Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive76

Archive 70

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Archive 74

Archive 75

Archive 76

Archive 77

Proposed Species?

Draft:Nepenthes titiwangsa is in the Articles for Creation queue. Do proposed new species count as notable? Newystats (talk) 06:28, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Newystats:, a species that hasn't been formally named doesn't meet the rationale of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. However, it could be notable (Denisovans haven't been formally named but are certainly notable). Even formally naming a species is still essentially just a proposal; we would like to see secondary sources that show that other experts recognize any proposed, formally named species.

There are article on some other Nepenthes species that haven't been formally named: Nepenthes sp. Anipahan and Nepenthes sp. Misool, and the draft on Nepenthes titiwangsa is much better developed than the existing articles. It seems likely that the user Amin28th who has added most of the text to the draft is Amin-Asyraf Tamizi, who published the paper from which most of the content is derived. That paper was listed as "in press" in earlier versions of the draft (but has now been published), and now there is a second paper listed as "in press" which may end up containing the formal naming. Amin28th has created articles on two other Nepenthes species that had Amin-Asyraf Tamizi as one of the authors in the publications where they were formally named.

I would suggest leaving the page in draft space for now, pending a publication where the species is formally named. Plantdrew (talk) 16:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Newystats (talk) 10:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Template:TNCStatus

I have been using Template:TNCStatus created by @Dr vulpes all over as I edit plants. It has some problems, but mostly works really well once I add the status to WikiData. But as I've gone along I have started to wonder if there are objections to using this template. Should I be directly putting in status manually until the template is more developed? I have noticed, occasionally, that the status in Wikipedia will be out of date and WikiData will be more current. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 15:53, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Relevant discussion

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Setting policy for lists of synonyms? for a discussion that impacts on this WikiProject. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Ongoing FAC for Hypericum sechmenii

Hello, there is an ongoing Featured Article Candidacy for Hypericum sechmenii at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hypericum sechmenii/archive1. All who wish to give input are invited to leave comments and improve the article. Thank you! Fritzmann (message me) 16:57, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Easy access to journal full texts

I'm not sure often you use The Wikipedia Library but you can access loads of full text content through it. I've made a file which you can download and import into the REDIRECTOR add on for Firefox and Chrome and it will redirect you to the full articles e.g. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2010.11.001 to https://www-sciencedirect-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0955395910001581?via%3Dihub. It should work wherever you find the links i.e. from google scholar etc. SmartSE (talk) 11:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

SL-class

See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive75 § Project-independent quality assessments 2

Hello project members! Note that per WP:PIQA, all the class ratings are being harmonised across different WikiProjects so we are looking to remove any non-standard classes like SL-class from your project banner. Would you like to automatically reclassify these as List-class or perhaps Stub-class? Alternatively it could just be removed and then the articles in Category:SL-Class plant articles would inherit the quality rating from other projects (or just become "unassessed" if there were no other projects) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I think that WP:PIQA leads to a bad decision in this case. Why should we not able to assess the quality of a list class article? (So showing that more work is needed.) The SL class should be left left alone. I see no reason for this decision to be imposed on us. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree - if anything we should be standardizing in the opposite direction by making rated lists the norm. I would appreciate some further discussion on this matter. Fritzmann (message me) 12:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

So we have two main options here. The first is to opt-out of PIQA completely. That will leave your project free to continue using whatever classes it wants to use. The process to do this was described in the notification linked above. (Would have been great if people had replied to it!) The disadvantage is that your banner will not inherit the global class from the banner shell and would generally be moving against the direction of travel to other WikiProjects. The other option is to find some other way to track the information you need to run your project. For example, we could fallback to Start-class but have another indicator/category that the article is a list. I agree completely that ratings should apply to lists and we are looking at various proposals to improve the assessment scheme, but things move slowly around here :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I am glad that it is being discussed because when this notice inspired me to look at Category:List-Class_plant_articles I was appalled by the quality of some of the articles. Many of them seem to be 20% done passion projects that have been abandoned for four or five years. I am quite enthusiastic about reasonably finished plant lists (I happen to be working two of them right now) but I think most or all of the "list of plants from <place>" articles should be put back in the draft space because they're so incomplete. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

With the prospect of losing a way to keep track of some dreadfully incomplete lists, I think we should get some of them out of article space while we are still tracking them. My first thought was deletion, but draft space would work too. Plantdrew (talk) 00:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay here is a concrete proposal. SL-class will be classified as List-class but we will tag all the current articles in Category:SL-Class plant articles with |attention=yes, which will populate Category:Plant articles needing attention and can be used for editors to review. Alternatively we can add a new parameter |SL=yes which can give a more descriptive message/category. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Any further thoughts on this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There is wikibooks:Flora of New York on WikiBooks... just a thought, without any proposal. Tosha Langue (talk) 15:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ:, flagging with |attention=yes is a good solution. Plantdrew (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

This is now completed, and you have 134 articles in Category:Plant articles needing attention to look through (if you wish) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Which are the most high priority articles to create?

Hi all

I've seen Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article requests and I'm wondering if there any other high priority articles that have been identified by the community as important and missing? Eg endangered plants, edible plants, plants from a specific genus or family etc.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 14:33, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I just did a quick search and found nothing. I suspect such a category or list does not exist because it would be more work to create it than to just fill gaps with a stub. The list of articles by importance and status on the front page lists 12 articles that are top priority articles that are only "start" quality, and none that are "stub". All of them are about general subjects like bud. The "high" importance articles that are "start" status include some species like Areca catechu, Cannabis indica, Capsicum annuum, etc. There are also LOTS of "mid" importance articles about species that are listed as "stubs". That's where you'll really find the gaps.

All the articles that I have added as new articles have be judged to be "low" importance though they are quite prominent locally. Truth is that most individual species are not critical article subjects from a global point of view. Though there are still lots of local endemics that need articles. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 14:58, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article requests is garbage. Being listed there is not an indication that creating an article should be a high priority. User:Pengo/missing plants is the best list of missing plant articles; it's based on how frequently a scientific name was found in a corpus of published works. Synonyms presented there aren't always up to date (the first red link is [[[Dolichos biflorus]] which the list suggests is a synonym of Macrotyloma uniflorum; but POWO has it as a synonym of Macrotyloma biflorum).

Overall, the issue isn't so much that Wikipedia is missing lots of high priority articles (although it is missing many low priority articles) so much as it is that Wikipedia has some very poorly developed articles that should be a high priority. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Popular_pages gets at (some) existing articles that should be a high priority. Take the quality ratings there with a big grain of salt (articles may have been expanded and have a quality rating that is too low, or an article may have a high quality rating and be well developed for aspects of human use, but lacking basic botanical content (strawberry was the second most viewed article last month, is rated B-class, and doesn't have a botanical description of the plant).

Some of the redirects in Category:Plant redirects with possibilities should be at least somewhat high priority. Plantdrew (talk) 18:24, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

A pretty good way to determine high priority species without articles would be to sort by number of observations on iNaturalist. There's an old thread on their forums where that was done previously. There were only 29 species listed, and articles for all of them were created fairly quickly. Another round of that, with several hundred species listed would be a good thing. Plantdrew (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

That is a very clever idea. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 21:36, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Request for Article improvement: Common symbiosis signaling

Request for Article Improvement : Common symbiosis signaling

Recently I have created an article on common symbiosis signaling pathway. It is just an initial version and needs a lot of improvement.

This article needs following improvements.

• 1. I have added some representational images. Need better quality images.
• 2. Needs to be scrutinized by more knowledgeable people in this specific topic, to check if there are any technical mistakes or wrong informations, and subsequently correcting them.
• 3. Needs to be add some sections in plain language to make the topic more sense to non-technical readers.
• 4. Needs a lot of minor edits regarding spelling, formatting, (italics, capitalization etc.) in context of scientific conventions.
• 5. If you or your institute is a part of research that is connected to Arbuscular mycorrhiza, Myc-factors, Symbiosis genes etc; then please feel free to enrich this article with photo and data files such as confocal fluorescence photomicrographs, calcium wave electrophysiology data, protein models, protein evolution and phylogeny, etc.
• Any other improvements.

Requesting the plant biology, plant physiology and plant molecular biology task forces to look it up. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Yikes! Application of #3 is the most pressing need for this article; I'm a "technical reader" and am having difficulty reading through this detail. Please see WP:TECHNICAL for some suggestions that might help. Esculenta (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Esculenta Thank you RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 16:59, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

lus.?

What does lus. mean in a scientific name? I came across Crocus heuffelianus lus. concolor and a few others under Crocus heuffelianus and elsewehere. I found the original description from 1862 for Actinostemon concolor lus. microphyllus and that does not explain the rank. Anyone know this abbreviation? -- awkwafaba (📥) 15:38, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

from here: "Isolated individuals with aberrant characteristics not caused by an invading foreign organism, and with limited or no sexual and asexual reproduction, which have been formerly designated as lusus naturae, monstrosities, or teratological taxa; or have been misidentified but named as genera, species, subspecies, varieties or formae, are to be named under the infraspecific rank lusus naturae (lus.).”" Esculenta (talk) 15:45, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That doesn’t sound like a clade, though. Why is it in IPNI as one? awkwafaba (📥) 16:17, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I think i get it now, it’s a non-rank rank to prevent people from repeatedly creating new species. awkwafaba (📥) 16:36, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

It is an old infraspecific rank of what we now call a sport Sport (botany) Weepingraf (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Flora of Peru

Is a sad stub, unsourced since 2007; can anyone here help out? Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 00:59, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

My project in box is full, but as I said at the talk page, I'm happy to explain how to use Excel to handle getting a subset of plants from the giant whole world dataset available from POWO. It is fairly easy. The hard part is then figuring out how well/much you want to check the data, what other information to add to it, and how you're going to break it up and format it for ease of use.

Alternatively, you could track down sources and turn it into a proper article about the Flora of Peru instead of a list of all the plants. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Branch

Looking for a way to improve the article for branch. The article makes it seem that branches are woody by definition. Coming at it from the perspective of nonvascular plants (Talk:Branch#Nonvascular), would it be better to create a different article on non-woody botanical branches vs. tree branches, or to loosen the definition of the page? Mbdfar (talk) 02:12, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mbdfar: The Kew Plant Glossary on p. 21 defines branch as "a lateral division of the growth axis", so in my view this should be what the whole article discusses. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:38, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Category up for deletion

I have proposed the at Categories for discussion that the Category:Blue flowers be deleted as an example of Wikipedia:Overcategorization due to the subjective nature of the inclusion criteria. If anyone wishes to comment it is open for about another 4 days. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion of classification of Mahonia

I have started a discussion of what would be best to do about the genus on the Mahonia talk page. Please weigh in with what you know and what you think the best course of action would be. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Trema micrantha#Requested move 1 November 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Trema micrantha#Requested move 1 November 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abductive (reasoning) 04:49, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Subgenus classification in Allium

Quite a lot of species in Allium, e.g. Allium cernuum, Allium acuminatum, Allium schoenoprasum, etc., had their taxo boxes edited by @Dark Jackalope to add subgenus Allium subg. Cepa to the classification. Is there an authority or consensus on A. subg. Cepa that I'm not aware of or should these edits be reverted? I went to Flora of North America and they said in Allium, "Resolution of the problematic subgeneric and sectional relationships among Old and New World species will require much more extensive molecular and phylogenetic analysis of the genus." This indicates to me that it is not a good edit as there is not yet consensus, but my ignorance is vast so I would like to hear from other editors. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 15:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Geographic categories

I recently noticed that some fern and tree articles are using a different set of plant geographic categories. Example Category:Ferns of the Americas. Since they are so incomplete I'm fairly sure these are not the preferred geographic categories.

I am less sure about the ones for trees. Category:Trees of North America seems much more complete, if a bit disorganized. When I edit articles about trees should I be using the tree equivalent of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I believe that they are deprecated but nobody wants to go through the hassle of having them deleted. Similarly for Category:Botanical taxa by author, these are useless except for Category:Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus, which is impossibly large for a list. The animal and insect guys maintain their categories better, which makes it difficult for the plant guys to WP:IAR and argue for the elimination of such categories. Abductive (reasoning) 11:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

@Abductive After thinking it over for a while, I think I'm exactly the sort of person who will go through the hassle of getting them deleted or merged as appropriate. I'm going to start with trees and I've started it at Categories for discussion. My current proposal is to merge everything into a new category "Trees of Northern America". 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Another category for deletion

I just started a new discussion over at Categories for discussion:Ornamental Grass. I think it a pretty clear case over over categorization. Plus, getting pretty close to WP:NOTGUIDE. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Plant ID on the Commons

Hello all! I can ID some of these (at least to genus). Should I just add the ID to the image description? Should I add it somewhere else? Should I have it checked first? If so, where and how? How does this usually work? (I'm new to editing the Commons and wary of breaking things somehow, haha.) -- Photosynthetic430 ❧ 18:16, 20 October 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Photosynthetic430 (talk • contribs)

I'm afraid we don't have an ID system as fancy as iNaturalist so unless someone has a better suggestion, I'd say just put your ID in the description. Kingdon (talk) 05:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation of links to San Pedro cactus

Could you help to disambiguate links to San Pedro cactus? There are several articles (shown at Disambig fix list for San Pedro cactus) where I am unsure whether this should be any of:

• Trichocereus macrogonus var. pachanoi, synonyms including Trichocereus pachanoi and Echinopsis pachanoi

but also:

• Echinopsis cuzcoensis
• Echinopsis lageniformis
• Trichocereus macrogonus
  • Trichocereus macrogonus var. macrogonus, synonyms including Trichocereus peruvianus and Echinopsis peruvianus

Any help appreciated.— Rod ^talk 15:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Papyrus reed ⟶ Cyperus papyrus

Hi. I'd like your feedback and verification/refutation of the redirect I just added for Papyrus reed, pointing to Cyperus papyrus. This term is used in various articles, such as at Reed boat and these 17 others, a couple of which pipe the expression to Cyperus papyrus (but most do not). This seems correct, afaict, but I'm not knowledgeable in this area. If this is wrong, or questionable, what would be a better destination? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Seems its a lesser used common name for the Egyptian Papyrus or just simply Papyrus, more used by garden centres than botanical sources, but used by some history museums (see Wellcome Collection, Mcclung Museum). The vernacular name can be any combination of (Egyptian) (papyrus/paper) (reed/sedge). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:59, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The Plant List species pages are gone

The species pages on The Plant List now give a Server error (500), e.g. at Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.. A search for the text "The Plant List" finds 7,613 pages in mainspace and 5,773 pages that also have a speciesbox.

I don't know if this is a temporary issue or part of phasing TPL out completely. TPL has been static for over ten years now and they've added more messages saying it is obsolete and see WFO., so it's not clear if they intend to keep it as an archive resource or not. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:57, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is a temporary hiccup or not, but I've certainly been replacing it in articles I edit with more up to date sources. It is a similar issue to how many articles in Wikipedia get written and then largely left alone for years. I just rewrote Penstemon grandiflorus which had been hanging out as a stub for a decade after a huge amount of copyrighted text had been removed from when it was created. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:09, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a citation template for WFO?

Is there a citation template for WFO like {{Cite POWO}}? If not, could there be? —  AjaxSmack  16:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

You can use {{BioRef|WFO}}. It requires the |id=. You can give it a title with |title= or provide other parameters to generate a title (|family=, |genus=, |species= and |authority=, e.g.

• "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
• "Goniolimon Boiss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
• "Goniolimon besserianum (Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
• "Plumbaginaceae Juss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

It also takes all the standard {{cite web}} parameters. Wait a bit and I'll set up {{Cite WFO}}. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:07, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I've set up {{Cite WFO}}, which can be used as follows:

Using |id= and |title=

• Code:{{Cite WFO |title=''Ditrichum'' Hampe |id=4000012284 |access-date=9 April 2020}}
• "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.

Using|id= with |genus= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|genus=Goniolimon |authority=Boiss. |id=4000015998 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Goniolimon Boiss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Using |id= with |genus= , |species= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|genus=Goniolimon |species=besserianum |authority=(Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn. |id=0000706383 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Goniolimon besserianum (Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Using |id= with |family= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|family=Plumbaginaceae |authority=Juss. |id=7000000482 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Plumbaginaceae Juss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Are there any other citation options required? —  Jts1882 | talk  17:45, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks! —  AjaxSmack  17:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882 I'm not sure if this is needed or not. WFO says they want their cites to look more or less like this:

WFO (2023): Berberis henryi Laferr. Published on the Internet; http://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-0000563260. Accessed on: 12 Dec 2023

Up to this point I've been putting in "WFO" as author last name and the current year as the publishing date. So it would look more or less like

WFO (2023): Berberis henryi Laferr. World Flora Online. Retrieved 12 Dec 2023.

Should we put the date and WFO ahead of the cite or is that unnecessarily both belt and suspenders? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 03:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm never sure how much to prioritise following a suggested citation style from a source versus making the citations follow a consistent Wikipedia style. It seems redundant to have WFO as author and World Flora Online as the website. I can see several options:

1. Leave as is.
2. Change to use WFO as author, in which case the year parameter is also need, although this could be extracted from the access date.
3. Make it optional. If |year= is given add WFO as author.
4. Leave it up to the editor. As the template allows all the CS1/CS2 citation parameters that are no explicitly set, you could also add |author=WFO and |year=2023, e.g.

• {{Cite WFO |author=WFO |year=2023 |title=''Ditrichum'' Hampe |id=4000012284 |access-date=9 April 2020}}
• WFO (2023). "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.

Thoughts? —  Jts1882 | talk  10:15, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I also am not sure how much to follow a source's suggested citation style, so I guess we are in the same boat with just the one paddle.

Now that I have sat down and had a think, it seems like perhaps I should have been ignoring WFO's suggested style. It does make it look more formal and impressive, but that's just being used to having citations look that way. Since the cite POWO template does not do it I think what you have works. It could always be changed later. The lovely thing about a template is the uniformity that it can impose and make it all the same everywhere if someone more expert in citation style comes along to say that it should be done the other way. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:39, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Arabis glabra to Turritis glabra

I noticed that this species and two others are classified in the genus Turritis by Plants of the World Online(1) and World Flora Online(2). In addition NatureServe now uses this as the correct species name as Turritis glabra. Is there any compelling reason not to move it? The other two species are currently red links so no need to move them. Main discussion should probably go at Talk:Arabis glabra. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:26, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Duplicated plant article - unsure which one should be redirected to the other

I'm currently in the middle of fixing some misattributed translations and ran across Pelecyphora robbinsiorum which appears to be referring to the same plant as Escobaria robbinsiorum. (The German wiki which the first article was translated from actually links to the second- but I digress.) Obviously, one of the articles should be redirected to the other and the relevant information merged- but as I'm wholly unfamiliar with the classification of plants, this isn't something I'm comfortable deciding on my own. Figured I might get a response here. Thanks, GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 00:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Pelecyphora robbinsiorum appears to be the current name.Maias (talk) 04:51, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

@GreenLipstickLesbian: unless there are good reasons not too, we usually go with Plants of the World Online. (The de wiki has a history of using a different source for cactus taxonomy.) Peter coxhead (talk) 13:45, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Leptospermum revision

Moved from User talk:Tom.Reding § Leptospermum revision

Was just reading the Leptospermum page, and remembered I talked to a scientist from the Mt Annan Herbarium in NSW who, with one of her colleagues, released a paper recently revising the Leptospermum genus, splitting it into 5. "Revised taxonomy of the tribe Leptospermeae (Myrtaceae) based on morphological and DNA data" by Peter G. Wilson and Margaret M. Heslewood TAXON Volume 72, Issue 3 p. 550-571. (2023, doi:10.1002/tax.12892, Wikipedia Library).

Might be worth checking out, it creates a WHOLE mess of the genera though Cheers mate 161.29.14.206 (talk) 08:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Moved here from my talk to be more visible to more knowledgeable editors.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:33, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

List of forest-inventory conifers in Canada

That link will turn blue within a couple of days. There have always been good forestry resources for the US and Canada, and I've wanted to do this list for a while; the problem has been the dreaded {{globalize}} tag (i.e. "may not represent a worldwide view"). Finally, solid progress has been made on standardization of approaches in North and South America (see, for instance, https://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/2020/en/). The more forest-inventory lists we push through WP:FLC, the harder it will be (probably) to change course on formatting or perspective, so as always, early feedback works better than late feedback. - Dank (push to talk) 18:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I see this is now at User:Dank/List_of_forest-inventory_conifers_in_Canada. I mean, it seems like a plausible way to format things to me, but I don't know if I'm enough up on list policies/recommendations to say much on that. Did you have any specific questions? Kingdon (talk) 06:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm stuck for the moment, and working on some other projects, but I'm open to questions or edits, and I can move it back to article-space if you prefer. - Dank (push to talk) 14:52, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Redirect Question

Hi,

I noticed that the P. mitis redirect page goes to Phyllostachys edulis rather than Polytrichadelphus mitis. This seems strage to me but I am not a botanist or have any familiarity with binomial names. Can someone who is familiar with this take a look to see if the redirect should be changed please (rather than me doing it and inadvertently making a mess)?

Thanks Carver1889 (talk) Carver1889 (talk) 21:24, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it might be because one of the (many) synonyms of Phyllostachys edulis is Phyllostachys mitis var. heterocycla, but you are right that is a weird redirect. Phyllostachys mitis is also a redirect to P. edulis, but it should be Bambusa vulgaris according to Plants of the World Online. (Or at least it was, I'm about to retarget.)

I think most abbreviated pages like P. mitis should be disambiguation pages rather than redirects because there are other species. Using duckduckgo I found Phacaspis mitis (a fly of some kind), Persicaria mitis (another plant), and Problepsis mitis (a moth) in just a quick five minute look. Would you like to learn about converting it to a disambiguation page, @Carver1889? Seems like a nice easy project and I've got you three entries in addition to Polytrichadelphus mitis. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:54, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

IPNI has 24 entries with generic names beginning with P and epithet mitis. If I counted correctly, after removing infraspecifics and duplicates there are 13 left. Puya mitis seems to be the only one which is an accepted species at POWO. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:48, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Do we really need anything at most places of the form G. species? (I mean, outside a few obvious ones like E. coli or T. rex)? I'd probably argue for delete (granted, without having thought about it much). Kingdon (talk) 06:57, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer to have them deleted. They aren't likely search terms; an abbreviated form rarely appears without the unabbreviated form, and readers are smart enough to search for the unabbreviated form E. coli and T. rex are truly exceptional in frequently appearing only in abbreviated form (e.g. in newspapers). C. elegans might be the next most frequently appearing abbreviated name. C. elegans (disambiguation) is Wikipedia's largest disambiguation page, and illustrates the folly of trying to maintain G. species abbreviations for navigation on Wikipedia. Most of the articles on the C. elegans dab page were created by the same editor who has created the largest share of G. species redirects. The redirect are rarely unambiguous and turning them into dab pages doesn't seem worth it for a minimal benefit to readers. Plantdrew (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hygrophyte

The hygrophyte page needs some work. The text is not good English, and it's not clear precisely what it's meant to say. (Hygrophytes are plants of wet terrestrial habitats, but the exact scope escapes me at the moment.) I'm also doubtful of some of the example genera, especially Chelidonium.

I came across this while investigating the term hygrohalophyte, which I would guess refers to plants of salt marshes, marine mud flats and mangrove swamps. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Gamochaeta coarctata#Requested move 28 December 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Gamochaeta coarctata#Requested move 28 December 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Bensci54 (talk) 21:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Hiding synonym lists in taxoboxes

Long lists of synonyms for species or genera in taxoboxes are often best set up to be initially hidden. To make this simpler, I have now added the necessary code to {{Species list}} (of which {{Genus list}} is a synonym). Basically it only requires adding |hidden=yes before the list of taxon name/authority pairs. See Template:Species list#Hiding the list. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Treatment of land plants at Sex article

I thought I would raise the treatment of plants at Sex here before trying to discuss it there. I'm unhappy with the way that it treats sporophytes as being unambiguously male or female. At Alternation of generations, single quotes are used when the terms male or female are applied to sporophytes, e.g. A 'male' willow tree (a microsporophyte) produces flowers with only stamens.

Is anyone else concerned? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:16, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about describing pollen as gametes.

There's a rich terminology for describing the [distribution of sexes|http://www.malvaceae.info/Biology/SexDistribution.php] in plants, and a history of usage of the terms male and female for stuff other than gametophytes. But pollen grains (and egg sacs) are not gametes. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is definitely part of it. I did start to edit the article to try to fix the specific problem relating to pollen, but then ran into wider issues. The problem, for me anyway, is that the relationship between biological sex and alternation of generations is difficult to explain briefly in the context of an article with a broad focus. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@Catfish Jim and the soapdish: might have an opinion on this matter. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:22, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll have a look at the article later, but if the suggestion in the article is that dioecious species have unambiguously male or female genotypes, that should probably be addressed (is this the concern?). I pretty much deal exclusively with monoecious plants, but any hobby breeder of the most commonly used dioecious species will tell you that 'female' plants can be induced to produce pollen to produce exclusively 'female' progeny. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 11:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

"By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male, while organisms that produce produce larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells) are called female."

Is the main issue that sporophytes do not (directly) produce gametes, thus not conforming to the quoted definition?

An attempted generalisation is "organisms that, directly or indirectly, produce only smaller, more mobile, gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male, organisms that produce, directly or indirectly, only larger, non-mobile, gametes (ova) are called females, and those that directly or indirectly produce both are called hermaphrodite. In botanical usage the terms are also applied to parts of plants, such as flowers, inflorescences, and ramets." Lavateraguy (talk) 13:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue may be this (but am not 100% sure):

"The majority of plants are bisexual, either hermaphrodite (with both stamens and pistil in the same flower) or monoecious. In dioecious species male and female sexes are on separate plants. About 5% of flowering plants are dioecious, resulting from as many as 5000 independent origins. Dioecy is common in gymnosperms, in which about 65% of species are dioecious, but most conifers are monoecious."

The problem I see with this is that 'female' dioecious plants can be induced to produce hermaphroditic flowers, for instance, by treatment with silver nitrate, producing viable pollen. The pollen is genotypically 'female' and all progeny resulting from such a cross is 'female' (but in turn can also be induced to produce hermaphroditic flowers). There are some real world benefits to using this for hybridising crop species (e.g. kiwi fruit) to introduce variation where you have limited choices of parental germplasm, or if you want to do something clever with cytoplasmic genetics, but undoubtedly the widest use is for producing feminised strains of cannabis (so I'm told). Catfish Jim and the soapdish 15:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that is specific to plants. Sequential hermaphroditism in say fish, for example, is also subject to experimental manipulation. Sex determination in Caenorhabitis elegans can also be modified by environmental stimuli. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

On a web search, I find some literature on its use with Cucurbitaceae. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Redirects to genus/Plant redirects with possibilities

Can all these Category:Plant redirects with possibilities just be deleted? It would encourage article creation, and whenever this issue is discussed here, it seems there is consensus that the redirect or redirects being discussed should be deleted. Maybe double check that they are accepted by PoWO first...I could do that if needed. Abductive (reasoning) 18:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love that and agree that it should be done, but the data hoarders at AfD will argue, "Oh, we can't delete that. Even a redirect is important to keep the history." And they'll point to some precedent that this is the way it has always been done. If you want to try I'll support you, but it might not be possible to get done due to the way the community works. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of the entries shouldn't be in this category. For example, we would almost never have articles on varieties like Asplenium scolopendrium var. americanum, so it doesn't have possibilities in my view. Others are just alternative names, like Comice. I would certainly love to delete all the redirects from a species to a non-monotypic genus. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Good point about the var. and subsp. I went in and retagged them to get them out of the category. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to see most of these go away. In my opinion most of them should have never been created in the first place (Desfontainia spinosa is an exception; the genus was monotypic when the redirect was created, and the genus article has a fair amount of content specific to the species). I think I'm largely responsible for tagging these redirects. I wasn't aware of {{R from species to genus}} when I first started adding {{R plant with possibilities}}, so not every species redirecting to genus has that category. I haven't tagged the species redirecting to List of Carex species (these all had a brief history as substubs), and there's a user who created a few thousand redirects from lower to higher taxa that I haven't attempted to tag systematically (most of them are protists or invertebrates but there are at least few plants; I have tagged the species redirecting to Ethulia). Plantdrew (talk) 22:39, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, how about this; the following redirects to non-monotypic genera (I checked) are for good species according to PoWO (also checked), and according to this massviews analysis, are used a lot and thus represent cases of WP:SURPRISE, and were never an article (unlike Calathea lutea which I will make into a stub): Thapsia garganica, Camptotheca acuminata, Myrtus nivellei, Weigela florida, Desfontainia spinosa, Manicaria saccifera, Cyrilla racemiflora, Sarcobatus vermiculatus, Harpagophytum procumbens, Saussurea involucrata, Calophyllum tacamahaca, and Pinus uncinata. Can these be deleted now? Then if some articles are created we can move down the list as appropriate. Abductive (reasoning) 22:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

This is the opposite of how I am inclined to approach it; I'd start with deleting the least-viewed redirects over the most-viewed. Myrtus and Sarcobatus cover (briefly) both species in these genera. Camptotheca has about as much content on C. acuminata as it does on the genus as a whole (although that content is not WP:MEDRS compliant (Thapsia is a similar situation). Cyrilla is written as if it were monotypic, and several of the additional species recognized by POWO are mentioned. Most of these have a significant number of incoming links; if we get Camptotheca acuminata deleted it's entirely possibly that someone seeing a red-link at chemotherapy will just recreate as a redirect again.

I don't think this set is going to be easy to delete at RfD. I think it would be easier to go with low viewed species to genus redirects that have 0 or 1 incoming links and no information about the species in the genus article beyond it's inclusion in a list of species. Plantdrew (talk) 16:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure. It will take me a while to do it, I'll have to carefully research each one. My personal desire is to make sure that any redirect that started out as an effort by a user to create an article is not deleted. Abductive (reasoning) 16:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Justicia cynea

The article Justicia cynea has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Unreferenced article. No plant of this name, nor any synonym, listed in Plants of the World Online or World Flora Online.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tom Radulovich (talk) 00:52, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tom Radulovich A good catch. First time I've seen a patent nonsense plant article. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

They are rare but there have been a few. A number of years back there was one about a man-eating plant. Hardyplants (talk) 03:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like it could be a misspelling of Justicia cyanea Leonard, which is recognised by SiBBr and is also in this Onezoom tree. It could be a new species that hasn't yet being recognised by POWO or WFO, although it's puzzling that no scientific paper comes up on a search. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I doubt it is a new species. A general search of the internet produces only a tiny number of results all Wikipedia or sourced to Wikipedia. Also no results searching the Wikipedia library. I think the misspelling is the most likely reason and it is a good idea to totally delete it. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:07, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm actually finding a little bit, searching that alternate spelling, Justicia cyanea, including this: https://ala-bie.sibbr.gov.br/ala-bie/species/310362#classification Uporządnicki (talk) 20:04, 27 January 2024 (UTC) Oh, I see someone else already brought this up. Uporządnicki (talk) 20:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Emery Clarence Leonard, the authority cited, died in 1968, and the article was created in 2006, so it's unlikely to be a new species. Tom Radulovich (talk) 23:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

The only name that fits is Lophostachys cyanea Leonard Weepingraf (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The current name for that is Lepidagathis cyanea (Leonard) Kameyama.

Neither Justicia cyanea nor Justicia cynea is in IPNI.

Lophostachys and Lepidagathis are placed in a different tribe (Barlerieae) to Justicia (Justicieae).

The citation for Lophostachys cyanea is to Lyman B. Smith et al, The Machris Brazilian Expedition Botany: Phanerogamae Amaranthaceae and other families, Los Angeles County Mus. Contr. Sci. 32: 13 (1959). No mention is made of Justicia cyanea there, but is conceivable that the name was used as a herbarium/manuscript name prior to formal publication of the species. One might have to go so far as to examine herbarium sheets to confirm that hypothesis.

There is a possibility of changing Justicia cynea to a redirect rather than deleting it, but I reckon that would fall under WP:OR (or worse) as there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the name was validly published.

(I considered that possibility of a particular bad misspelling of Justicia carnea or Justicia cyanantha, but the cited authority makes those hypotheses unlikely, perhaps more so that the above hypothesis of a herbarium name.) Lavateraguy (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Template:Plantgloss

You can now use {{plantgloss|term}} to easily create a link instead of manually doing [[Glossary of botanical terms#term|term]]. This will of course primarily be of use for terms that are only in the glossary and don't have their own articles. The utility of this will be greatly improved by adding anchors for plurals and other alternative terms covered at the same entry, as I did for the "P" section here. That way, you can just do {{plantgloss|paleae}} instead of {{plantgloss|palea|paleae}} or {{plantgloss|palea}}e. PS: The template alias {{botanygloss}} also exists for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Toward a MOS:FLORA

Moved from User talk:SMcCandlish

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants#Article advice is mostly stuff that should go into a MOS, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template is guidance about what should go into a plant article (although it is certainly not obvious that "Template" refers to that). Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

That collectively could maybe become an MoS page. What I would recommend (based on some experience at this):

• All the pertinent material should be combined into a single page, like WP:WikiProject Plants/Style advice.
• Rewrite it to use guideline-appropriate language.
  • Fix informal wording, long-windedness, supposition and opinion, etc.
  • Normalize the usage to current Wikipedia terminology (a lot of old project material dating from the 2000s uses terms that WP didn't eventually settle on, instead of familiar WP-isms like "notability", "due weight", "independent, secondary, reliable sources", "lead section", "original research", "living persons", etc.).
  • Avoid advice that doesn't advise, like "some editors prefer X and some prefer Y", unless it is really important (due to repeated prior dispute) to record that something in particular is left to editorial discretion. Really, everything is left to editorial discretion that isn't subject to a specific guideline about it, so it's usually not necessary to say so.
• Trim redundancy:
  • Avoid repeating other parts of MoS except for particular topic-specific applications; link to or explicitly cross-reference other guidance, as needed.
  • Remove generic non-style material already convered by other policies and guidelines (how to cite sources, etc.), except maybe notes about how to apply them to this topic in particular, if there's some kind of style-connected rationale to include it.
• Make sure any sectioning advice agrees with MOS:LAYOUT (and MOS:LEAD as applicable), and with the way botanical articles are actually written (especially modern GAs and FAs); often old sectional advice in such documentation is actually wrongheaded by current standards.
• Delete any conflicts with MoS, with other guidelines, or especially with policies, or revise the line-item in question to stop conflicting. A common conflict source in such documents is over-capitalization that doesn't agree with MOS:CAPS, and title strangeness that contradicts WP:AT or WP:DAB. For this topic, beware any inconsistency with WP:NCFAUNA.
• Delete or fix any "advice" that is not actually usually followed. In particular, look for old "we wish it would be this way, even though it's not" stuff. The purpose of guidelines is recording best practice not imposing new practice.
• Another gotcha is specific advocacy of the writing standards of some off-site organization that is not universally recognized as authoritative. IBC and its ICN are, but various national bodies are not. In this regard, it would probably be good to not repeat much of MOS:ORGANISMS except in summary. That's in good enough shape to also move to guideline status (I keep forgetting to get around to the proposal).
• Add important advice for anything that represents definite current on-site best practice in the topic area that wasn't covered in the old material. Don't go wild in this regard; if the material looks recently broadly expanded, people will notice and question its consensus level.
• Remove content advice that's not at least vaguely also style advice (maybe put it back on the main wikiproject page if it's important); people rebel against MoS proposals when they wander into trying to be content guidelines. Same goes for behavioral stuff. How (including parentheses/round-brackets, etc.) and when to provide taxonomic author names is a good example of something that's both a content issue and clearly also a style issue worth covering.
• When it seems tip-top shape, propose at WP:VPPOL that it be made into a guideline at WP:Manual of Style/Flora (to agree with WP:NCFLORA), or maybe /Botany, or /Plants I guess, though "plant" can have more than one meaning, like 'factory'). "Advertise" the proposal at relevant places like WP:VPPRO, WT:MOS, WT:PLANTS, WT:TOL, WT:NCFLORA, etc. The ongoing proposal at VPPOL about "MOS:CS" can probably be used as a model, including my process for resolving complaints about the material.

The most important part is making sure that what it contains is what is actually done, i.e. it already represents consensus and just deserves the {{Guideline}} approval stamp, and renaming/recategorization as an MoS guideline. I'll probably convert the above into an more generally-worded essay page in a moment. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Revised version now at WP:MOSPROMOTE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Categories for monotypic genera

Metarungia is now considered monotypic, and it has its own category. Is it worthwhile requesting deletion of such categories, which will likely contain only one article (and possibly one redirect), or simply leave them be? There is a commons category for Metarungia, but it is currently empty. Tom Radulovich (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Categories with a single article in them aren't useful. You could just upcategorize the species into the family article, leaving the category empty, after which it will soon get deleted anyway (saving a deletion request). Esculenta (talk) 17:54, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Notice of Cupressus to Hesperocyparis move request

On Talk:Cupressus macnabiana I have opened the formal request to move the remaining pages from Cupressus to Hesperocyparis. Please weigh in so that this can be closed without the need for the discussion to be posted again for more comments or a clearer consensus. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Linnaea borealis

I asked a question at the talk page for Linnaea borealis about the synonyms. POWO lists about 150 of them for Linnaea borealis var. borealis, mostly other subspecies. Would it be reasonable to just ignore the subspecies or should they all be listed? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

My view is that synonyms are not automatically notable. (Wikipedia is not a taxonomic database.) It is a judgement call by editors which synonyms to include. My suggestion would be ones which have an extensive history as accepted names of species. Lavateraguy (talk) 04:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That gives me the confidence to ignore the many (so many) subspecies that were published by Veit Brecher Wittrock. 152. 152! It is a little interesting and I may well put a sentence or two in the article under taxonomy, but that's just too many to list. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:50, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. I tend to write fairly compulsive nomenclature sections, but I wouldn't tackle that in the running text, let alone the infobox. (They're forms, incidentally, not subspecies.) Choess (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Change some Festuca to Lolium

There are several Festuca species such as Festuca arundinacea (the ones currently in Schedolium) which should probably be moved to Lolium, in line with POWO. There will be quite a lot of changes to be made, by the looks of it. Any objections if I start the process? E Wusk (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems entirely sensible to me. The List of Festuca species already follows POWO though it looks like it has not been checked since 2022, this would just be cleaning up all the articles to actually follow that instead of having them hang out being confusing.

I just took at look at the Category:Festuca. There are 143 pages listed there. I downloaded a list from POWO of everything they think is valid as of today and dumped it into a spreadsheet. I found seven pages that need moving, merging, or discussion.

• Festuca arundinacea → Lolium arundinaceum
• Festuca brevipila → Festuca trachyphylla
• Festuca gigantea → Lolium giganteum
• Festuca groenlandica → Festuca brachyphylla
• Festuca mairei → Lolium mairei
• Festuca paniculata → Patzkea paniculata
• Festuca pratensis → Lolium pratense

I'll use the current POWO list to update the wikipeida list tomorrow. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 06:05, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

There are also changes to be made to the Lolium article, of course, and × Festulolium which will have to be merged with Lolium (it's one of the arguments for the change because it removes these intergeneric hybrids). E Wusk (talk) 07:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I just finished up formatting the data I downloaded from POWO and updated List of Festuca species. I think × Festulolium should probably be updated to say that it was a historically used genus. Unless there is objection I'll create a new page for List of Lolium species since there are 39 of them listed on POWO and that seems a bit long for an article. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:11, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

There's precedent for longer lists in genus articles. (E.g. Mangifera has 65, and it wasn't much shorter before I updated it from POWO.) I'd place the threshold higher - perhaps around 80 to 100 species. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. Good to know. I'll just update Lolium with a formatted species list. Edit: or not... The list currently there has geographic information as well. Don't want to take that out. I will have to stop and think for a bit.🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd suggest ~100 species before considering splitting a species list out from a genus article. The presence of distribution information has often discouraged me from updating a list of species; I don't want to lose that information, but I also don't want to take the time to add it for any additional species (not to mention properly referencing the distributions; a lot of the species lists with distributions were added by User:Joseph Laferriere, with the distributions apparently taken from WCSP (which no longer exists), but the reference is to a genus page there, while the distributions are only given on the individual species pages on WCSP).

@MtBotany: looking at your update to the list of Festuca species, you're making extra work for yourself in formatting. {{Species list}} handles the italics automatically, you didn't need to specify them, and if you use {{Linked species list}} instead of {{Species list}}, it handles the linking. But that's still not the easiest way to get a list of species from POWO properly formatted and linked. With {{Format species list}}, all you need to do is copy-paste the list from POWO and the formatting and linking is taken care of for you (you do need to subst the template: i.e. you invoke it as "{{subst:Format species list|1=" (without the quotes), paste the list of species, provide "}}" at the end to close the template and then save the page. 20:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 20:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The species list template seemed not to be doing the italics correctly when I first did it. Not sure why though. I totally expected it to italicize as you can see at this old edit. Then I went back and made more work for myself to force it to display correctly. Thanks for the tip about linked species list. Definitely going to use that one. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I decided to just go with a more simple list for now on Lolium and I am going to consider how much work it will be put it in a table using the POWO native distribution information. If I can make a spreadsheet do the formatting work and then reuse that effort for other genus pages it might be worth it. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:00, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The WCSP data is available from POWO as its successor, WCVP. You can download the WCVP data as a large zip file. It has several files, including ones dealing with the taxonomy (names file) and distributions, which I assume are the tables from their database. If you get the taxon ID from the names file, you can find the associated localities from the distributions file. The distributions entries match the distribution list on the POWO pages. But unless you set up a local database using those tables, the information is no easier to extract than getting it from the POWO pages. They also had Python (pykew) and R API services, but I can't find links to them any more. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:50, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

rWCVP see here [1]https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.18919 Weepingraf (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Schedolium? Should that be Schedonorus? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:59, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

xSchedolium is the intergeneric hybrid between Schedonorus and Lolium, analogous to to xFestulolium. Neither is needed if those species move to Lolium, then just become normal hybrids. E Wusk (talk) 09:23, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Intsia needs urgently to be enhanced!

The article Intsia is a stub and I can not believe that it has been rated as Low-importance! Please read the German article [2] which contains very important details about the threat and illegal deforestation.

Intsia bijuga is listed on the IUCN International Red List as NT = Near Threatened in 2020. The population of Intsia palembanica is continuously decreasing and the IUCN assessed this species as NT = “Near Threatened” in 2020.

I would rate this article as High-importance! --Plenz (talk) 07:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

German Wikipedia doesn't have articles for the species of Intsia; I'd consider the species to be topics of higher importance the the genus, and a higher priority for expanding articles (that said, both species are present in New Guinea, so the topic of illegal logging there might be best addressed in the genus article). Plantdrew (talk) 18:03, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

With regards to importance, I've compared it with some other genera of timber trees - Shorea and Hopea are mid-importance, Dipterocarpus, Mansonia and Triplochiton are low-importance. While there would be no objection to improving the article it seems a stretch to place it as high-importance. Tilia, in spite of its cultural importance in Europe and America, is only mid-importance. (Oak and pine have qualified for high-importance.) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I have reassessed Intsia as Mid-Importance. In general, Importance is a reflection of reader interest in the article as measured by pageviews, not anything inherent in the article's topic. Abductive (reasoning) 02:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Cupressus and Hesperocyparis

I ran across a question on Talk:Cupressus about if some species should be moved to Hesperocyparis to follow Plants of the World Online and World Flora Online. I did a quick look around and it seems like this is becoming the accepted classification. Anyone have contrary information to say this is "too soon" or POWO and WFO being weird? Please weigh in if you have information or suggestions.

Edit to add: Oh, and I got sick of the long form so I made "Wikipedia:Plants talk" into a redirect to here. Redirects are cheap and it seemed like it would be useful when directing people to the talk page specifically. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:35, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

WT:PLANTS redirects here. Lavateraguy (talk) 01:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That is what I was not figuring out. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@MtBotany and Lavateraguy: – only seen this just now. I'd say 'too soon', and 'by far most likely never'. While accepted by POWO and WFO, the evidence is weak at best, and Cupressus s.l. (including Callitropsis, Hesperocyparis, Xanthocyparis, but excluding Juniperus) is almost certainly monophyletic. The Cupressus Conservation Project notably rejects the splits. There appears to be a lot of what I can only call 'political' pressure to accept these segregates, with flimsy evidence; Zhu et al. 2018 for example found that the great bulk of the tested genome (80 of 82 genes) supported a monophyletic Cupressus s.l., with just two anomalous genes (ycf1 and ycf2) supporting paraphyly with respect to Juniperus – yet in their conclusions, they accepted the nomenclatural consequences of the two anomalous genes over the evidence of the great bulk of the genome. It also remains that there is not one single morphological character that can distinguish all Cupressus s.str. from all Hesperocyparis. Best to retain Cupressus as a single genus in its traditional sense. - MPF (talk) 14:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

So the group knows I've placed a comment summarizing the situation on Talk:cupressus. Interested parties should comment there. I'd like a consensus on what to do before any more pages are moved or the two edited pages get moved back. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The thing is, as a project we have chosen to follow POWO, which accepts the split, a move that has been gaining traction in the litruature as well when you look at google.scholar use over the last 5 yeare. Why do we care what Cupressus Conservation Project says (the last updates to the "SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES" page are over a decade old now) given the lack of any transparency on who the group actually is. @MPF: you mention "politics", can you provide papers that discuss that issue and can be added to the genus level articles to maintain neutrality while we move forward with the taxonomy updates?--Kevmin § 22:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin that in the Zhu et al. paper cited above, the authors accept as most relevant, a phylogeny only supported by a tiny part of their data. Why? Same goes for the Stull et al. 2021 paper cited on the Hesperocyparis page: they demonstrate that Cupressus s.l. is monophyletic, yet accept Callitropsis, Hesperocyparis, Xanthocyparis as separate genera, even though the only reasons for accepting them was the suggestion that Cupressus s.l. might be paraphyletic with respect to Juniperus - which turns out not to be the case. "Why do we care what Cupressus Conservation Project says"?: because it is an important contributor to Cupressus taxonomic research. You're looking in the wrong place, check the Bulletin link, which is where their work is published. - MPF (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I saw the bulletin link, and I'm not sure why an in-house publication with a POV is being presented as more authoritative then the other body of literature from the last 5-ish years. you say its an important contributor to Cupressaceae research, and yet doesnt seem to have a cite record in any other literature, that feels very telling. The IPNI currently only has 8 names presented though the Bulletin, So again WHY is it superseding our project default of POWO. --Kevmin § 16:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you that the information in the Bulletin should not supersede the more generally used sources like POWO, but do you think it would be fair to have a line in articles talking about the taxonomy of Hesperocyparis saying something like "However, botanists from the Cupressus Conservation Project vigorously dispute the placement of species in the new genus and argue that they should be classified in Cupressus in a larger sense (Sensu lato)."? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@MPF: are you affiliated with the Cupressus Conservation Project?

I'm inclined to follow POWO, and mentioning the Cupressus s.l. view in the articles on the segregate genera (Volume 6 number 1 of the Bulletin has an editorial arguing for the s.l. view). Plantdrew (talk) 20:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

(I did a little digging on the editorial author, per an American Conifer Society Bulletin bio Didier Maerki is a geography teacher in Geneva , Switzerland . He has been a member of the ACS for 2 years and spends much of his spare time in France at Arboretum de Villardebelle. So I'm less inclined to give substantial prose time to the opinions in the Cupressus Conservation Project, given the fringe level nature of the opinion.--Kevmin § 15:19, 30 January 2024 (UTC) )

While he may be professionally a geography teacher, he's also at least a minor botanist. He is in the International Plant Names Index. I think one sentence using him as an example of taxonomic disagreement gives the right weight given that all the rest of the Taxonomy section is given over to the majority view. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

(I forgot to reply to this) MtBotany I feel its rather telling that the ipni you point to all originate with Maerki's pet project where he is the journal editor, which edges close to conflict of interest/self publishing territory and needs to be treated as such--Kevmin § 17:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point. I'll see if I can find any other editorials or papers that would be a better source to cite. I got the impression there was a minority of scientists that disputed the move, but it might actually be misunderstanding of the science on the part of amateur scientists. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin I found a peer-reviewed paper on JSTOR titled "Data sharing for conservation: A standardized checklist of US native tree species and threat assessments to prioritize and coordinate action" that uses Cupressus for north American native trees. And a monograph about Cupressus nevadensis from Enzyklopädie der Holzgewächse: Handbuch und Atlas der Dendrologie on Wiley. While neither of these address the taxonomic question directly I think they might be a better examples of continuing use of Cupressus instead of Hesperocyparis by professional scientists instead of the editorial currently referenced. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

"The clade comprising all three genera was found to be sister to a clade containing Juniperus and Cupressus sensu stricto."

I suggest "Studies have found the clade comprising all three genera was found to be sister to a clade containing Juniperus and Cupressus sensu stricto, or to Cupressus sensu strictu online", with cites to representative studies. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I added in a short paragraph to that effect at Hesperocyparis, open to rewording to be less awkward. I also checked the list with POWO and found one more species to add to the page. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The editorial in the Bulletin is from 2017. As part of the evidence it cites a paragraph by Christopher Earle saying why the "conifer.org website (USA) recognises only one Cupressus genus" (p7). But now the Gymnosperm Database (=conifer.org) uses Cupressus in the narrow sense. If Christopher Earle (who edits the relevant pages) has changed his mind due to new evidence, his previous arguments are not a good reason to reject the narrower circumscription. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

How many studies have presently followed these conclusions about Cupressus and Hesperocyparis being synonymous? Both POWO and the Gymnosperm Database recognize these other genera, and I've seen quite a few studies (i.e. Stull et al 2021) come to the "paraphyletic Cupressus" interpretation too. While there may be validity to the monophyletic Cupressus idea, I believe that for now we should go with what the authorities generally follow, and can change back to Cupressus if taxonomic opinion goes the other way. But I'm no expert so I'll defer to what others say. Geekgecko (talk) 22:13, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Gymnosperm Database is hedging their bets. They apparently have (mostly duplicated) pages for each species not in Cupressus s.s. at the Cupressus name and the non-Cupressus name. See Cupressus nootkatensis and Callitropsis nootkatensis. I'm not sure if it is possible to directly navigate to the Cupressus names (I noticed the Cupressus nootkatensis page as an external link in our article, and got to some others by editing the URL in my browser). Plantdrew (talk) 21:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Odd that they have slightly contradictory pages, but the Cupressus genus page (Last Modified 2023-12-17) restricts Cupressus to the old world species. The Callitropsis nootkatensis page (Last Modified 2023-12-18) is slightly newer than the Cupressusnootkatensis page (Last Modified 2023-11-26). These recent page updates suggests this is a matter they will revisit whenever there is new evidence, possibly the reason for keeping multiple pages.

Overall, I think we should follow the Gymnosperm database/POWO/WFO treatment for decisions on page titles, taxoboxes, etc and then mention the debate in the text. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Stull et al. 2021 again - like Zhu et al. 2018 - has a discord between what they say, and what they show. They say "paraphyletic Cupressus", but the phylogeny (copied below unaltered from the Hesperocyparis page) shows that Cupressus s.l. is monophyletic with respect to Juniperus. This is the heart of why I am so dubious about these studies: they are not presenting their results in a truthful manner. Why??

Stull et al. 2021

Juniperus Cupressus s.l. Cupressus s.s. Xanthocyparis vietnamensis Farjon & Nguyên Callitropsis nootkatensis (Don) Oersted Hesperocyparis H. bakeri (Jepson) Bartel (Modoc cypress) H. macnabiana (Murray) Bartel (Macnab’s/Shasta cypress) H. goveniana (Gordon) Bartel (Gowen cypress) H. macrocarpa (Hartweg ex Gordon) Bartel (Monterey cypress) H. sargentii Jepson (Sargent cypress) H. glabra (Sudworth) Bartel (Smooth Arizona cypress) H. arizonica (Greene) Bartel (Arizona cypress) H. guadalupensis (Watson) Bartel (Guadalupe cypress) H. montana (Wiggins) Bartel (San Pedro Martir cypress) H. forbesii (Jepson) Bartel (Tecate cypress) H. lusitanica (Miller) Bartel (Mexican cypress) H. stephensonii (Jepson) Bartel (Cuyamaca cypress)

MPF (talk) 21:20, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know where the cladogram at Hesperocyparis comes from - Figure 1 at Stull et al has a paraphyletic Cupressus s.l., but with sparse taxon sampling (6 ingroup taxa).

Stull et al have a large gene set, but weak results at the relevant node. (A Cupressus s.l.-Juniperus clade has ~75% genes trees supporting and 25% uninformative, but when it comes to a paraphyletic Cupressus (with respect to Juniperus), it's about 30% supporting, 20% opposing and 50% uninformative.) To resolve the question I'd suggest a study with broad taxon sampling within Juniperus and Cupressus s.l. - but even that might be insufficient, especially if reticulation is involved.

Regardless whether Cupressus s.l. is paraphyletic with respect to Juniperus, it is paraphyletic with respect to Callitropis and Xanthocyparis. If one doesn't sink those into Cupressus to retain monophyly one has to recognise Hesperocyparis, in which case one can duck the issue of whether Juniperus lies within or without Cupressus s.l. My preference is to not rush into reclassification based on single molecular studies (to avoid the risk of repeated taxonomic changes), but having glanced at some papers I think there's a decent case for a 5 genus (as opposed to a 2 genus) classification. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy: Check out Zhu et al. 2018, they have a more detailed study, which does support a monophyletic Cupressus s.l. overall in 80 out of 82 genes. - MPF (talk) 00:46, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Zhu et al is a plastome study. Such can generate misleading trees if allopolyploidy, hybrid speciation or chloroplast capture is involved. Zhu et al conclude that something on those lines has occurred.

In their study, about 15% of the plastome supports the paraphyletic Cupressus topology.

Zhu et al report structural isomerism in Cupressaceae genomes. I've seen papers where this has resulted in anomalous results (e.g. Hibiscus and Gossypium not being mutually monophyletic); it seems that whether this is an issue depends on the tools used. On the other hand, I don't think that this is an issue in Zhu et al; the smaller IR of Cupressaceae would reduce the magnitude of any spurious signal, and the observed non-congruences are in the wrong direction for an artefact resulting from this. Zhu et al's taxonomic conclusion is "The maintenance of Cupressus s.l. is problematic due to uncertainty in the placement of Juniperus. Notably, a paraphyletic Cupressus s.l. is consistently recovered in the few studies that have utilized nuclear or mitochondrial protein-coding genes [7, 8, 12, 13] as well as a minority of plastid analyses from this (Fig. 2; Fig. 4) and other [14] studies; more nuclear and mitochondrial data is required to explore this issue further. Furthermore, while the CaHX clade is clearly monophyletic in this and many previous studies, there are a variety of morphological characters that distinguish Hesperocyparis from Ca. nootkatensis and X. vietnamensis [8], arguing against circumscribing all three genera into a single, more broadly defined genus. Collectively, while there is still room for debate on the precise relationships among species in the CaCuHJX clade of Cupressaceae, the weight of evidence strongly favors recognition of five separate genera: Callitropsis, Cupressus, Hesperocyparis, Juniperus, and Xanthocyparis." Lavateraguy (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, based on the now deleted comments at WP:technical moves and other evidence here and at the move request on Talk:Cupressus macnabiana, Its seems apparent that MPF has an undisclosed COI with conifer editing and Cupressaceae topics specifically. This is problematic as it brings the possibility of non POV editing or COI violations--Kevmin § 17:47, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Kevmin - rather than doxing, it would be better if you answered the points I raised about intergeneric hybrids, etc. Yes I have an interest in conifers, but not a conflict of interest. I am not paid for any editing I do, either here, or elsewhere. I am also entitled to privacy about my life outside of wikipedia: stop invading it publicly. Also: are people who have actually studied many of the species concerned and are familiar with them, to be prevented from editing about them? Is editing only to be done by people who know nothing about what they are editing? - MPF (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@MPF Being the subject of such questions is not pleasant, but it is not doxing. Kevmin did not post your name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organization, telephone number, email address, profiles on external sites, other contact information, etc. You are quite correct that all editors have biases and conflicts of interest. We have places we work, publications we contribute to, organizations we support, etc. However, if an editor contributes on Wikipedia in an area where they have an interest they need to disclose this fact. For example on my User page I disclose that I am a member of a native plant society and that I contribute to its newsletter. If I add information from the Colorado Native Plant Society's newsletter other editors should have this information so they can give greater scrutiny to my edits and judge if I am giving it undue weight or using Wikipedia to promote the group. IF you are part of the group you don't need to give your name or anything else. You should disclose this fact or clearly state that your are not a member of the Cupressus Conservation Project. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

He as good as did, by giving a link to where my name and contact details are given; this should not have been done publicly here. WP:COI says: When investigating COI editing, do not reveal the identity of editors against their wishes. Wikipedia's policy against harassment, and in particular the prohibition against disclosing personal information, takes precedence over this guideline. To report COI editing, follow the advice at How to handle conflicts of interest, below. This has certainly been breached, and the guidelines for investigaion there not followed. As it happens, I've hardly done any editing on wikipedia at all (hiatus 2008-2020, and very little since then apart from Commons image renames) from well before the Cupressus Conservation Project was formed (2012), so the matter had not arisen before now. - MPF (talk) 01:17, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

References

Proposal for JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID property on Wikidata

JSTOR World Plants has data and images for over 1.3 million type specimens of plants species.

For example, on Selliguea plantaginea, we cite https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.us00134691, whose URL contains the ID us00134691

I have just published a proposal for a Wikidata property, to allow the import all such IDs, and to create Wikidata items for the individual specimens - linked, of course, to the item about the relevant taxon.

This will allow us, should we choose to, to include a template (perhaps like, or even as part of {{Taxonbar}}) on a page here, to display data about the taxon's type specimen (the collector, the date and location of its collection, and its current whereabouts, and perhaps an image).

The proposal is at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID. Please use that page to express your support, or make any comments or suggestions for improvement on the proposal.

(Discussion of display of the data on Wikipedia should of course take place here, in due course). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Wikidata property has been created at JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID (P12464). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Invasive species

Invasive species has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Notice of move request

There is a move request at Talk:Tupelo (disambiguation) proposing that the disambiguation page replace Tupelo, currently the article name for genus Nyssa. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

There move request to replace Tupelo with Tupelo (disambiguation) is still ongoing. There are two issues with this move, currently. If it needs to be moved because of WP:NOPRIMARY, a good new article name is needed for genus Nyssa. As the plant project would we prefer Nyssa (genus) or Tupelo tree as the target?

The second issue is that it is not clear that is is a case of NOPRIMARY as the disambiguation page only has 4.5% of the long term views of Tupelo article though some editors are discounting this saying that the unmeasurable navigation through search engines like google means that Tupelo is not the primary topic. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a reason why Nyssa should be one of the exceptions to policy of using botanical names. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, Nyssa is a disambiguation page. But I think Nyssa (plant) (not Nyssa (genus)) would be appropriate as a title. The tree genera that have vernacular names as article titles are generally widely distributed in the northern hemisphere and occur in the UK, US and Canada: oak, maple, pine, fir, alder, birch, beech, willow, elm. Tupelo stands out in comparison to those as something that only occurs in a small part of a single English-speaking country (although it's range isn't restricted to English-speaking countries). Plantdrew (talk) 22:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Sagina subulata

It appears that the name in common use for this species is not the nomenclaturally correct one. The combination was published twice in 1826 (per IPNI); as a new species description by d'Urville for the species now known as Colobanthus subulatus, and as a new combination based on Spergula subulata by Presl, the latter being what is commonly understood by that name. A replacement name was proposed in this paper, but Sagina hawaiiensis Pax (a rather unfortunate epithet for a European species) has priority and has been adopted by POWO.

Having referred to Stafleu and Cowan (Taxonomic Literature 2) the date for that latter name is October 2026; the date for the former name is not completely clear - I think that it's 1825, but I can't completely exclude 1826 and 1829(!).

Given two centuries of usage for this species in the European literature I'd be tempted to consider this a candidate for conservation.

Do we just do a move to Sagina hawaiinensis, with a section on the nomenclature, or something else. (Sagina subulata C.Presl. is still in widespread usage, for example the Euro+Med database uses this, with no mention of the other two alternative names.) Lavateraguy (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Mangifera

While updating the page, I've discovered a couple of nomenclatural issues with Mangifera where the spelling used for the Wikipedia articles differs from that used at POWO (austro-indica vs austroindica, persiciformis vs persiciforma). I suspect these of being orthographical corrections by POWO.

Also, if we are following POWO a merge is needed of Mangifera torquenda (which has some content) into Mangifera similis (a bare stub); the problem is that what is true of Mangifera torquenda may not be true of the broader Mangifera similis so content can't be moved across blindly. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

austroindica resolved - austro-indica is correctable per article 60.9. I've performed the move. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Having attempted to interpret the Latin I think that Wikipedia and IUCN are correct with Mangifera persiciformis and POWO, WFO and IPNI are wrong with Mangifera persiciforma. Next step is to contact IPNI. (There's a can of worms involved - I think that there are 17 names in -forma/um that should be corrected to formis/e, and I see a few questionable spellings among the 8150 records with formis/e.) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

forma is obviously a noun (as it is e.g. an infraspecific rank) so it looks fine to me, something like peachy form, persiciformis being formed like a peach. Perhaps not what they intended exactly but not wrong. Weepingraf (talk) 13:12, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

As I understand, epithets are either adjectives, genitive forms of nouns, on nouns (nominative case) in apposition. To use a noun in apposition it has to already exist, and I doubt that persiciforma did. For comparison epithets amygdaliformis, botryformis, cerasformis, cucumiformis, maliformis, pruniformis and pyriformis, and more broadly bacciformis, nuciformis and pepoformis exist. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

No less an authority than Stearn's Botanical Latin (p.93 in the 4th paperback edition) is clear that -formis constructs adjectives whose nominative endings are -is (m & f) and -e (n). I note that PoWO corrects at least some of the spellings in IPNI, e.g. IPNI's Lithocardium cuneiforma is Lithocardium cuneiforme in PoWO. I have no doubt that the Chinese authors of Mangifera persiciforma made an error and the name should be corrected to Mangifera persiciformis. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:33, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I still think that Mangifera "persiciforma" is an error, but further study suggests that it's not so obvious that it's correctable – it seems that there's more reluctance to change the original authors' names under the current version of the ICNafp than there used to be. It's been pointed out to me that my example of Lithocardium cuneiforma → Lithocardium cuneiforme is not the same, because this is a transfer from Cordia cuneiformis so is clearly adjectival. We'll have to see what the IPNI and PoWO editors think. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I've had a reply from IPNI. They are correcting epithets in -formum to -forme. They've tabled for further consideration the issue of epithets in -forma. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sambucus#Requested move 29 February 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sambucus#Requested move 29 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Declangi (talk) 11:15, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Taxon publication/transfer year in taxoboxes

There is a discussion here about including the date of taxon publication or transfer in taxoboxes that could benefit from additional opinions, particularly from those editors affected by it (i.e., taxa under the ICNafp umbrella). Esculenta (talk) 16:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Question about a couple of journals

In trying to gather sources about Coccothrinax, I have found articles (see the list on Talk:List of Coccothrinax species) from journals named Palms and Palm Arbor. I haven't been able to find out anything about those journals. Does anyone know anything about them? Donald Albury 16:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

https://palms.org/journal/

https://ucanr.edu/sites/HodelPalmsTrees/PalmArbor/

Lavateraguy (talk) 17:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Donald Albury 17:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Selina Wamucii: AI generated?

I was checking the recently created articles Abuta fluminum, Abuta dwyerana, Abuta acutifolia, Abuta aristeguietae. Abuta acutifolia and Abuta dwyeriana have prose statements that aren't supported by the cited sources (IPNI and POWO aren't sources that generally have much that can be turned into prose). Abuta fluminum and Abuta aristeguietae cite [3] (part of the website for Selina Wamucii) for some prose statements, which I had questioned as a source a couple months ago at User_talk:GuppyGherkin9#Selina_Wamucii_as_a_source. Selina Wamucii's plant website does indeed make a bunch of prose statements for obscure species, and appears pretty high in Google results for sufficiently obscure plant species. But it appears to me that Selina Wamucii is AI-generated bulllshit (statements may be true for a few/some/most members of a higher taxon, but not necessarily true for a given species). I want to generally AGF for the editors who have cited Selina Wamucii, but the statements ostensibly sourced to POWO at Abuta acutifolia suggest that editors citing Selina Wamucii might also be relying on AI to generate articles that hallucinate other statements.

Articles mentioning Selina Wamucii:[4]. Plantdrew (talk) 02:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I found that at least part of Abuta fluminum about Tamarins is a chopped up version of this National Geo article. Which is a separate problem.

I agree that Selina Wamucii looks questionable at best. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

"statements may be true for a few/some/most members of a higher taxon, but not necessarily true for a given species" is not unique to AI - Wikipedia has had humans guilty of that practice in the past. (And a broader scale there were the Scots Wikipedia and Russian history scandals.)

However I had a look at what they wrote for some obscure mallow - Malva x arbosii, which is an obscure hybrid, with essentially no data on line; Malva setigera (the currently accepted name for Althaea hirsuta); and Malva x columbretensis (known from one small Spanish island group). Based on that sample I infer that what they have is automated scraping of some sites (POWO, IPNI, WFO, TPL) supplemented by AI text. For example it says that Malva setigera has a single cotyledon, and that Malva x columbretensis is native to India. Those are errors that I can't see a human making, and they seem to be more likely to be AI than a buggy scraper. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Selina Wamucii seems to be a digital tools provider for the agriculture business (e.g. providing a marketing App for small farmers. The Data Sources section says:

Selina Wamucii uses raw data from a wide range of relevant sources, which could be combined or used for data verification, depending on data availability, product, and geographical scope. This list includes, but is not limited to, the following primary sources:

It doesn't say how the raw data is combined but it's a small company so can't have the resources for any human oversight over a section with the same broad scope as WFO and POWO. It looks like it might be a good company to help small farmers sell avocado, but not one for reviewing scientific information, which is what we'd expect for a secondary source. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, even regardless of the AI stuff this is not really a good source. I think the best solution here is to revert to the versions of the Abuta article before the source was added, or to just excise any statement attributed to this source Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree with everyone that Selina Wamucii doesn't look like a reliable website to be citing scientific information, and even more so because Plantdrew has already pointed out that are some discrepancies with the information on the website to GuppyGherkin9. There also seems to be an issue with WP:OR if the information written in these articles isn't supported by the cited sources. Eucalyptusmint (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Justicia genistiformis

The article Justicia genistiformis has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No accepted plant species of this name, or valid synonym, or close misspelling, exists on definitive databases like Plants of the World Online or World Flora Online.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tom Radulovich (talk) 06:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I've added on comment at Talk:Justicia_genistiformis#Is_this_a_valid_species?. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Olive articles

We currently have articles at Olive with a taxobox for the species Olea europaea, and at Olea oleaster, supposedly the "wild olive" although the latter article has a list of Greek cultivars. It seems to me that these articles need to be merged, but as with all highly cultivated species, drawing boundaries between the original wild species and cultigens is difficult. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:40, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Blighia sapida#Requested move 11 March 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Blighia sapida#Requested move 11 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Declangi (talk) 00:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Taxonomy of Syringa villosa subsp. wolfii

I have made a couple of changes to Syringa josikaea, among them a paraphrase of a 2016 article discussing the species' prehistory and taxonomic affiliations. The paper identifies Syringa villosa and Syringa "wolfii" as its closest living relatives, however, the latter of which is considered by both POWO and WFO to be a subspecies of Syringa villosa. To reflect the fact that we generally follow POWO's recommendation on these questions, I have therefore decided to refer to them as subspecies in the article. This, however, seems a) redundant as it would be easier to simply name S. villosa as sister and b) runs the risk of breaching WP:NOR. How do you think we should proceed? AndersenAnders (talk) 17:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@AndersenAnders: it doesn't breach WP:NOR if you reference it. For example, you could say something like "The closest living relatives were identified as Syringa villosa, including S. villosa subsp. wolfii (under its synonym S. wolfii)". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Right, I wasn't thinking of this. Thanks AndersenAnders (talk) 14:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

References

Nomenclatural issue at Talk:Rose

A nomenclatural issue (why is the type of Rosa Rosa cinnomomea when Rosa cinnomomea is a synonym (per POWO) of Rosa pendulina?) has been raised at Talk:Rose. If anyone can shed any light ... Lavateraguy (talk) 20:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Request for input on foliosum

Hello all! I have begun work on a new type of plant article and would like to receive some input from you lovely folks before I continue. I noticed there are no articles on any specific epithets or lists containing all species with a particular name. To try to remedy this, I started the Set Index Article foliosum, which aims to collect all species that end in that epithet. I would like to take this to FLC when it is complete, so am trying to solicit input that would bring it to that standard. I also have the goal of bringing other articles of list type to FLC, so general feedback/suggestions/consensus are welcome. In particular, I have two main queries:

1. What should the criteria for inclusion be, and are the data repositories listed sufficient for completeness?
2. Does the table need any more or less information to be useful?

Thank you for any thoughts you have, whether here or at the article's talk page! Fritzmann (message me) 16:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I would find lists like these interesting, and perhaps useful in some instances. Why not include foliosa, foliosum, etc., they are all the same specific epithet in different gendered endings. Will you include varieties & forms with this name? Including fungi too? (an epithet search on 'folios' turns up 38 hits at Index Fungorum) Esculenta (talk) 16:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I thought about doing the different forms of the same word, but the list will already be long as is. I have included about half the vascular plants so far, and have a lot of work to do in finding all of the species from other kingdoms. Plus, for the sake of titles I think it makes sense to just link to the other tenses in the lede. Not planning to include varieties and forms at the moment; I think treating it as a specific epithet is the most straightforward approach. I want to include fungi, yes, as well as animals and any other organisms. I'm not as familiar with these, so would love recommendations for databases that would give me a complete view. Fritzmann (message me) 16:41, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that you should look at C. elegans (disambiguation) if you haven't already. Don't know if it will enthuse you or scare you off from this project. Esculenta (talk) 19:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Lol definitely enthuses me! Although I think I will stay away from such highly common epithets for the time. Fritzmann (message me) 21:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I for one think an article like this is lacking in wp:Notability and falls afoul of being essentially botany wp:Fancruft.--Kevmin § 16:44, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin: could you elaborate on this? I definitely had reservations about that, but felt that the navigational benefits outweigh crufty concerns. The usecase I thought of was what if a layperson saw a species abbreviation, like D. foliosum, but didn't know the genus or type of a plant. They could just search "foliosum" on wikipedia, and this list would then help them find what they are looking for. Would love to know your thoughts! Fritzmann (message me) 17:49, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

With a few exceptions (C. elegans, D. melanogaster, T. rex, H. sapiens, E. coli, Rh. ponticum) it is not normal to encounter the short form of a species name in a context where the genus is not implicit. The usual practice is to write the genus name out in full on first usage (and any subsequent uses relating to the genus as a whole) and (depending on the author's chosen style) abbreviate the genus in species name is subsequent uses. (My preference is to write the name out in full - for the benefit of search engines (it's less hassle than writing ABBR tags.)

IPNI has 960 records for foliosa/us/um (with some duplicate names) (plus 80 for foliacea/us/um and 65 for foliata/us/um), and that doesn't include occurrences among algae, fungi and possibly even animals. If a person doesn't know the genus or type of a plant a list of such magnitude is not likely to help them resolve the hypothetical ambiguity. (This isn't the largest possible list - IPNI has 1276 records for hookeri/iana/ianus/ianum, and I didn't realise it was so common, but 2189 records for elegans.)

The question has come up before, and the consensus has been against it. I think WP:NOTDB applies. For widespread and complete coverage it's a lot of work (I expect that there are several million plant binomials to cover), for little benefit (the "if a job can't be done well, it's not worth doing" principle applies), and there other places (tens of thousands of plant species lacking articles) where effort would be more usefully applied. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Lavateraguy, that definitely gives me good insight. I think I'll table the project for now, knowing that. Perhaps I'll continue it as a pet project here or there, but it's clear that there are better places to sink effort into! Thanks for your valuable advice, Fritzmann (message me) 12:35, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Authors of synonyms

I have always blindly followed other editors of plant articles by "smalling" the authors of synonyms in taxoboxes (as for Lambertia formosa for example). I have searched for guidance but can only find examples such as here. Is describing the editors of synonyms in small font contrary to MOS:SMALLFONT as suggested at Styphelia prostrata? Gderrin (talk) 23:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

In MOS:SCIENTIFIC, it says "In the article body, wrap the authority information in {{small}} or .... (This need not be done in a taxobox, which handles this automatically.)" I think this is referring to the "authority" parameter, which does "small" automatically. It does not say to "small" authorities listed in the "synonyms" parameter, but perhaps this should be made explicit (so that authorities are a consistent size between authority listings in both of these parameters? Esculenta (talk) 23:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

The bit Esculenta quotes was added by Peter coxhead on 11 October 2020. On 7 Februray 2021 SMcCandlish added a cross-reference to MOS:SMALLFONT pointing to MOS:SCIENTIFIC. So it's been 3 years with taxon authorities noted as an exception to SMALLFONT.

MOS:SMALLTEXT goes somewhere different than SMALLFONT (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility#Font_size vs. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting#Font_size. I am inclined to take the Accessibility section of MOS more seriously than most other sections. Yeah, smalling already smalled text seems like a potential accessibility issue. {{Small}} warns against using it in "infoboxes", as do the MOS sections already linked. What is an "infobox"? Taxoboxes were the first infoboxes (Wikipedia_talk:List_of_infoboxes/Archive_1#Poll:_new_name). Taxoboxes are not based on {{Infobox}}, which displays text that is smaller than the prose content of the article. Taxoboxes display most text at the same size as the prose content of the article. Smalling authorities in a taxobox does not take them below an accessible size.

Taxoboxes are apparently MOS:INFOBOXEXCEPTIONS, as they include higher taxa not mentioned elsewhere in prose content. Infobox wars are a thing with an open (but likely soon closed) discussion at WP:RECINFOBOXRFC. There are some other "infoboxes" that aren't built off of {{Infobox}}. I don't know of any that don't small their text, but taxoboxes are an obvious exception to the notion that "infoboxes" start off with small text. Plantdrew (talk) 01:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Esculenta that it should be noted that synonym authorities are also set in smaller font, which, as Plantdrew notes, has been agreed not to be against SMALLFONT.

One way of automatically setting synonym authorities in small text is to use {{Species list}} (or the equivalents for other ranks). An issue with synonym lists is that long lists are, rightly, often hidden, e.g. by using {{Hidden}}, but this by default makes its contents smaller, so that double "smalling" gets applied to authorities, which is wrong. Using {{Species list}} with |hidden=yes avoids this. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I've now tried to clarify at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Scientific names. Please check. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to Esculenta, Plantdrew and Peter coxhead for their contibutions here. I will use {{Species list}} with {{Hidden}} from now on. Gderrin (talk) 08:40, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Penstemon alluviorum

I've been working on a Draft:List of Penstemon species (almost finished) and I've run into the fact that Penstemon alluviorum is a synonym of Penstemon digitalis according to POWO, WFO, and Flora of North America. It contains essentially no information and unless there are objections I'm going to turn it into a redirect. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment: The latest version of the Weakley Flora (Flora of the South Eastern US(2024) still recognises Penstemon alluviorum, as do a number of recent (but older than FNA) regional floras. The Weakley Flora has 5 taxa in the Penstemon digitalis complex - POWO recognises 4 of them, but not Penstemon alluviorum, probably following FNA. It seems that it's not a settled question, but since Wikipedia's default sources consider it a synonym, and the article is a stub I'd go ahead and do the redirect. Maybe add a paragraph on the Penstemon digitalis complex at Penstemon digitalis. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:58, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we should make exceptions to following POWO, like Penstemon grandiflorus, where pretty much every other source disagrees. If Weakley and FNA both listed Penstemon alluviorum I'd keep it and add more information to explain the controversy, but in this case I think redirect with more information at P. digitalis is the right move. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 16:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

No, It is FNA that POWO follows in synonymous Penstemon alluviorum. Weakley overall is much more of a splitter than FNA. Weepingraf (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Opinions sought: List of Penstemon species

I have almost finished finding photographs for the Draft:List of Penstemon species and should be finished in about a week. Currently I have the list in a table with four columns: Scientific Name, Authority, Common Names, and Photo. I thought it might occasionally be useful to be able to sort the table by Authority, but if I put it into just three columns it may display better on mobile devices. Any opinions on what I should prioritize? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:09, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think those four columns should be fine on mobile. The images are small and the names will wrap if people have narrow screens. The sorting on different columns is a nice feature of wikipedia tables. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the authorities should go in the column with the binomials. Authorities don't really stand on their own (especially abbreviated ones; we'd never write "it was first described by L."). It seems unlikely that anybody would want to sort by authority, and if they did, they won't really get the results they probably would want since parenthetical authorities will sort separately from non-parenthetical authorities, and authorities following a parenthetical would sort all over the place. Although it's not very widely used (and I think isn't used at all for plants), {{Species table}} puts authorities in the same column as the binomial. Plantdrew (talk) 19:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Plantdrew for both reasons given. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:26, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

MtBotany I do have a question. You made the column for the photos sortable. How do they sort? Uporządnicki (talk) 16:56, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@AzseicsoK By the description of the photo. It is not hugely useful, but it will group the botanical illustrations together for example. And more useful for people attempting to find additional photos, group all the entries without photos. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

South African plant photo donation

Please see this quote regarding an amazing donation of tens of thousands of photos depicting South African plants:

"Greetings from the Afrikaanse Wikipedia where I am a bureaucrat. Last year I negotiated a deal with Emeritus prof. A.E. van Wyk (renowned botanist and author of various books on Flora in South Africa) whereby he agreed to share his 60,000 photos with us (a lifetime's work). He has started loading those pictures onto Commons as User:SAPlants. I think it is going to take him the better part of three years to complete this. All the pictures are categorised according to their taxonomic names. He has already loaded close to 18,000 pictures. Most of the pictures covers Southern Africa flora. We, here on the Afrikaans Wikipedia, are working hard to create articles to accommodate these pictures! A good example is the family Aizoaceae with 100 genera already created! I invite you to get stuck into those pictures and articles..." Adam Harangozó (talk) 09:16, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Fantastic! And I especially love the efforts going into creating articles to go with the photos. 17:21, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Batales

Hi there, I'm trying to add refs to very old unsourced pages and came across Batales. I'm not familiar with best practice for refs in this area, so could someone here add some refs to improve it, please? JMWt (talk) 06:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

See Cronquist system for references for the orders of the Cronquist system. Batales refers to the 1981 version; in the bibliography at the bottom of Cronquist system one can find Cronquist's 1981 publication. (This is an instance where a primary source should be acceptable.) The problem is accessing the publication is probably hard, and adding the reference unseen questionable practice.

An accessible secondary source can be found here Lavateraguy (talk) 08:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Nice find. It would be extremely useful to have that comparison table in Excel. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:27, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks,if someone could add it to the page and some point, that would be great. JMWt (talk) 09:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

A related issue is that Batidales redirects to Brassicales rather than Batales. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:05, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Bat flower vs. batflower

Hello WP:PLANTS people! I was trying to copyedit Tacca integrifolia and saw that somebody previously changed the use of the common name "white batflower" to "white bat flower." I reverted them and looked for a source to prove either spelling, and I found a lot of shop listings that said the latter, but those aren't exactly reliable. Do any of you guys have access to a source that says otherwise? I also looked at Tacca and both terms were used in the same article. Thanks! —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 13:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Google search gives roughly the same number of results for batflower and bat flower. white bat flower has over 4 times as many results as white batflower. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:30, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Lavateraguy! :) —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 21:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

One more place to find sources for common names: archive.org

It is a far from a perfect library, but it is a good place to find sources you can access, read, and search for text strings that is free. In this case there is the same result as searching google. One book (three copies) that has "white batflower" and six that have "white bat flower". Plus some other common names.

It is no replacement for Wikipedia library access, but it is great for older floras and the occasional book explaining plant name origins. Second only to Biodiversity Heritage Library for scans of old botanical books. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:51, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much @MtBotany! I actually do have access to TWL so that's perfect :). —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 00:05, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Asparagusus One thing about searching the archive library. If you put in a binomial and get very few results from older books try putting it in without double quotes. Many books are formatted so that the genus and species name appear on different lines (especially the older ones) and so searching for "Tacca integrifolia" will miss many sources prior to about 1890. You'll get a lot of false positives as well, especially with a name like integrifolia, but sometimes it is worth it for a really deep search. Hand-book of Indian Flora (1864) (p.459) is an example. Tacca integrifolia only appears there as a synonym, but even in the name they're using as correct only appears as T. aspera under a heading further up the page for Tacca. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the sources in the taxonbar, both Mobot Plant Finder and RHS use "bat flower" and iNaturalist uses "white bat flower". Both "bat flower" and "batflower" seem in use as vernacular names. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:33, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

eFloras.org problem affecting many references

As of now, http://www.efloras.org/ is offline. This affects, among others, the online Flora of North America and the online Flora of China, both widely used in references. The Flora of North America seems to have moved to http://floranorthamerica.org, but with no clear mapping between old and new URLs for taxa. I can only find the Flora of China via http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/, from which you can get to PDFs for families, but apparently not individual taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

At least for references using FNA and template {{eFlora}} it looks fixable. The new urls use the taxon name, which are the third parameter in the template. So 'Quercus is at http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_alba, Quercus sect. Quercus at http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_sect._Quercus and Quercus alba http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_alba. I don't know how widely the template is used. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:23, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Missouri Botanical Garden websites (excluding Tropicos) have been down since March 12, with no estimate of a time to be fixed. floranorthamerica.org has existed alongside efloras.org for several years. I don't know what the long term plans are for efloras, but I expect it will be back up for the near term when the Mobot web server is fixed. Plantdrew (talk) 14:58, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

That's good to know as there are over 8,000 uses and only about 800use the template.

Not all the Mobot websites are down. APweb is still live. Others give a message about scheduled maintenances (e.g. latindict). WFO is also live, although not sure if that is hosted by mobot.—  Jts1882 | talk  08:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

APweb was down when I tried to access it last week. It looks like pages with the domain mobot.org are now up, and those with missouribotanicalgarden.org are still down. Plantdrew (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

The botanical dictionary one was down when I wrote that post, but is indeed up now, so they are making progress. Perhap eFlora will be fixed soon. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:25, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

The eFloras are back online. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882: down right now. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I saw it was down again at the weekend. This time it's giving an error page rather than not being found. Hopefully just ongoing issues with the mobot site updates. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

And both Flora of North America and Flora of China are back online. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:34, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:José Mariano de Conceição Vellozo#Requested move 28 April 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:José Mariano de Conceição Vellozo#Requested move 28 April 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:12, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Moving Securigera to Coronilla

I noticed today that Securigera is listed as a synonym of Coronilla in both POWO and WFO. Is there any reason that the species should not be moved? I also asked over at Talk:Securigera in case anyone is watching that page and not this one. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:49, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Replied at Talk:Securigera. Plantdrew (talk) 01:36, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

POWO lumping Citrus

POWO has, since at least last September, massively lumped cultivated Citrus. Citrus × paradisi (grapefruit) and Citrus × sinensis (sweet orange), to pick two important ones, are treated as synonyms of Citrus × aurantium f. aurantium. The most recent source cited on POWO's page for the genus Citrus is Mabberly, 2022 (doi:10.7751/telopea15954), and he does list sinensis and paradisi as synonyms of aurantium. He advocates for recognizing ICNCP cultivar groups, rather than ICNafp binomials to handle the diversity of cultivated citrus. However, he basically fails to list any cultivar groups (I count 5 that he mentions).

Citrus taxonomy is of course a mess, and a cultivar group approach would be an excellent solution, if only somebody would publish a list of cultivar groups and the "species" names associated with the groups. Mabberly hasn't done that. POWO isn't designed to have records of cultivar groups (or any names governed by the ICNCP rather than the ICNafp); it's certainly their perogative to lump in the ICNafp framework, but I don't think Wikipedia should follow POWOs lumping. Hopefully eventually somebody will publish a cultivar group classification of Citrus.

@Abductive:, pinging you because I came across a discussion you were having with another editor that inspired me to post this (and Citrus taiwanica should not be moved to Citrus × aurantium f. aurantium, since the latter (per POWO) covers perhaps dozens of "species" with Wikipedia articles). Plantdrew (talk) 20:14, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

As you may of noticed, I did not move it. I was hoping to make the user aware that Citrus is, as you say, a mess and best left alone while we wait for clarification. Abductive (reasoning) 20:21, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I got the opposite message, the message I got was that you wanted to redirect the article[5] not leave it alone while we wait for clarification. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:31, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if this is what we're looking for, but this paper from 2020 has a citrus industry perspective on groups of cultivars. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with sticking with the status quo until some better work comes out. Just because POWO changed doesn't mean we have to change; I agree that their current solution feels inelegant. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Citrus taxonomy mentions the alternative to cultivar groups - nothovarieties. But there doesn't appear to have been a consistent classification of citrus into nothovars either. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:10, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

There seems to be some sort of local consensus that POWO is gospel. That has never as far as I am aware been endorsed by the community, I would simply disregard POWO and use the existing notability guidelines. POWO is not part of wikipedia, they don't carry any special weight that other organizations of their caliber doesn't. They aren't special and they aren't gospel. They're just one point of view. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:37, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The important thing here is to avoid creating more articles on Citrus for the time being. Abductive (reasoning) 20:59, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Why should we do that? That is not in general how things are done on wikipedia (its the opposite), is there another local consensus which applies here? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

If you continue to create questionable articles, editors will question them. Please refrain from doing that. I suggest reading the guidance here in this Wikiproject. Abductive (reasoning) 00:48, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I did not create a questionable article. What are you talking about? Note that this topic has a page on three other language wikis[6][7][8], so it would be hard to suggest that its in any way of questionable notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Again, I said, going forward it would best to check PoWO before creating an article on a flowering plant. Presently PoWO lists 360,013 accepted species. This Wikiproject has only managed to create about 90,000 articles on plant species. That means that 75% of uncontroversial plant species don't have an article. Please consider directing your efforts towards these missing articles. Abductive (reasoning) 01:51, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I see no reason to add such a layer of censorship to article creation, it would also be against the spirit of wikipedia to shy away from controversial topics. This is wikipedia not PoWO... Here PoWO carries the same weight as any other source of its caliber, no more and no less. I hope this is not going to be an issue with you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:06, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Please read WP:Consensus and WP:PSTS. Abductive (reasoning) 03:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

You are the one opposing the general consensus on notability, not me. I see no mention of PoWO at PSTS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:51, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

PoWO is a secondary source. It is run by Rafaël Govaerts at Kew Gardens. This Wikiproject largely defers to it and (to a lesser degree) others like it, such as FNA and Flora of China, which were run by Peter H. Raven and Ihsan Ali Al-Shehbaz (both of whom recently retired, I think) out of the Missouri Botanical Garden. If you are going to make a case for creating an article that deviates from these sources, it would be best to run it by the guys here at this Wikproject first. Bring a source such as Taxon (journal) and explain why the creation would help build an encyclopedia. Abductive (reasoning) 20:09, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Why would I bring it here and not to another one of the relevant WikiProjects (for example Food and Drink and Taiwan)? Why are you claiming this wikiroject to be superior to all other wikiprojects. I can't see any logic, guideline, or policy behind that, its just chauvinistic control freakery. It doesn't need to be brought to any wikiproject at all, wikiprojects don't get a sign off or veto on article creation. They're basically just clubhouses, they have no power or authority whatsoever. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Because it's a plant? Abductive (reasoning) 20:53, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Its just as much food/drink, agricultural product, and Taiwanese as it is a plant. So why according to you does only this wikiproject get a say? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:58, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Please read WP:Here to build an encyclopedia and WP:CHALLENGE. Any editor can "challenge" a source. Abductive (reasoning) 23:11, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

At this point you can stop suggesting I read policy and guideline, I clearly have a stronger grasp on it than you do (which makes sense, I'm a wikipedia generalist and you are a plant specialist). You have not yet challenged any of the sources. You have challenged stand alone notability. I also asked you about wikiprojects and you responded with an answer about editors. Please answer the question about wikiprojects, I expect good faith from you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:44, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Different person with a point of view on POWO. I]t is not the gospel. It is, however, the best we've got for coverage of most of the world. I only ignore it when there is a strong local consensus I can point to as a reason to ignore POWO. For example Penstemon grandiflorus. Every North American source from Flora of North America to the USDA says it is the correct name and have for a long time. So I cite these other sources and note the disagreement. Likewise the fern boffins think POWO got it wrong and so we are using World Ferns as our list, currently. Is there an equally authoritative list for citruses that we could or should follow? If not we'd be loosing more chaos and confusion on our readers and editors. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:03, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for some of the history here. Chaos and confusion are the norm on wikipedia, most topics areas don't even try for any sort of overarching organization. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, POWO is not gospel. The consensus view of the project is that it is the best source for determining which plants get articles and for providing a consistent classification in the taxoboxes (with alternative views given in the article). However exceptions are made when there is consensus that a different classification better serves Wikipedia, e.g. the PPG via World Ferns, which was considered more suitable than a more lumped approach by POWO. Do we know what classification POWO is following now? In my reading the classification that made most sense to me was Ollitrault et al (2020), but I don't know what other resources use this. I think we should have a discussion on whether POWO is the best classification for citrus. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:01, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the table in the horticultural classification mentioned above is essentially Table 4.1 from Ollitrault et al (2020). —  Jts1882 | talk  09:10, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

POWO seems to be following (mostly) Mabberly 2022. Species recognized by POWO but not mentioned in Mabberly are Citrus assamensis, Citrus khasya, Citrus polytrifolia (described by Govaerts), Citrus pubinervia (described in 2021), and Citrus swinglei.

Species and hybrids recognized by Mabberly but not POWO are Citrus polyandra (synonym of Clymenia polyandra per POWO, and Mabberly mentions that name) and Citrus × otaitensis (Mabberly says this is a spelling correction from Citrus × taitensis, POWO regards C. otaitensis as superfluous and accepts C. taitensis).

Most of the hybrids recognized by Mabberly are treated as artificial hybrids by POWO and thus don't show up in the list of accepted species, but the names can be searched for and POWO doesn't treat them as synonyms (aside from C. otaitensis). POWO has three additional (not synonymized) artificial hybrids not mentioned by Mabberly:Citrus × rissoa, Citrus × webberi and Citrus × wilsonii.

POWO certainly has more synonyms listed across their species than Mabberly mentions. It's not clear to me where POWO is getting Citrus × aurantium f. aurantium and Citrus × aurantium f. deliciosa from (it's not Mabberly). Plantdrew (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Citrus × wilsonii is Shangjuan if I am not mistaken. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:45, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I've now created a redirect for Citrus × wilsonii. Plantdrew (talk) 02:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

The consensus at WP:PLANTS (here) is that all plant species are notable. That changes the problem from determining whether a species is notable to determining whether the species is valid. POWO is the best single source for seed plants, so for consistency, and to avoid engaging in WP:SYN the consensus is to follow POWO in the absence of good reason to disagree (and to get them to change when we find they've got the nomenclature wrong).

However infraspecific taxa are not necessarily non-notable, especially in horticulturally and agriculturally important species. It seems to me that Citrus taiwanica is notable (though perhaps at the lower end of notability compared to many other citrus); the problem is what is the "correct" name for the article.

I also wonder whether there's case for recognising apomictic species in Citrus. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:59, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Seems pretty clear that at the very least it should be Citrus × taiwanica. Abductive (reasoning) 23:28, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

If considered a hybridogenous species Citrus taiwanica is a valid name. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:43, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Can you explain your position? That does not seem to be clear to your fellow editors. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:59, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Cultivated Citrus are not apomictics nor species but cultivars of complex hybrid origin between some 5 wild species. POWO uses only scientific names so merely follows the ICN which states:

"Art. H.4.1. When all the parent taxa can be postulated or are known, a nothotaxon is circumscribed so as to include all individuals recognizably derived from the crossing of representatives of the stated parent taxa (i.e. not only the F1 but subsequent filial generations and also back-crosses and combinations of these). There can thus be only one correct name corresponding to a particular hybrid formula; this is the earliest legitimate name (Art. 6.5) at the appropriate rank (Art. H.5), and other names corresponding to the same hybrid formula are synonyms of it (but see Art. 52 Note 4)."

So all the cultivars/hybrids must go under the same scientific name if they have the same wild species in their ancestry. Everything else must be named under the ICNCP like here [9]https://idtools.org/citrus_id/index.cfm?packageID=1179&entityID=8696. There are 28 species in Citrus and 750 scientific names which mostly refer to individual cultivars. In no other area of plant breeding do we still use scientific names to refer to cultivars so I would think it unwise to continue making pages for all those using scientific names rather than a common name or a name under the ICNCP. Weepingraf (talk) 01:08, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I entirely agree. Endless confusion has resulted from treating cultivars, land races, etc. under scientific names (bananas are another good example). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Limosella

POWO and WFO place Limosella in Plantaginaceae. Accordingly I updated the categories for the article, but now I'm uncertain. Most other sources, including recent phylogenetic studies, have it in Scrophulariaceae. And there's tribe Limoselleae in Scrophulariaceae; presumably it would be renamed (Manuleeae?) if the type genus were no longer in it. Tom Radulovich (talk) 20:12, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I haven't found any recent phylogenetic studies that place Limosella in Plantaginaceae. It used to be grouped with Gratiola (in Gratioleae or Gratiolaceae) and Gratioleae is now included in Plantaginaceae. Plantdrew (talk) 21:07, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! For now I left the genus in Scrophulariaceae tribe Limoselleae, with a note that POWO and WFO place it in Plantaginaceae. Tom Radulovich (talk) 00:16, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

APweb can be used as a source to support the placement of Limosella in Scrophulariaceae. There is a discussion of the background in the Phylogeny section of Plantaginaceae and Limosella is placed in Limoselleae] in Scrophulariaceae. Limosella doesn't seem to have been included in broad molecular studies. Ito et al (2015) only looked at Limosella species with a couple of related genera as outgroups, so the statement that the phylogeny and biogeogrpahy were inferred from molecular data needs qualifying. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:29, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Calendula palaestina

Hi everyone, I'm very new to this, and I've just had a go at my first plant article (in my sandbox). My mentor has already made some useful comments, but has suggested I run it past you. I'd really appreciate any help you can offer in this. ArthurTheGardener (talk) 13:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Links for the topic (Calendula palaestina, Palestine marigold) and relevant sandbox:. POWO has a record (Calendula palaestina Boiss.) and there is an item on Wikidata (Calendula palaestina (Q15554215)), which I've added to the {{taxonbar}}. It passes the criteria for an article, with appropriate taxonomy, but I'll leave it to others to comment on the biological aspects. There are many stub articles with far less information. —  Jts1882 | talk  19:30, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that: do you think I should just shift it to mainspace as it is? ArthurTheGardener (talk) 19:35, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Distribution

Can you tell us a bit about its region of origin and current distribution, please? 89.111.118.86 (talk) 10:56, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Unlikely, as you haven't given any indication of what plant "it" is. Choess (talk) 19:35, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to merge a lot of articles into agroforestry

It would be great if you could comment at Talk:Agroforestry#Merge proposal Chidgk1 (talk) 14:01, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Use of "As of" templates

While looking at the project's cleanup listings, I noticed that several genera use Template:As of to introduce their species lists. On the one hand, this seems like a legitimate use of the template: taxonomy is dynamic, and species lists do change over time. On the other hand, if we followed this principle strictly, every article on a recognized plant genus would be permanently on the cleanup listing. For genera whose circumscription has remained stable, that's kind of an attractive nuisance; well-meaning people can waste a lot of time checking to see that, yes, there has been no change in this genus since 3 years ago, or whenever it was last checked. Given the easy availability of POWO/World Ferns for people who have to have definitive, at-this-minute species lists, I'm sort of inclined to avoid using the template and let interested editors update species lists at intervals of their discretion. I'd be curious to hear other opinions, however. Choess (talk) 19:35, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that {{As of}} put pages in the cleanup listing. I'm not I sure I understand how it is supposed to be used. There are lots of articles that need periodic updates. {{Update after}} is suggested to be used when there is an expected date that new information will be available (that's never the case for taxonomy), but it's only used in 5,100 articles. {{As of}} is used in 118,000, but there are surely more articles on populated places and corporations than that (populated places will have population figures update on a predictable basis from census results, and corporations will issue annual financial statements with revenue). Should every populated place/corporation have either "as of" or "update after"?

There's some value in knowing that a species list was last updated 10 years ago, but 10 year ago, species list would have been sourced to The Plant List, and I'd hope that World Flora Online becomes the standard in the next 10 years; we can search for articles using TPL/POWO/WFO as references. And there are genera out there that don't have any reference for their species lists, or don't have full species lists (perhaps just partial lists generated by PolBot).

I've never used {{As of}} when I've updated a species list. I do write "as of", but I haven't seen the value in typing the extra characters to incorporate the template. Plantdrew (talk) 16:29, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe Category:All articles containing potentially dated statements as a "cleanup" category. I generally do use {{As of}} out of habit, but I accept that it has few if any realistic advantages over plain text "as of". I do definitely think that we should use phrasing like "As of DATE, SOURCE accepted the following TAXA:^REF" as an introduction to lists of taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Another perspective. In the WP:Lichen task force, we use Asof date templates for most species listings in genus articles. I'm working on a Wikiproject helper bot, which will, as one of its functions, check all instances of the Asof template, check the source species listing and compare with the article listing and create a report of genus articles that potentially need updating. Esculenta (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, all. Perhaps "cleanup" isn't quite the mot juste but pages with that category will appear on the automated cleanup listing, which I probably should have linked in my initial post. It is broken out by category, so having a large number of articles in that category doesn't make the cleanup listing useless. The helper bot sounds very useful; I may veer around and start adding the template to genus articles I maintain as I work on them with the hope of eventually tying into that. Choess (talk) 04:30, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Potential significant change to species notability

Over on Wikipedia talk:Notability‎, several editors are working on a draft proposal to replace our current notability guidelines for species (all species are notable) with something much more restrictive (only species that go beyond certain limited pieces of information would be allowed their own articles). If you have opinions on this issue, now would be a good time to weigh in there. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:21, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Need help sorting out Sphaerocoryne lefevrei

Hello. I'm not a regular editor of botanical articles, and need a bit of help. I recently came across some confusion regarding the plant known as lamduan in Thailand and rumduol/rumdul/romduol in Cambodia. After raising the issue at Talk:Uvaria siamensis#Melodorum fruticosum and a bit more research, here's what I can summarise:

1. The lamduan/rumduol is a native plant in Thailand and Cambodia.
2. In Thailand, the plant has mostly been described using the scientific name Melodorum fruticosum.
3. But M. fruticosum was found to actually be a synonym of what is now Uvaria siamensis, a different species.
4. The species is now described as Sphaerocoryne lefevrei (Baill.) D.M.Johnson & N.A.Murray, 2021. It's listed as accepted by POWO.
5. In Cambodia, the same plant has mostly been described under the scientific names Popowia aberrans and Mitrella mesnyi.
6. Most authorities including POWO list P. aberrans and M. mesnyi (superfluous) as synonyms of S. affinis.
7. S. lefevrei and S. affinis are similar in appearance, and some authors described them as a single species. But S. lefevrei is a small tree native to Indochina, while S. affinis is a climber native to Malesia.
8. Since S. affinis doesn't occur in Cambodia, the romduol flower should clearly be described as S. lefevrei.

As for our coverage,

1. On Wikipedia, redundant articles were created in 2009 at "Melodorum fruticosum" and "Rumdul", the latter of which was moved to "Mitrella mesnyi" in 2010 and "Sphaerocoryne affinis" in 2014.
2. I have since moved the "Melodorum fruticosum" page to Sphaerocoryne lefevrei, and updated the article to consolidate information on the species there.
3. I've converted Melodorum fruticosum to a disambiguation page.
4. I've written a new article at Sphaerocoryne affinis. The previous article has been moved back to Mitrella mesnyi (to keep the histories separate) and converted to a disambiguation page, since the content there was mostly about the Cambodian flower and not this species.

What I need help with:

1. I have no idea what needs to be done to sort things out on Wikidata.
2. What can be done to address the fact that there are no sources directly connecting rumduol to the scientific name S. lefevrei? Johnson & Murray do list M. mesnyi as a synonym in their paper, but this isn't reflected by POWO.

--Paul_012 (talk) 14:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC), updates 14:39, 7 June 2024 (UTC), 19:52, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Update: Plantdrew has helped add the Wikidata item; thank you. --Paul_012 (talk) 19:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Expert needed to review AfC submission of a draft about a plant species

• Draft:Helianthus devernii (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Kindly determine whether the topic is a correctly named WP:NSPECIES subject, and whether the sources are reliable. There is original research in the draft. When the original research is removed perhaps a valid stub can remain. If the answer to all of these items is approximately "yes", please notify me or move the draft to mainspace. Thank you. —Alalch E. 00:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alalch E. It is a valid species according to Plants of the World Online. You are correct that there is some original research there, but I think it can be cleaned up. There are even some pictures available on iNaturalist. I've applied for BioOne access so I can look at the paper in the journal Madroño and check information there. No description in Flora of North America right now. I can start doing some edits to fix it if that's helpful. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 01:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much. That would be immensely helpful. —Alalch E. 01:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alalch E. I've done as much as I can until I get BioOne access. I think it is publish ready now, though obviously it needs a proper description and other work. I'll do that once I can read the description of the species. I'll also poke around BLM and see if there is some information that is not being indexed by search engines. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks again, wonderful progress. —Alalch E. 02:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The work of Draper & Esque (2021) is cited in a review by Seiler et al (2023) (Wikipedia library), which can be used as an independent secondary source. It provides a four sentence summary including its description as an "endemic species from two small desert spring populations" its placement in "section Ciliares series Pumili" (based on morphological and nuclear data), a comparison of its morphology with its closest relative, H. pumilus, and the threat from "heavy recreational use and invasive plants and animals".  —  Jts1882 | talk  06:08, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Policy discussions relating to species notability

This WikiProject is likely to be interested in the following discussions: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Species notability and Wikipedia talk:Notability#Biology. C F A 💬 14:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Draba hyperborea

User CycoMa1 began a draft about a plant species but then decided to move on to other things. It was originally under a generic, placeholder name, so I moved it to Draft:Draba hyperborea to match the content (or rather, the former content, as it has been blanked) and to make it findable, should anyone search for it. The draft was 3.2kb and had seven citations at max extent, and is available for expansion and release, if anyone is interested in developing it. Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Can someone else do it instead. I have currently lost interest in it entirely.

I am currently more invested in a different draft at the moment.CycoMa1 (talk) 01:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

There are two species involved here; one from eastern Europe - Draba (Schivereckia) podolica, and one from the North Pacific region (Draba grandis). Historically the name was applied to the North Pacific species, but late in the century it was discovered that this was a misappplication, and the plant described by Linnaeus was the Eastern European one (with some additional complications arising from splitting/lumping issues). POWO apply the name to the Eastern European plant, but the ICBN NCVP have recommended that it be applied to the North Pacific plant with a conserved type. Any article would have to need to resolve the identity of the taxon associated with the name. (There are a total of 5 relevant papers in Taxon.) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:09, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I think that in view of the uncertainty over the name to be applied pending a decision under the ICNafp, it's may be best to leave it as a draft for now. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I thought that the last paper in Taxon (Wilson, 2022) resolved it in favour of the North Pacific taxon, but I wasn't completely confident that I understood how the rules worked. I sent an email to Kew yesterday, and I've received a reply from Rafaël Govaerts agreeing that the name applies to the North Pacific taxon (the change will be included in the next refresh of POWO).

For the papers (Mosyakin, 2015; Applequist, 2017; German, 2017; Applequist, 2019; Wilson, 2022) see here. German, 2017 is paywalled. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:34, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, so when it appears in PoWO, the draft can be moved to mainspace with a ref to PoWO. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:52, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I've made some movement towards an article on Draba hyperborea, but looking at the history the originator started out with the intention of writing an article on Draba podolica. When POWO update there is the alternative of rolling back my edits and moving the article to Draft:Draba podolica. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:01, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I do also need to mention, when I was writing this article I was on vacation.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Which is something I really need to stop doing. I have a lot of time today, so I can respond to many comments.CycoMa1 (talk) 18:55, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Horticultural botany

The article Horticultural botany has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The subject does not appear to be notable. Internet searches failed to find significant coverage of horticultural botany in reliable independent sources, and the article itself has never had a single citation.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Averixus (talk) 17:37, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Unplaced Names

I was updating some taxoboxes when I came across Oxanthera brevipes. I checked the taxonomy at POWO and it states "This name is unplaced", which put a kibosh on the speciesbox update for a little. I did some poking and found a few more unplaced names and collected them in Category:Unplaced names ( 30 ). Not sure much can be done for these lost souls other than watching and waiting until they find a new home, but thought I'd bring it to ya'll's attention in case anyone had any better ideas, or just wanted to also keep an eye out/on. awkwafaba (📥) 17:18, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Peter coxhead and I have notes on a few more unplaced taxa; I've added them to the category. Peter and I have been avoiding implementing automatic taxoboxes for unplaced names. I suppose we could go ahead and do automatic taxoboxes for the ones that have an accepted genus and note the unplaced status of the species with |classification_status= and some kind of note in the relevant genus article. I am not inclined to create any taxonomy templates for synonymized genera that contain an unplaced species. Some of the unplaced species might best be deleted (I'm thinking of Cupania elegans in particular). Plantdrew (talk) 00:20, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

In the case of Cupania elegans I think that the article is incorrect in describing it as a horticultural name. Apart from the sparse description (one could argue that it is a nom. subnudum) it seems to be validly published. Depending on whether undulate leaves are sufficient to distinguish it from other Cupania it might well be a nom. ambiguum. If it is distinguishable then we are left with the question whether it is a horticultural variant or a some species. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:42, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Butia campicola

What happened here?

• POWO has Butia campicola (Barb.Rodr.) Noblick. First published in Palms 48: 42 (2004)
• WFO has Butia campicola (Barb.Rodr.) Noblick. This species name was first published in Palms 48: 42 (2004)
• The taxobox has Butia campicola (Barb.Rodr.) Noblick, 2004

Which seems straightforward enough. However a 1996 IUCN publication has:

• Butia campicola (Barb.Rodr.) Noblick (=Syagrus c.)

Is it merely that the recombination wasn't properly published until 2004?

I came across this trying to find an old IUCN assessment. They don't recognise the species any more but the Wikipedia article says they rated it endangered between 1996 and 1998. If I could find the ID, I could check archive.org, but as they don't recognise the species I can't find the ID. Any ideas?  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:09, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

After a few false starts I found the Noblick publication on ResearchGate. It's a one page publication validating a transfer previously made in "Henderson, A., G. Galeano & R. Bernal. 1995. Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas. Princeton University Press, New Jersey" Lavateraguy (talk) 13:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Adeia (plant)

I am not sure what the English Wikipedia usually does when POWO and WFO disagree – in this case, POWO accepts the new genus Adeia, whose article I linked in the section title, but WFO does not. We therefore still keep the type species, Hazardia whitneyi, at the old name. This is clearly unsatisfactory, but I am not sure in which direction to resolve it. Felix QW (talk) 18:33, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@Felix QW:, the WFO pages I've looked at accept Adeia. Do you have a link to a page where it isn't accepted? WFO does treat both A. whitneyi and H. whitneyi as accepted, which is wrong (and there are two different WFO records for Haplopappus whitneyi var. whitneyi).

We haven't really had any discussion about what to do when POWO and WFO disagree. They basically never disagree, although that may be changing. Plantdrew (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, sorry about that. I must have seen that H. Whitneyi was accepted and then deduced that they must have not accepted the genus Adeia. In that case, we should probably simply move the species page to the new name, adapt it to the fact that the non-eponymous variety is now accepted as a separate species and move on. Felix QW (talk) 19:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think that is the way to go. Plantdrew (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the quick replies! I think I've adjusted everything now. Felix QW (talk) 19:40, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Abram Paschal Garber

The draft I started on this American plant collector was rejected if anyone can help. Thanks! FloridaArmy (talk) 10:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

This article[10] has a bibliography listing 45 texts that mention Garber which may be of use to you, if you can track them down. I'm still not especially confident you will be able to establish notability (it can be quite difficult with scientists, given that despite their achievements they are rarely mentioned in the media) but I hope that bibliography is helpful.

On a related note, if you're not able to get him an independent article, I think it would be a good idea to expand a bit upon him in the articles on taxa named in his honour - Garberia, Euphorbia garberi, and Habenaria floribunda are the ones I could find, and they either don't mention him or only mention him very briefly. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:54, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Subdivisions

Working on Draft:Trifolium parryi, I found that both WFO and POWO have one variety and two subspecies listed as valid. I've gone back and forth with myself about how to handle the taxo box in this case. My first thought was just to call them "Subdivisions". My second thought was to just list the two subspecies and mention the variety in the text under Taxonomy. Opinions? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 14:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

15 articles with {{Speciesbox}} use "Subspecies and varieties" for |subdivision_ranks=, 4 use "Infraspecific taxa" and 2 use "Subdivisions". There are many articles with {{Automatic taxobox}} that list more than one rank. I assume the choice of the plural subdivision_ranks for the parameter name means that it was intended to cover cases where subdivisions at different ranks might be listed. Plantdrew (talk) 16:16, 17 July 2024 (UTC)