magazine, etc), or that require that you are credited as the photographer whenever the image is used.
In the end, its question of cost versus gain. The advantages having well-taken and accurately labeled photographs of plants readily available online has always won out for me over any possible misuse or loss of personal gain that may ensue. Online photographs are what first made me fall in love with cp's, and I still find them invaluable for understanding habitat conditions, growth forms, and so forth. The choice is of course entirely yours to make - though I must say I personally would love to see more of your work online. If you do decide to upload more photos, consider using the wikimedia commons, which will allow your photos to be used in other wikimedia projects, such as foreign-language wikipedias. --NoahElhardt 17:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm involved with monitoring endangered plants, and one of the thing that would be extremely helpful is a good, high-contrast picture of the plant in bloom, along with some sort of "size reference" object (like a dime).

We typically go out (once) during the estimated blooming season, to look for and count plants, because we're particularly interested in blooming -vs- non-blooming (a key statistic in projected viability). Thus, being able to recognize the flowering form should be a great aid in locating the particular area inhabited by a given species. With small, ground-hugging plants like most Drosera, it could be difficult to locate the site without accidentally trampling some, unless we have more-obvious cues (the nice raised-on-a-stalk flowers, for example) to help tell us when we're in the right area. 69.7.197.98 20:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC) [Still waiting for my Login ID to be processed: AnneONeimaus]

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


CP People

What do you folks think about a piece on some of the great CP luminaries we've had - Joe Mazrimas, Leo Song, Larry Mellichamp, Adrian Slack, Donald Schnell etc to name a few. I know we stand the awful chance of missing some folks...but it will be a start to reference a lot of the good work these people have contributed over the decades. Perhaps we should qualify the CP luminaries by stating a few "rules" to abide by. Your thoughts? Flytrap canada 22:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Good idea! Joachim Nerz, Adrian Slack and Andreas Wistuba already have pages, but many others are well deserving of their own. Several of these names already appear in several articles as redlinks, which should be fixed. As far as inclusion rules go, I think they should have at least published several new species or important scientific works related to the plants. Shall we make a list of prospective bio pages? --NoahElhardt 00:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Allen Lowrie already has a stubentry in de, I will translate it beside the other marked entries too. All in all it is rather hard to find out any data on these persons (regrettably). We should not miss

Greets, Denisoliver 22:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Charles, Ch'ien, Robert, and Peter have contributed much to the recent knowledge and positive commercial viability of CPs (access to rare plants and books)... so I hope it's okay to include good folks in the commerce of CPs Flytrap canada 01:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Sarracenia Cultivars

Think it would be worthwhile to list out cultivars for Sarracenia on this page: List_of_Sarracenia_species_and_hybrids? (Ex. S. 'Judith Hindle'.) And would it be proper to re-use the registered cultivar description in the new articles?

The Sarracenia article says:

Several species have subspecies or recognized varieties. The International Carnivorous Plant Society (ICPS) formally recognizes a number of cultivars as well. See the complete list for a listing of species including these taxa.

Which would seem to indicate to me that the following list would INCLUDE cultivars, and it currently only lists "Common hybrids" with formal names like S. x catesbaei. Thoughts? -->Chemical Halo 00:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Style questions

Greetings, all. As you know, I've been going through and writing articles on some Stylidium species. I was wondering if you could opine on a few questions I had:

  1. Should I go ahead and move the triggerplant page to Stylidium per the flora naming convention? Just forgot about it until I ran across it a couple days ago.
  2. I've been using the same block of general text describing the nature of a Stylidium species in the species stubs (i.e. the last paragraph in Stylidium adnatum, Stylidium repens, Stylidium hispidum, etc.). Should I remove those and leave it up to the reader to read further into the genus-level article and keep the description solely on the species-level attributes? If they differ from the norm, then the norm should at least have mention, but I'm beginning to second-guess my decision to include those paragraphs in every species article. May just be unnecessary fluff.

Opinions? Rkitko 09:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Did everyone take a wikibreak? ;-) Hope everyone has a happy, healthy new year's celebration. Get back to me on this when you can. Cheers, --Rkitko 07:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


Given the seminal nature of the work, shouldn't Darwin's Insectivorous Plants be in the References section for most Droseara (specifically, rotundifolia, anglica, intermedia, capensis, spathulata, filiformis, and binata), as well as Dionaea, Aldrovanda, Drosophyllum, Roridula, Byblis, Utricularia, and some Pinguicula (vulgaris, grandiflora, and lusitanica)?

I added the reference to the Drosera intermedia article, but also a question about the "only monograph to date" comment on L. Diels Droseraceae. Namely, doesn't Darwin's extensive coverage of Drosera contradict this, or is it the fact that Diels specifically addressed the family as a whole that the comment is addressed to?

This is my first attempt to contribute to Wikipedia, so someone more experienced should definitely check the my entry for stylistic consistency...

Also, in my reference-addition, I included the Project Guttenberg link for Insectivorous Plants. Should we generally do this, if a public-domain online version of a work is available, or is this considered "bad style"?

69.7.197.98 20:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC) [Still waiting for my Login ID to be processed: AnneONeimaus]

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

List of Stylidium species

I've begun working on another project at my sandbox. (Here we go again!) I noticed that List of Drosera species uses the section as the lowest taxon. The articles I'm using for the List of Stylidium species article go one step further and breakdown each section into unranked "groups" though I assume they meant subsection or series since those are the next taxa below section. Do you think I should include that much detail on the list article? Or save that info for each species page? And I assume since the taxonomic dust hasn't settled yet on this genus and because these are based on morphological differences, not DNA, I will have a few unranked species. Should I just put the unranked ones under their own header "Unranked"? Thanks for any help with this :-) --Rkitko 07:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, should I keep or cut out the common names? I've already decided to move synonym info to the species pages. I'm trying to keep it simple, but I will maintain the authority name and date info. Thoughts? --Rkitko 07:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
My feeling is that you should probably not take it beyond the section level, especially if the taxonomy is still unstable. I'm always happy leaving out common names, but it doesn't hurt to include them for the lay community if it doesn't hinder readability. I'm not sure what to do with unranked taxa. You may want to ask these questions on the general Plant WikiProject, where more taxonomically inclined folk hang out. --NoahElhardt 00:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Assessment

Greetings, all! You may have noticed I changed how we assess articles and subsequently updated the {{Carnivorous Plants}} template to match. If you have any questions on how to use it or if something needs updating, I spent quite a bit of time working out the bugs and will probably be able to figure out any issues quickly. I just wanted to start a discussion, however, on the "importance" assessment parameter. It's an option parameter, but I think it will help us to better organize our articles. To that end, would you say the following is a good ranking scheme?

Top-importance: Main articles, overviews, descriptions (like carnivorous plant).
High-importance: The main genera of carnivorous plants (Drosera, Nepenthes); perhaps articles on taxonomy, ecology, evolution of carnivorous plants if we ever split those off from the main article and replace those sections with summary style.
Mid-importance: Species that are cultivated and well-known (Drosera capensis, Utricularia vulgaris), maybe lesser-known genera (Stylidium).
Low-importance: Species without much information on them, aren't cultivated, etc.

Now I suppose botanists would have to be placed in either high, mid, or low depending on how much work they did on carnivorous plants and how their work contributed to the scientific understanding of CPs. I know I'm having a hard time thinking of any of these species as "low importance" but remember this is in regards to the available encyclopedic content these species have written about them.

So I see a few distinctions that we have to decide how much importance to place on these articles:

  1. Cultivation (Yes/No/To what extent?)
  2. Endangered (Yes/No/To what extent?)

Can you think of any others? Once we hash out these assessment criteria and come to consensus, we can then go ahead and move all the specifics over to the very broad Wikipedia:WikiProject Carnivorous plants/Assessment. :-) --Rkitko 08:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for getting this started. I generally agree on your assessment scale as it now stands. I would probably rate Dionaea muscipula as a Top-importance article since it will be one of the most-visited articles.
When considering the relative importance of various species, I would definitely add Distribution (Widespread/localized) to the list of factors to consider. I would, for example, rate D. rotundifolia and D. anglica as mid-importance because they both have a generally circumboreal distribution, and are therefore familiar/native to much of the industrialized world. --NoahElhardt 20:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I actually enjoyed doing it, as tedious as it was. When I have the time, I might consider doing it for WP:PLANTS as well. I'd agree on Dionaea muscipula and on the "Distribution" consideration--excellent thoughts! D. rotundifolia and D. anglica are both cultivated as well, so on that alone I'd say they should be mid-importance. What do you think about the potential articles on Evolution of carnivorous plants or Ecology of carnivorous plants? I'd rate them as top-importance, but WP:BANKSIA has rated similar articles as high-importance. And lists? Top-level lists would be things like List of carnivorous plants and high or mid importance for lists of species in a genus, depending on how well-known that genus is (List of Stylidium species should probably be mid-importance, whereas List of Drosera species should be high-importance). --Rkitko 23:48, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, part of what makes an article important to me is how likely it is to be read. As such, most genera articles should have a higher importance rating than, say, Evolution of carnivorous plants. Moreover, I would rate ALL genus-level CP articles as at Least High importance, including Stylidium. I'm surprised you gave Aldrovanda high importance but Aldrovanda vesiculosa mid importance. Isn't the latter more important than the former?
Some of the quality assessment is difficult. What do we do with articles that cover the topic well but don't list many inline citations since they were largely translated from German (ex. Pinguicula alpina, Pinguicula). What about stubby articles that just about cover the topic (ex. Pinguicula laxifolia)? --NoahElhardt 00:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Mmmm, I see what you mean. Sometimes I get wrapped up in a systematic approach (genus more important that species, for example). Thanks for snapping me out of that! That's why I rated the Aldrovanda articles as such. Feel free to change it. I agree with your assessment. (I think it was late and my 100th edit of the night or so, which also explains the state of my language skills at the time.) Quality assessment is indeed difficult, which is why I was hoping that you might assess most of the Pinguicula species and perhaps User:Mgiganteus1 might assess the Nepenthes articles since these seem to be areas where you might know immediately something that I'd have to look up and research (i.e. importance of species without information in the articles regarding distribution or cultivation). Of course anyone can assess any article and it can be changed at any time.
As for lack of citations, I'd have to say even though the article content is impressive and amazing (and those ones you cited are very good!), the article probably wouldn't pass WP:GA without the citations, so it would have to be assessed as B-class. At least that will let us know which articles can easily be made GA by adding references, since there won't be that many B-class articles. I'd say Pinguicula laxifolia would be a lower B-class or a higher Start-class article. We're going to end up with quite a few species pages that we can't expand to GA because of a lack of information. I'd be surprised if I can get much more information on some of the Stylidium species to bring them out of stub-class.
I think you hit upon a good way to think of the importance of an article. I just re-read what I copied into Wikipedia:WikiProject Carnivorous plants/Assessment#Importance scale and that seems to say it all. I could go either way with the genus-level articles and initially thought to place them all at high importance. I'd agree with that, now. What about family-level? Sarraceniaceae, Stylidiaceae, Droseraceae? I'd say High-importance as well. Phew, ok, back to the thesis :-) --Rkitko 01:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
The way we considered the Banksia articles was to look at each taxonomy level separately, such that the various genus get assess on the relation to the project as you could have say 5 maybe 10 species genus with very little known about the plants being rated as low. again the same with species those that have iconic status whether from movies, religious rituals, or domestication would be high where as the species that was only collected once from the Amazon basin in the 1800's would rate as low. You'd apply a similar process with botanist, habitats, lists etc. Ultimately its guide and what you assess at now can always be reconsidered. Gnangarra 06:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Given the seminal nature of the work, shouldn't Darwin's Insectivorous Plants be in the References section for most Droseara (specifically, rotundifolia, anglica, intermedia, capensis, spathulata, filiformis, and binata), as well as Dionaea, Aldrovanda, Drosophyllum, Roridula, Byblis, Utricularia, and some Pinguicula (vulgaris, grandiflora, and lusitanica)?

I added the reference to the Drosera intermedia article, but also a question about the "only monograph to date" comment on L. Diels Droseraceae. Namely, doesn't Darwin's extensive coverage of Drosera contradict this, or is it the fact that Diels specifically addressed the family as a whole that the comment is addressed to? 69.7.197.98 20:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC) [Still waiting for my Login ID to be processed: AnneONeimaus]

Copyedit request

Hey, all. The new editor is back and has created a few more articles (really provoked me to get on my game and spruce up the ones I need to!) but I've done quite a bit tonight and need to get going. I've done a bit of copyediting on Pinguicula gigantea, but I think there's a bit more to be done there. I also took care of Geranium viscosissimum, Potentilla arguta, and Barry Rice. Had to remove quite a bit of instruction-type material. Feel free to add some of it back if you're able to put it in a more neutral voice. Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 08:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment complete

I finally completed assessing all of our current articles that were tagged with a big effort tonight. Be sure to check my assessments regarding importance, especially in Drosera and Nepenthes species, since I'm not very familiar with which species are in cultivation. When the article gave me some hint that the species might be cultivated, I ranked it as a Mid-importance article. Feel free to change those ratings. Just felt I had to get it done so I can get on to creating new articles! Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 08:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Allen Lowrie

Could people from this project give this article a look? It might be in violation of WP:BLP. Circeus 13:24, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Carnivory descriptions for individual species - redundancy?

Hey there, I've recently been creating pages for New Zealand CP's and in the process of planning expansions for a few I came up with this question: how much detail do you go into for descriptions of carnivory on the article for an individual species? Take Drosera, Bearing in mind that much of the detail for such a section of an article is generic and will apply for the rest of the genus, couldn't you just provide a link to the "Carnivory" section on the drosera page? After outling the basics of their carnivory and mentioning any aspects unique to the species in question, this is what I'm thinking I will do with some Drosera pages as it seems like repetition of stuff already on the genus page would be redundant. I'm looking for feedback as regards this idea.Thoughts? Kotare 05:33, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan. I would mention that it's a carnivorous plant (link to the main article) in the first sentence or two. And you're right, if there's anything unique about its carnivory, then go ahead and mention that in the article, but I would assume they're pretty similar throughout the genus. If anything is treated thoroughly on the genus page, then I don't think it needs to be explained again on each species page. The Drosera capensis page does a fair job on this. And I must say, thanks for all your work on this! I'm currently working on filling in the species pages for Stylidium. Once I'm done with that I'll turn my attention to Utricularia species, since I have a copy of Taylor's monograph on hand. What has everyone else been up to? Seems kind of quiet 'round here! --Rkitko (talk) 12:24, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Sweet as, thanks for giving D. capensis as an example as well, that's useful. Thanks eh, I'm actually going to have to give it a rest for a bit while I deal with uni work but I have big plans for many of the NZ CP articles.. I'm going to rip into U. dichotoma at some point and go for GA. I must say you have done an awful lot of good work on CP articles from what I've seen .. good on you, it's an area that needs a lot of work at present. That will be particularly awesome if you start ripping into the Utricularia articles.. the biggest CP genus and there are 4/(5?) species articles at present, it's nuts. It would be good to push the Utricularia article itself up towards GA/FA at some point also, it's a bit underdeveloped, hasn't really been touched since '05 and the references need to be sorted - that's on my to-do list also. Yes and you're right this area of wikipedia does feel very quiet, it sort of reminds me of a quiet little back alley in the middle of a bustling city... Anyway, Keep up the good work! CheersKotare 05:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm living and working in Alaska this summer, and that has kept me busier than I was beforehand. I keep coming back here for spurts of activity, but its usually at the cost of other things that are more important to me. I'll be returning to school in California this fall, and depending on how busy my schedule is, I might be around more again. The best part is, I'll have access to a great library and a large cp collection to photograph! :) Stuff I'd like to do here? I have some Pinguicula species pictures that need uploading and articles, and I'd like to work on getting the Sarracenia species pages up to snuff, particularly S. purpurea and S. rosea. --NoahElhardt 19:35, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Carnivorous plants

Hi all! I was cleaning up this category and began to remove this category from some species pages and thought I'd check in with everyone here before I continue. Because we now have created all of the CP by continent (and NZ) categories and because the taxonomy categories (e.g. Category:Droseraceae, Category:Plumbago, etc.) are subcategories of the main CP category, having each species categorized into Category:Carnivorous plants seems redundant and like overcategorization. What are your thoughts on this? If we're in agreement, I can have BotanyBot remove the category from all but the essentials. --Rkitko (talk) 01:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to ask about this actually.. I wasn't sure before but now that I think about it I agree. "Category:Carnivorous plants" can just be left on the misc. ,essential CP pages while all the species pages are taken care of by more specific regional and taxonomic sub-categories. At the moment things seem a bit cluttered category-wise and this change sounds like a good way to clean things up. I think this new system of categorisation for articles under the wikiproject will be better than that which we had before. On another note, in terms of creating different regional CP sub-categories, it gets a little tricky down here in this part of the southern hemisphere.. we either a)need another category that takes into account Pacific islands which have native CP's such as New Caledonia - I like the seperate categories for NZ and Australia because they are geographically distinct landmasses and Australia is such a centre for CP diversity and all- perhaps the last category could be "Carnivorous plants of Melanesia" (that gets New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea) - or, if there are CPs there also "Carnivorous plants of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia".OR b)We could just have Australia, NZ and Pacific Island CP's all under "Carnivorous plants of Oceania" which, admittedly, would be simpler. Now that I've considered it I think this will be the better option.Kotare 05:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)*Oh just one more thing, I think we should cut the "Carnivorous plants of Central America" category as North America as a region (at least by wikipedias definition) includes the countries of Central America also, thus this category seems kind of redundant . Cheers, Kotare 10:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Excellent points. I had wondered about islands and some parts that won't fit into Category:Carnivorous plants of Asia. I hadn't thought about Category:Carnivorous plants of Oceania, but it sounds like a good idea. On the categorization of Category:Carnivorous plants of Central America, I had created that one by what my sources were telling me. Specifically, in the Utricularia articles, Peter Taylor described the species' distributions as being in certain countries of Central America. And from personal experience of living in North America, I can tell you that a lot of residents in the US and Canada don't think of the countries of Central America as being part of this continent. Often, people will exclude the southern parts of Mexico as well. I don't really prefer one categorization or another, just letting you know I was following my sources :-). --Rkitko (talk) 13:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree on dropping the carnivorous plant category from most/all species pages. Geographic and taxonomic groupings should be plenty for most people. A few practical questions related to geography:
  • Mexico: North America or Central America? (I would say North)
  • Hawaii: ? (D. anglica shows up here)
  • You say "carnivorous plants that are native or naturalized in North America". How naturalized are we talking here? The mendocino county bog in CA has around 20 species of cp's, many of them native to Africa or elsewhere. Do those count? Some of them aren't spreading much, but many will be impossible to get rid of and are here to stay (D. capensis, U. subulata, etc.) I'd almost favor dropping the "naturalized" clause.
  • Please define the extent of Central America on that page, as the definition varies by source.

I'm really starting to see the benefit of having these geographically ordered categories. Great idea. --NoahElhardt 19:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Good to hear from you, Noah.
  1. I'd say most people agree that Mexico is in North America. At least that's how I learned it in World Geography back in the day of Elementary School ;-)
  2. Hawaii? I guess we could categorize species from the islands under Oceania.
  3. Naturalized in categories: There are apparently two different schools of thought on this. I agree including naturalized species in flora categories (or CP flora categories) is difficult to demarcate. In this case I'd favor omitting them, you're right. Initially, I was following the example of how User:Hesperian set up the flora of Australia categories (e.g. Category:Flora of Western Australia) by state to include naturalized species. See Category talk:Flora of Togo for another similar, yet unrelated discussion. For our purposes, introduction of a CP to a continent is not worth categorizing since when it happens the species remains in a relatively small area relative to the size of the geographical regions we've chosen to categorize by. We could, however, establish another category to describe those species that have been introduced and naturalized in areas outside of their native range. Sounds like a good idea, just not sure what to call it.
  4. A solution to our Central America category would be to follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. Hesperian proposed we use that for the main flora categories, too. Brummit includes all of Central America in South America. I'd support recategorizing the species in that category if we can only agree on where to make the cut ;-) Panama? Otherwise, I'd say the following countries make up what can be called Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. --Rkitko (talk) 20:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
*I agree, great idea, include central america in the south america category - this is wikipedia so why not use the definition of central america in the referenced article Central America. If we do this the following countries will make the cut and be in central america and thus in the south america category as per Brummit: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama- rkikto, these are the countries you suggested anyway and I think this will be the best way to go. For both the north and south america categories we should clearly state what the boundaries are for our purposes; part of the advantage of using the wikipedia definition for central america and including it in the south america category is that we can just wikilink central america at the top of that page and people can see what countries we're talking about there.Are we in agreement that "Category:Carnivorous plants of Oceania" should be created and that the categories "CPs of Australia" and "CPs of NZ" merged into it. If we are I'll go ahead and sort it out.. - one question though, would I just create redirects to this new page on the existing 2 category pages? Noah, I think we should note that we are including Hawaii in Oceania for our purposes on the new category page and I think Mexico should definitely come under the the North America category, wikipedia has it there also. It's nice to see such progress being made on the organisational side of this wikiproject, Cheers Kotare 23:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Kotare, all of that sounds good, though I'd keep Category:Carnivorous plants of Australia and Category:Carnivorous plants of New Zealand, but make them subcategories of Category:Carnivorous plants of Oceania (CPs of Australia category should probably remain a subcategory of Category:Carnivorous plants since it is a continent in its own right but perhaps the CPs of NZ should only be a subcat of Oceania. Sound ok?)
All the rest sounds great, though! On an unrelated front, a kind fellow from Australia is sending me tons of pictures of Stylidium plants he's taken over the years with permission to upload them under a Creative Commons image license. If I can key them out, we'll have a whole bunch of photos to play around with! I'm excited. Best, --Rkitko (talk) 01:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
One more note: I operate BotanyBot, so any recategorization can be made simple if you just give me the word! --Rkitko (talk) 01:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Exciting!! Now we need someone with a huge Utric collection. :)
Personally, I would like to see the Carnivorous plants of Central America category stay. Somehow, I don't really consider Belize to be part of either South America (geographically) or North America (floristically). Otherwise, the above suggestions sound great. Can you use botanybot to add categories semi-automatically, or does it just switch category assignments? In other words, will we have to add these categories to articles manually? --NoahElhardt 01:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
On a side note, the french translation of the Pinguicula moranensis article is slated to be the article of the day on the French Wikipedia on the 6th of August! --NoahElhardt 01:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) That's fantastic news, Noah! And yes, there are various ways BotanyBot can go about doing that. We'd either need a standard list of plants by geographical region it can run off of or it can crawl through the taxonomy categories and search for select terms in the text (e.g. "South America") though it would get difficult if those words aren't listed. Might just be easier to do it by hand - we don't have that many articles and the 100-some Stylidium and Utricularia articles I've created are, for the most part, already categorized. What's easier to do is decategorize the species from Category:Carnivorous plants. I use AWB for the bot functions and it can recat, decat, or add a category easily. I'd agree on Category:Carnivorous plants of Central America as well. Needs to stay, just needed clear demarcation. :-) Rkitko (talk) 02:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it took a while, but I've got it pretty much sorted out. Take a scan over them to make sure I got the plants in the right places. Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 02:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Good work! However, I think the Oceania category is somewhat problematic. At the moment it appears to include the entire Malay Archipelago minus the Philippines, which is included in Asia. In fact, the Malay Archipelago is part of Southeast Asia and Oceania usually only includes New Guinea from the Malay Archipelago. I don't have a solution as such, but perhaps something like this:

This is still problematic, since New Guinea forms part of both the Malay Archipelago and Australasia. Thoughts? Mgiganteus1 14:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's problematic and I apologize if I've categorized something incorrectly. I think I may have gotten it completely wrong! It appears as if I was under the impression Sumatra is part of Oceania when it isn't. And what of Borneo? Neither seems like it should be part of the traditional circumscription of "Asia" (at least in my understanding of it... but then again I know very little of the region). I'm not sure fine-tuning our geo-categorization is the answer--perhaps just a better circumscription? --Rkitko (talk) 14:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Betalain citation needed

I've just created an article on betalains. I remember at a one meeting of the BSA (either the one in Ames or the one in Seattle) hearing that the Droseraceae and Nepenthaceae were in the same clade with the Caryophyllales. I think it was at the same meeting that I first heard betalains had been found in these carnivorous plants. However, I am having trouble finding a journal citation. Can someone help? --EncycloPetey 06:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Pitcher plant?

Hi! I'm not a member of CP project. A few years ago, on a dive trip in the Riau islands of Indonesia, our bus broke down on the way to the boat. While waiting for the replacement bus, I came across these plants near the roadside. I immediately thought these looked very much like carnivorous pitcher plants. Later, while looking them up, I realized, these shouldn't belong in Indonesia at all and it seems to me they are South American species. Am I wrong? Can you find these in tropical Asia as well? What species could this be? I am curious to find out, but also, if these pictures are of use to this project, please feel free to use them. Cheers! Jnpet 06:56, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jnpet. Both of your images show Nepenthes gracilis with its reddish lower pitchers and green upper pitchers. Like most Nepenthes species, N. gracilis is native to Southeast Asia. South America does have pitcher plants (Heliamphora and the carnivorous bromeliads Brocchinia reducta and Catopsis berteroniana), but they are not very closely related to the Nepenthes. When I expand the N. gracilis article I'm sure I'll find a place for at least one of these images. Do you know which of the Riau Islands this was? Mgiganteus1 08:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks so much, very informative. If I recall correctly, the pictures were taken on Pulau Galang. Cheers! Jnpet 09:11, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Das Pflanzenreich Illustrations

Hi, all. Just letting you know that I uploaded illustrations from Macfarlane's monograph on the Sarraceniaceae from the 1908 Das Pflanzenreich. They're located in Category:Sarraceniaceae. Feel free to put them in articles. I also have the full text in a pdf. I'm working scanning in the Droseraceae monograph from Das Pflanzenreich and will have those images up shortly. Let me know if any of you would like either of the pdfs. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 20:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Italian article translations

I just wanted to bring this up and extend some very well deserved thanks to an editor on it.wiki, Tursiops, who has been translating many of our articles for the Italian Wikipedia. Very good work! Rkitko (talk) 16:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Protocarnivorous plant

Hi all. Me again! I was thinking about moving this page I created a while ago and wondered what your thoughts were. Initially, I created it at that title because "protocarnivorous" seemed to be the most widely used term. Now I'm beginning to believe, while still widely used, it's not as accurate as, say, "paracarnivorous" (see the first paragraph or two of the lead in the article). The article is about plants that may be on their way to carnivory (proto), but it also talks about plants that have possibly lost their carnivory, and plants that probably formed their adaptations on a path separate from carnivory all together. That, at least, is what I'm thinking at the moment and why I think para is more descriptive and accurate. Any thoughts? It's not all that important, but I'd appreciate input. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 04:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

"Nepenthes classification" renamed

Just wanted to make sure I wasn't running afoul of anybody by moving Nepenthes classification to Taxonomy of Nepenthes. There's a reasonable existing body of article with that naming scheme, so I think it's fair to keep it to this (X of foo are also the most common form for subarticles in general). Circeus (talk) 06:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

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