User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 1

Archive #1: User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 1

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Manilkara zapota

Hi, thought I should check with you to see what you think about the suggestion that I made at Talk:Manilkara zapota. I've made the change at Pouteria sapota, and will go ahead with the other page if you agree. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Go ahead and make your changes. I'm still concerned about "mammosa" though; The Plant List has Calocarpum mammosum as a synonym of Manilkara, but Calocarpum mammosum var. bonplandii (and other vars.) as synonym of Pouteria. I'll see if I can better figure out the history of mammosa.Plantdrew (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard that the Sapotaceae are a taxonomic mess partly because there was a botanist who seemed unable to make up his mind and make multiple new combinations in different genera for the same plant. Don't remember who that was now, but you might find out ... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On an etymologically related note, I'm glad to see you made the move from Mammee apple to Mammea americana. Have you looked at Mamey? It's an article about a small French town, but I'd like to see it become a disambiguation for the various fruits as well as the town. Should I wait longer to see if there are objections to moving the town to a new title, or just go ahead and do it?Plantdrew (talk) 16:12, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Answered on that talk page. I don't know what is the approved form for page names of places. Otherwise I'd say yes, go ahead. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:55, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, we think alike. Sorry that we sort-of collided on the Mameyes landslide. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. I wasn't sure whether it would be better to redirect the landslide to the floods or the town. It looks like your editing interests are pretty much the same as mine (fixing confusing plant articles)Plantdrew (talk) 23:52, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's good to meet you. There amount that needs to be done gets overwhelming at times. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:06, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Miyakea

Hallo, I've done a bit of tidying up after your work here.

The dab page template {{dab}} goes at the bottom of the page, not the top
But in fact I discovered the existence of {{Genus disambiguation}} which is exactly right for this page
In dab pages there should only be one blue link per entry, so I unlinked the family names
When you make a move like this - moving an article away from the base name to put a disambiguation page there instead - you need to check carefully for any incoming links, and it's your responsibility to fix them. In other circumstances where you move a page from A to B, perhaps because A wasn't the best form of the name, a redirect "A to B" will be created and any links to C will follow that redirect, and any existing redirects "C to A" will automatically be updated to "C to B". But if you're going to overwrite "A" with a dab page, then any links or redirects to A will just go there, and you've broken the encyclopedia slightly because they no longer go where they should. I've updated the links from Crambinae and List of crambid genera: M so that they now point to Miyakea (moth)
Yes, I moved the page. In tidying up the dab page I looked around for any other entries and found a redlinked Miyakea (mantis shrimp), so I've added it to the dab page and moved your "... (animal)" to "... (moth)".

I hope that lot all makes sense and that you agree with my various changes. PamD 14:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And as an afterthought I've redirected Miyakea (animal) to Miyakea, because it could refer to the shrimp, and changed the hatnotes on the moth and plant pages. PamD 14:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing this for me. Sorry I missed the incoming links for the moth. The mantis shrimp is actually a later homonym of the moth (two organisms in the same kingdom can't have the same scientific name, and the earliest name is always used). Carcinologists may not have realized this yet, but they will eventually need to publish a replacement name for the shrimp.Plantdrew (talk) 18:02, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nice job on Marah

Thanks!--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lavender and Lavandula

Hi. I'm writing about this move that you made without discussion some time ago. While I don't disagree with the general principle of naming articles on a genus by their botanic name, this article was not only on botany, it was about many aspects of cultural use all referred to by the name 'lavender'. For your move to be successful the article needed to be split into two or more subjects, and it should have split with the rename. Or a new Lavandula article could have been created with the botanic content. You left the term 'lavender' redirected to a species page where the bulk of the culture and usage is unavailable; it would have made more sense to send it to a more capable redirect. Also I'm sure that you know that the term lavender is used to refer to the genus as well, yet this is no longer found in the disamb. You will see at http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Lavender that the subject has lost several the great bulk of its visitors since the move; no doubt they will eventually find their way back, but all necessary redirects should have been in place for them at the start. Sorry to moan, but it seems you chose to deal with just one aspect of a complex topic and assumed that it makes sense to everyone. Imc (talk) 17:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've redirected Lavender back to Lavandula. Disambiguating the incoming links to Lavender would be very difficult. This will restore traffic and solve the problem in the disambig.

I'm not sure what content should go into a split Lavender article. Cultivation & Etymology could appear in both a Lavandula article and a Lavender article. Lavender oil already exists, and the entire Health Precautions and much of Medical Uses could go in the Lavender oil article. Culinary Use, Other Uses and some of Medical Uses would be appropriate for a Lavender article. In History and Culture probably belongs in Spikenard (or the redirect Nard (plant)), with content in that article specific to Nardostachy jatamansi split into a new article.

Does redirecting lavender back to Lavandula resolve your desire for a split?Plantdrew (talk) 01:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making the change. I don't think that it is satisfactory yet, but it would be worth mulling over it for a while first. Imc (talk) 19:06, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wild melon

Was this meant to be a disambiguation page or was there something more to come? It seems strange to me that you would create an orphan page for this. - UnbelievableError (talk) 07:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a disambiguation. It's a pretty common situation for plant articles; there are tons of orphan redirects of plant common names (redirecting to articles at the scientific name). It's not unusual for a plant to have a half-dozen English language common names, nor is it unusual for plant common names to be ambiguous (used for multiple unrelated plant species). Many of these common name redirects/disambigs will end up being orphaned, but they are still useful as search terms even if no internal links end up being created.Plantdrew (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Onagraceae

Thanks for making that edit - I'd got distracted by other avenues. Thanks also for your reply at WT:WikiProject Plants - the situation is much clearer to me now. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the thanks. I'm not very pleased with the phrasing I used in Onagraceae, but couldn't think of a better way to include Gaura and Calylophus. If you can improve it, please do.Plantdrew (talk) 21:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Douglas fir

Hi Plantdrew. I've had some pretty strong words to say about botanists over the last few days (sorry, but been a bit stressed by the construction works taking place right outside the front door), but with this contribution you managed to restore my faith in botanists. Thank you. Skinsmoke (talk) 15:01, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your contributions

	WikiProject Forestry
	Thank you on behalf of WikiProject Forestry! We appreciate your contribution(s) and invite you to join us in further improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to forestry. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions on the project's talk page.

Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 21:43, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

Hi. Thanks for the correction about the quote marks on Blackcurrant. I was unaware. In the fix, you also changed "cultivar varieties" to "cultivars varieties". Is that grammatically correct? Sounds wrong to me. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oops. I was thinking "cultivar varieties" was redundant, and "cultivars" would suffice, then decided "varieties" helped clarify, but forget to delete the s. Now I'm thinking I should just wikilink cultivars.Plantdrew (talk) 00:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Common names

Your point about footnote 3 at WP:UCN being too thoroughly buried as a footnote is a good one. I really don't have time to read through those piles of discussion about the page however. If you've done that and can point me to a manageably small component of the discussion, I'd be happy to join in a proposal to bring it closer to the surface. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bringing it closer to the surface is a good idea, but it's a can of worms I don't want to open, and I doubt you do either. There is no manageable component to the discussion. An extremely vocal editor with an anti-WP:FLORA point of view (if you've ever looked through the WP:FLORA or Plants Project talk archives, I'd bet you'd know who I'm talking about) was involved in a massive edit war. This editor is still active on Wikipedia, and still promoting some idiosyncratic views about article title policy. I'm not interested in engaging him.

The footnote has been a footnote ever since Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (common names) was merged into Wikipedia:Article titles. If you're a glutton for punishment, there's 200+ kilobytes of archived talk page discussion about what "common" names are, but the most relevant part for the vernacular/scientific name footnote currently in UCN is this long section (and scroll up for more).Plantdrew (talk) 23:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, or as Pogo might say, oog. Another day, perhaps. Thanks for the introduction to the matter, which can be kept in mind. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't looked into the history/debate behind the footnote when I mentioned it at Syringa. Another day indeed. I'm curious about your mentioning Pogo; I picked up a Pogo book at a sale when I was a kid and enjoyed it, but the strip is really before my time (though my local newspaper did carry the late 80's revival of Pogo for awhile). I'd assumed from your user name that you are a 28/29 year old Australian. Is that assumption way off base, or was Pogo popular into the 90's in Australia, or do you just have a broad knowledge of old comic strips?Plantdrew (talk) 20:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tee hee. Well, I'm editing wikipedia anonymously, so can't really answer those questions. However, 84 is just a randomly chosen number, and it's more-or-less random that I too came across Pogo as a kid and enjoyed it. It's a life-long appreciation that has lead, for example, to my pet tortoise being named Miz Turtle (after Miz Beaver, mostly). Anonymity is a strange thing. For example, I've been assuming that your name is Drew, and that you can't be from the U.S. to have used the word kerfuffle on your user page. I'm reluctant to admit to any special knowledge, but recently decided to add babel boxes after seeing people having trouble with French sources that they might have wanted to ask me about. It's a bind, but it's from bitter experience that I've decided to persist with it. It's a bit reminiscent of the beetle who addresses his nephew by a different name in every frame of the comic, in here we really have very little idea who we're talking to. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:31, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I'll just chalk you up as having knowledge of old comic strips. It's interesting hearing your perceptions of me; I don't take special pains to conceal my identity (my username is a real life nickname), but maybe I'm more anonymous than I'd thought. I look through my edit history and see many potential clues to my identity, but of course I already know what's relevant and what's a red herring.Plantdrew (talk) 21:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

About clues, I've seen at least one user page in here where the person says that they don't edit in the subject area of their professional expertise, so perhaps that means that it would be too painful to fight the nonsense that accumulates there. I don't remember now who it was, and couldn't find the page by guessed keywords, but this person says something similar. You've persuaded me to write a bit on my user page about specialties; perhaps it might actually lead someone some day to ask me for help in an area where I can be of some help. The list probably sounds rather weird. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Prawn

Hi Plantdrew. I've only just noticed your comment at Talk:Prawn#US Term. I agree with you that the sources I used are old and may be outdated. I couldn't find more recent reliable sources. Would you mind editing the section the way you think it should be, because really, I have no idea what current US usage is, and I've exhausted what I want to say on the usage of these terms :). --Epipelagic (talk) 03:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a stab at it, although I don't really have a better source than the dictionary definition I linked on the Talk page. It's a shame Holthuis's FAO publication (which I'd otherwise consider a good source) conflicts with current US usage.

Thanks for your work on Shrimp and Prawns; questioning the conflation of these common names with taxonomic groups was one my first actions on Wikipedia, and I certainly didn't have the patience to argue the issue, let alone work on developing articles on the concepts covered by the common names. I'm pretty pleased with your work (the confusion over US usage is pretty minor issue), and certainly understand your not wanting to hassle with them further. Plantdrew (talk) 19:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if you can do that. There are still overly constrained attempts at corralling the term "shrimp" on the shrimp page, but it couldn't be completed without compromise. The lobster article, and to a lesser extent the crayfish and crab articles remain with serious issues, but it's too exhausting trying to do anything with them. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done, see this diff: [1]. The FAO site seems to be having some trouble, so I can't view the Holthuis publication. I hope I haven't misrepresented anything I'm attributing to Holthuis.Plantdrew (talk) 16:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Epipelagic (talk) 16:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Recent plant-related edits

Hi, it looks as if you don't have email turned on. I just wanted to let you know that I'm likely to be slow in responding to the latest flood of peculiar edits, because other responsibilities are taking up my time. I expect that we'll make headway there eventually ... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't get burned out over what's looking like an ugly argument. I'm not inclined to argue for generally including primary/preliminary medical studies, but I really don't want to see traditional ethnomedicinal info lost (which appears to be a separate issue). I do think there are some cases where primary medical studies should be cited. For example, I can't find any medical secondary sources examining A. absinthium as a vermifuge, but there are several primary medical sources suggesting it may be effective. I'd hope a sentence like "Preliminary studies have suggested A. absinthium may be effective as a vermifuge" with multiple citations could pass the MEDRS standards.

I added a couple statements to A. absinthium cited by (arguably) secondary medical sources. I'll see if the additions stand. I honestly don't see why the sources I provided (a preliminary document about the status of A. absinthium as an herbal medicine in the European Union, and an herbal medicine overview written by a for-profit company and hosted on a hospital website) should be considered any more reliable than a primary medical source, or Grieve's Modern Herbal.

On a tangential note, I hope the lack of a citation to Charcot's 1869 original primary source description of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis#History is due lack of editor attention to that article rather than WP:MEDRS's deprecation of primary sources (the 1869 description is currently only cited by a 2001 secondary source); if MEDRS deprecates clearly relevant primary sources in medicine, there's no hope. We don't have a lot of plants citing original descriptions, nor do medical articles on diseases often cite the first description, but the primary sources in these situations have to be relevant and should be added. Plantdrew (talk) 06:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The A. absinthium argument is quite ridiculous, and the same group of people have zapped a number of other plant articles. I hope that eventually it can be established that it is permissible to include matters such as possible new antibiotics for swabbing down hospital benches, though with the way that argument is going it looks as if the crisis situation where the antibiotics we rely on are failing will be said to be a trivial matter not worthy of wikipedia.

Yes, I hope that the lack of citations to original descriptions for plants and diseases is due to the time lag with getting much of that material online, so that these parts of wikipedia pages were added a few years ago when the biodiversity heritage library and other materials weren't available to casual online-only searches. The online materials have improved so dramatically that I too, previously a lurker in science-library basement compactus-storage areas, have become largely an online searcher.

As for becoming burned out, I'm actually wondering whether wikipedia editing is the sort of training that can make one able to cope with even the most idiotic aspects of everyday life. :) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:56, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

For several reasons, it has taken me a few days to respond to your message on my talk page, but I have now made a post which, among other things, answers a question you raised. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:38, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of Montana plants

Hi, I notice that you recently assessed some of the lists of Montana plants (e.g. List of Scrophulariales of Montana). I guess these were entered from an older field guide, because they are not in the APG III orders/families (e.g. the families on the Scrophulariales page are in the Lamiales). I've been aware of this list (and at least one other) for some time, but been daunted by the work involved in updating to APG III. Do you think this would be worth doing? Or would it be enough to put a note on each page saying that the orders/families may be out of date? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have zero interest in working on updating the classification in the Montana lists (see List of flora and fauna of Montana and especially the sublist List of dicotyledons of Montana for more of these). Adding a note about the classification being out of date would be good. Moving the Scrophulariales list to List of Bladderworts, Broomrapes and Figworts of Montana would be consistent with how the lists for the other orders are titled and the strange title would serve as a red flag for botanists that there is something odd about the list. It might also be appropriate to assess these as "SL" class for WikiProject Plants (rather than "List" class); my understanding is that "SL" class (which shows up as "Other" in the summary statistics on the WP Plants page) is for lists that have a fundamental flaw in their scope or which are woefully incomplete. However, the Montana lists actually seem to be reasonably complete. The problems with the Montana lists are: out of date taxonomy; bizarre titles employing common names for families/orders; lists are alphabetically organized by non-standard common names; and all the links are to these "common" names (and there are far more red-links than there would be if scientific names were linked).

At any rate, cleaning the lists up would be a lot of work. Adding a note about the outdated classification would be good if you want to tackle it. The only thing I'm potentially interested in doing with them would be reassessing them all as "SL" class rather than "List" class; do you think changing the assessment class is a good idea? Plantdrew (talk) 17:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't expecting that you would be any more enthusiastic about sorting this than I am :-), just wondered what you might think could usefully and easily be done. I do think that SL is a useful category to mark problematic lists, which these are. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rhynie chert

I agree with your other downgrades, although I would have downgraded most to Low importance, rather than Mid. However, the Rhynie chert is a significant and major fossil plant flora. I have read the grading scale, but am still not sure about all aspects of it, but the Rhynie flora is far more important than anything else you labeled Mid. I suggest we discuss it at the article talk page and get more input if you disagree with me. I will review the rating scale again, though. --AfadsBad (talk) 23:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I might further downgrade some of the others to Low; I'm intending to work on the Mids after the Highs. It's an extra step in the workload, but I'm finding it easier to get a sense of the importance by seeing the context of everything that's in a particular importance category and homing in on the articles that seem out of place (and also checking how related, "parent" or "child" articles are assessed). I did look at the importance assessment for Paleobotany, but didn't read the article. Having read it now, I'd agree that (as presented in the article) Rhynie chert is one of the most important "child" topics of Paleobotany. I'm fine leaving it as High.

Sounds like a workable strategy.

I find the rating scale pretty confusing and vague. If I were to go strictly by the wording there, I'd be more inclined to argue Mid. "Subject is only notable within its particular field or subject"; Rhynie chert is notable within several fields (geology, paleozoology), but is not something that a non-expert in those fields is likely to have heard. Part of the difficulty with the rating scale is that it covers several different kinds of articles; articles about botany concepts, articles about botanists, and articles about taxa. Top importance basically seems to be reserved for fundamental botany concepts that the layperson is likely to have encountered (with a couple major taxa and botanists). High importance includes a lot of important botany concepts, but ones which are less familiar to the layperson (and lots of articles about the most economically important species/genera). The rating scale may need some rewording or expansion.Plantdrew (talk) 00:24, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm scared to rate things, was just going to go after a few things in the near future, probably will stick to quarterbacking others' efforts. Yeah, confusing and vague, and I disagree with some parts of it. --AfadsBad (talk) 00:55, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who has edited this article (including supplying images from specimens I have) and also edited related articles, I think that "Mid" is correct: it's probably "High" for palaeobotany, but only "Mid" for plants generally. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:14, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree; I think it is top for paleobotany and high for plants. I have not edited the article, and I don't think that one can judge well from within Wikipedia about importance. Recently an editor added a missing article on an historically important wildfire; looking at what was within Wikipedia, it would be hard to tell that that wildfire was important. Researching wildfires in the US in general, one could find the importance of that particular wildfire. I do research in botany, extensively, and topic wise, this is much more important to botany than the topics contained in Mid in the scheme. However, the importance ratings are hard to understand, and I disagree with them in places, and this discussion could be on the article discussion page for other editors to make a decision. Thanks for the input, Peter. --AfadsBad (talk) 17:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, these things are a matter of judgement. If there were a whole article on the early evolution of vascular plants of the relevant period, then I'd rate it "High" for plants, but not just the Rhynie chert article. Anyway, you asked Plantdrew, not me! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't? But to me that would be a synthesis, and not necessarily more important than long-term fundamental data for the topic. It seems that talk page following is the norm, so, I can't see any harm in your commenting, well, okay, maybe your disagreeing with me could harm my ego, but that is probably better left at the door for wiki (s.l.) editing. --AfadsBad (talk) 21:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a matter of judgement, and I'm pretty rusty on early land plant evolution. I'd say Rhynie Chert ought to fall somewhere in importance between the broad concept articles it's relevant to (Evolutionary history of plants (Top) Vascular plant (Top) Polysporangiophyte (High)) and the significant taxa found in the chert (Horneophyton (Mid) Aglaophyton (Low) Rhynia (Low)).

Anyway, I lean Mid importance, but am not too concerned about leaving it High at present. If you want to discuss it further at Talk:Rhynie chert or on my page feel free. I'm going to try to get back to going through the High importance list to see whether anything else stands out to my subjective eye as being assessed with more importance then it should be. I'd welcome another set of subjective eyes looking over any changes I make. Plantdrew (talk) 23:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Peyote

In case you hadn't noticed, there has been another attempt to restore "divine messenger" as the meaning of "peyotl". I've fixed it, but... Peter coxhead (talk) 18:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I missed it getting added back, but saw your revision. Thanks, I'll keep a closer eye on peyote for the next few days. Plantdrew (talk) 18:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Banana nomenclature

I thought I'd start a new thread on this topic. I see that you are interested in the nomenclature of cultivars. It seems a rare interest on Wikipedia; I've never managed to get many people at WP:PLANTS interested in applying the ICNCP.

Banana cultivar nomenclature is a complete mess, as far as I can see. The system used was invented long before the ICNCP and disregards most of its major principles.

Stover & Simmonds (1987) Bananas (3rd ed.) is a classic, it seems; not much seems to have changed as regards the principles of banana nomenclature since. They treat "Cavendish" as a subgroup within the AAA genome group. They then put 'Dwarf Cavendish' in single quotes (giving a long list of synonyms, many of which violate the ICNCP by including the word "banana" or its equivalent in other languages as part of the cultivar name). They say of 'Dwarf Cavendish' "this is the most widespread ... clone" and say "[t]his cultivar". But they then go on to say "The 'Dwarf Cavendish' must have had numerous origins by mutation from taller members of the Cavendish group [sic]" followed by a discussion of where different "stocks" probably arose. So 'Dwarf Cavendish' isn't a clone in spite of what they have just said!

To take a more modern source, Ploetz et al. (2007) Banana and Plantain: An Overview with Emphasis on Pacific Island Cultivars have a hierarchy which includes:

AAA Genome

Cavendish subgroup

'Pisang Masak Hijau' [invalid because "pisang" is the Malay/Indonesian word for "banana"]

'Giant Cavendish' cultivars "There are several 'Giant Cavendish' cultivars ... may differ in height by about 40 cm and exhibit differences in bunch, finger, trunk, and rachis morphology and color." [So 'Giant Cavendish' isn't a cultivar.]

'Dwarf Cavendish' [they give 'Cavendish' as a synomym, so that "Cavendish" may refer to a subgroup or a cultivar or a group of clones within a subgroup]

As there's no active Cultivar Registrar for bananas that I can find, naming articles and styling names in Wikipedia seems highly problematic. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Orthoceras

It's my experience in Wikipedia that, if things X, Y, and Z all share the same name, the one that either originally held the name, got that name first, or the majority of people who know about it associate with that particular name gets the article without a specifier, while the others get articles with specifiers. Or, the name gets turned into a disambiguation page. But since most people think of the fossil cephalopod whenever they hear "Orthoceras," I don't think moving Orthoceras to Orthoceras (mollusc) will sit well with the other editors. I commend and appreciate your sentiments and reasonings, though.--Mr Fink (talk) 14:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Triphora (gastropod)

Thanks so much Plantdrew for creating the new stub article on this interesting genus of tiny high-spired sea snails! I have fixed the stub up a bit. I don't know if you have a particular interest in snails, maybe not, but in case you do, I am giving you this invitation:

I've noticed your edits on pages relating to Gastropods; perhaps you'd be interested in joining WikiProject Gastropods?
If you would like more information, please visit the project page or the project talk page.

Even if you don't want to join this project, we will be more than happy to have any snail or slug-related articles that you might feel like creating! Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 14:02, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the recognition and invitation, and for adding a reference to my stub. While I'm interested in biodiversity in general, my primary interest is plants, and there is plenty of work to keep me busy with plant articles. I created the stub for the gastropod Triphora in the process of disambiguating the two genera called Triphora. There are certainly other plants that share a genus name with a mollusc; if I come across another ambiguous genus name I will create another stub. I wish WikiProject Gastropods well in your efforts to document the diversity of life on Wikipedia. Plantdrew (talk) 02:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much Plantdrew for your very nice reply. We are lucky that in our project we have a few people who really don't mind working hard on the gastropod coverage. It is a really large class of animals, second only to the insects in numbers of species, so it requires a lot of work. It is really tough keeping up with all the changes in taxonomy. Thank you for working on the plants; the land snails in particular appreciate your work! Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 00:43, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also

Did you ever wonder that, if someone made an animated caricature of an edible Chinese tree, they would have made a Cartoona sinensis?--Mr Fink (talk) 16:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice one. If I were to open a restaurant, I'd want to serve Toona salad sandwiches. Plantdrew (talk) 16:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A little on the serious side, be sure to cook the Toona leaves like a pot herb, or give them a "cream of spinach" treatment. Otherwise the raw leaves are rather tough, and have a slightly musky odor.--Mr Fink (talk) 17:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sloanea berteroana

Drew, thanks to the various edits to my recent plant articles - it's good to have an expert around who knows/undertands these things. Question: In regards to your edit HERE, if THIS seemingly very official site got the spelling wrong, what other site can I use in the future as the ultimate authority on the correct spelling of a species? Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 23:45, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for you work on the trees of Toro Negro. I've been there, and it's a beautiful place. The Plant List is the best single general source on plant names; it does have some a few errors itself, and there are other more specialized databases that are often better for plants native to a particular region or a from particular family. Tropicos is good for providing a little bit of detail about the name, often including a link to the original description, but Tropicos can be a little difficult to interpret without some botany background (Tropicos don't usually come right out and say a name is "right" or "wrong"; rather, they list various botanical works that have treated a name as "right" or "wrong"). In this case, Tropicos DOES actually come out and say "berteriana" is wrong. The plant was first collected by Carlo Bertero (not Berteri), and was named by Jacques Choisy in Bertero's honor. There are some rules about when a botanical name that was originally misspelled can be corrected, and "Sloanea berteriana" species falls under the cases where misspelling can be corrected.

Anyway, The Plant List is a good place to double check names. The Plant List and the USDA Plants site you used usually don't disagree, but when they do, go with The Plant List, with one caveat. The Plant List sometimes lists plant names as "Unresolved" (rather than "Accepted"/"Synonym"), where there is a profile for the plant on USDA Plants. As USDA Plants specializes in plants of the US and Puerto Rico, they have a little more interest in not leaving names of Puerto Rican plants "unresolved". USDA Plants is a good source, provides more detail than the Plant List, and is well worth using as a primary reference. Double checking an entry from USDA Plants against The Plant List is a good idea, but these databases usually won't disagree. I'll see about getting a source added to the S. berteroana article that explains the name situation a little better. Plantdrew (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Thanks. I just created Buchenavia capitata but hadn't seeing this reply from you. I am going back to this new article and double check names against your recommended sources above. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, if you have been to Toro Negro, then I know any of my articles about trees in Toro Negro will be in the hands of an expert reviewer. I was there one vacationing but was entirely recreational. I intend to return soon with higher intentions in mind - such as my own pics of trees... Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 02:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a look at Buchenavia capitata, and that should probably be at Buchenavia tetraphylla. Tropicos is not a good source for the higher classification; plant articles on Wikipedia are classified using the APG III system, which doesn't use formally named Classes/Divisions. The Equisetopsida used in the Tropicos classification is represented at Wikipedia by Equisetopsida sensu lato. The funny thing is that Missouri Botanical Garden hosts Tropicos as well as the most comprehensive website about the APG III system; I guess they just wanted to make sure the Class/Division fields in Tropicos were filled in. Anyway, you can just copy the taxobox from the article on the parent taxon (e.g. Buchenavia) and fill in the appropriate parameters for the child taxon, which will keep the classification scheme used consistent. I'm glad to see you were consulting the sources I suggested. Plantdrew (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I will work on this once I have had a chance to digest what it means. BTW, feel free to undo or modify any work I do in this plant taxonomy (or whatever it's called) area. Taxonomy is not my forte, and my primary motivation is just to ensure that non-existing articles that are referenced at Toro Negro State Forest are created so that the Toro Negro article will be fairly "well connected". Thank you, Mercy11 (talk) 01:17, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the edit HERE - I probably would had gotten something wrong!,,, but I guess I am slowly learning my way around nevertheless! Your directions were very clear. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vitex divaricata

Would you kindly take a look at Vitex divaricata. Newly created. Thank you. Mercy11 (talk) 17:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A couple things with the taxobox. |binomial_authority uses a standardized author abbreviation (which you'll see given on any of the taxonomy databases you cited). Many of these standard author abbreviations redirect to an article about the botanist who described it. Piping the link to the botanist article is a little more transparent to the reader than linking to the redirect, but you necessarily don't have to link to the botanist article at all (although it is a nice step to take). Please do use the standardized abbreviation though; the tiny minority that care about binomial authorities in the first place will expect an abbreviation (and for those readers who are interested in what the abbreviation stands for, you can make a link to the article on the botanist).

|synonyms should be for synonymous scientific names, not other common names. Adding scientific synonyms needn't be a high priority but is another nice step.

I consolidated multiple citations of the same reference (and used a template, {{ThePlantList}} to format a specific reference; there's also {{PLANTS}} and {{ITIS}} for two other sources you cited, but I really wouldn't worry about using reference templates unless you're doing a lot more plant articles). Plantdrew (talk) 01:00, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alsophis portoricensis

Hi. I was wandering if you do animalia too? If so, HERE is one that might need a second set of eyes. Thank you! Mercy11 (talk) 15:46, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know a little about animals, but not much. It looks pretty good to me. Unfortunately, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles seems to be pretty dead. I'm not sure how to resolve the Alsophis/Borikenophis issue. I'll look into it a little further. Plantdrew (talk) 23:02, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Borikenophis portoricensis is probably the scientific name to go with; EOL lists some treatments in different databases; EOL ultimately follows ITIS in treating it as Alsophis portoricensis, but the ITIS record hasn't been updated since 2004, and the name B. portoricensis was first published in 2009. Sources since 2009 seem to be mostly classifying it as B. portoricensis. But the title is a whole other issue. The former genus-mates in Alsophis are titled by common names. So perhaps the title should be Puerto Rican racer, but Borikenophis lists "Puerto Rican racer" also as a "common" name for another species (and the English "common" name was first coined by scientists for a snake which might be most commonly known as "culebra corredora" by the people who encounter it on a regular basis). Reptile articles seem to use a mix of common names and scientific names. I'm happy leaving it at Alsophis portoricensis for now and letting a future editor who's get a better handle on how to deal with reptile articles figure it out. Plantdrew (talk) 04:20, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I listed it HERE in the hopes it will get more exposure, or at least it will serve as a record for future "generations". Mercy11 (talk) 13:14, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. Plantdrew (talk) 14:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Good news! Please see HERE and help me take appropriate action. Thank you! Mercy11 (talk) 01:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(2) Also, I have one question: Page 86 of THIS document states Alsophis portoricensis has a level 4 protection status assigned to it. However, I just noticed that when you edited the Alsophis portoricensis article (HERE), you left the "LC" (Least Concern) grade untouched. Was this an oversight or is the Gap analysis report non authoritative? (Perhaps there is a global authoritative list of endargered specias somewhare.) Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 14:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll get to (1) shortly. For (2), I'm not finding "protection status" defined in the Gap analysis document; it might have something to do with the amount of protected habitat, rather than whether the itself species is protected. I missed the extra stuff you pasted from Epicrates inornatus when creating the article( the LC status is for this other species). Alsophis portoricensis appears to not be protected. I've checked the overall US Endangered species list, Puerto Rico DRNA, CITES and the IUCN Redlist. [IUCN Redlist] is the global authoritative list of endangered species, and the best source on endangered species for Wikipedia. Note that endangered isn't the same as protected; endangered is a matter of biology, protected is a legal matter. Organisms that the US government has declared ARE protected, but many countries don't have the same laws protecting endangered species. CITES is a global treaty to protect endangered species, but only a few species are CITES listed. Plantdrew (talk) 20:21, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For (1), I ended up moving to Borikenophis portoricensis and creating a dab for Puerto Rican racer. See talk page and edit history. 20:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC)~

Anthocephalus chinensis

Hi. THIS edit might be of interest to you. Please check it out when you get a chance. I did not create a new article because I think these are the same species. If you find out they are not, let me know and I will create a new article. Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 01:52, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a pretty messy situation, which you've handled well. There are two species. Anthocephalus chinensis is apparently fairly obscure tree from Madagascar now classified as Breonia chinensis (see TROPICOS or The Plant List). At some point, the "kadam" tree was misidentified as Anthocephalus chinensis''; this is a fairly important tree from Asia, and the species introduced to Puerto Rico. The correct scientific name for the "kadam" tree is Neolamarckia cadamba. Most of the botanical databases don't handle misidentifications; ARS-GRIN is perhaps the only one that does (see here). We don't really want to handle misidentifications in Wikipedia either, but there's no escaping the fact that in this case, the misidentification is the most widely used sense of Anthocephalus chinensis; most of the references I see when I Google Anthocephalus chinensis clearly intend the Asian "kadam". Redirecting Anthocephalus chinensis to Neolamarckia cadamba will get most people to the plant they are looking for. Ultimately, once an article is created for Breonia chinensis, Anthocephalus chinensis might be best as a disambiguation. For now, I'll stick a hidden comment on the redirect. Plantdrew (talk) 17:01, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you for having invested the time in this. Mercy11 (talk) 19:59, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Prunas occidentalis and Pouteria mirtiflora

Hi Drew, I GAVE UP on creating articles for Prunas occidentalis and Pouteria mirtiflora. They are both reported to exist at Toro Negro State Forest according to this Puerto Rico government publication HERE. I just could not make heads or tails of the stuff I found during my online searches. Beyond that, their very names by the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, the government agency that's supposed to deal with fauna and flora, seemed to have the wrong spelling: from Prunus to Prunas and from Multiflora to Mirtiflora. Eventually I was pulling on my hair! I would had taught the PR DNER would have a botanist on staff who could certify documents before they were released to the public...

But then I had second thoughts: If you, Drew, could figure out what specieii they are trying to report, I could create the 2 missing articles. They might not be fancy articles but at least they will exist and that might prompt other editors to expand them further. Just an idea. Can you help? Thanks. Mercy11 (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a shame the DRNA couldn't get it right. Pouteria multiflora seems to be correct; it's the only Puerto Rican species of Pouteria with a spelling anything close to "mirtiflora", and "jacana" is a common name for it. Go with Prunus occidentalis; some recent sources have split the genus Cerasus out of Prunus, which may eventually prove to be the way to go, but all of the species that would go in Cerasus are still classified in Prunus on Wikipedia (if we split out Cerasus on Wikipedia, it'd be better to rename articles in bulk rather than having some species in one genus and some in the other). Plantdrew (talk) 22:46, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Prunus occidentalis is done. I couldn't figure out exactly which of the two botanists (Swartz or Dumont de Courset) to credit as the binomial authority. I went with Swartz for now. I am sure you will find other errors. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 00:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It looks very good, thank you for your work. I'm really appreciating the assessment for WikiProject Plants, good categorization, and tagging it with the trees stub template. I changed the classification in the taxobox to follow the APGIII system used on most plant articles (I just pasted the classification as it appears in the Prunus article).

Swartz is the correct authority. Make sure you're getting the authority from the same source you're using for the scientific name. The format of the authority changes when a species is place in a different genus. The same issue came up with Xiphosurus cuvieri. For both plants and animals, parentheses around a biologists name/abbreviation indicate that the species has been moved into a different genus from where it was first described. Plant authorities also include the name of person that moved it to the new genus; Dumont de Courset moved occidentalis from Prunus into Cerasus. Animal authorities don't include the name of the mover, but do include the date; "(Merrem, 1820}" has parentheses to indicate that Xiphosurus cuvieri has been moved from the genus in which it was first described. And plants use a unique abbreviation for each authority while animals write out the surname. But you don't need to worry about the technical details; just make sure to follow the source's presentation of the authority. Plantdrew (talk) 03:08, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"For both plants and animals, parentheses around a biologists name/abbreviation indicate that the species has been moved into a different genus from where it was first described" Sigh - I knew I should had taken that botany elective while in college! Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 12:25, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a pretty tricky little techical detail, and not something likely to be covered in the classroom (I do remember a class where we went over the differences in the rules for naming plants and animals, but I don't think we ever went over authority formats). Plantdrew (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Xiphosurus cuvieri

Hi again. Having given up on the two articles (Prunas occidentalis & Pouteria mirtiflora) as stated above, I went on to create an article for Anolis cuvieri (another one in the Hojas de Nuestro Ambiente - Toro Negro report from PR DNER above), but discovered that its accepted name was Xiphosurus cuvieri, so I created an article by that name instead since there was none. (Warning: this is fauna, not flora!) The article is probably not the fanciest and most informative, but does contain two things that I think both you and I care about: (1) It has a photo of the creature and (2) it has its full classification. Of course, evertythng is documented with citations. When you have a chance, please check it out and make any appropriate comments or edits....Hopefully I am getting better at creating these flora/fauna article by now! Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 20:48, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good job with the extensive citations. I made several corrections to the taxobox (looks like a lot of it came from pasting a taxobox from another article and missing some fields that needed to be changed). I swapped the parentheses around "Merrem, 1820" after Anolis cuvieri/Xiphosurus cuvieri in the taxobox (the parentheses indicate whether or not the species is in the original genus; the sources have the parentheses right, I assume you just missed fixing it when you were swapping the scientific names around). I italicized the "name' field in the taxobox. I'm not sure the source is for the IUCN LC listing; the IUCN website itself [2] doesn't have data for the species under either name. I removed the IUCN related stuff. Took out Xenondontinae as the subfamily (snake subfamily).

One big thing is to consolidate citations of references you use multiple times. You can set it up by using <ref name=xxx> insted of <ref> the first time you use the reference (technically it doesn't have to be the first instance, but it's good practice). Use any name you like for the reference name; preferably something short and easy to type (I usually abbreviate the title or authors). You can then call the reference again with <ref name=xxx/>. I didn't see "Lagartijo gigante" in the Reptile Database, so I replaced what would've been the first use of that source with a citation needed, then consolidated the other citations of the Reptile Database. Plantdrew (talk) 00:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I found the citation for "Lagartijo gigante" (I had previosuly mis-cited it to The Reptile Database, but removed the alleged common name when I couldn't verify the name with any source). Is it HERE (on the 4th paragraph from the end of the article). However, I didn't add the alleged common name back into the article because, as you know, we have found several errors in that publication before, and now I am thinking it is just one more careless error from the PR DNER. Also, I haven't seen the name used in any of the other "authoritative sources" (like ITIS etc) that we have talked about before. Do you agree with this decision? Mercy11 (talk) 01:44, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I lean towards including more common names and I don't think sources for common names need to be the highest quality, but I think it's fair to leave "lagartijo gigante" out. This is the English Wikipedia, and we don't need to include every Spanish common name; including some non-English common names is appropriate, but we don't need to list the more obscure non-English common names. Plantdrew (talk) 17:53, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I went to Commons (HERE) and tried to change the name of the JPG file to remove the erroneous "Lagartijo gigante" common name from the JPG filename, but could not figure out how to do it. Perhaps you can; I know it can be done - I remember doing it before and it involved submitting a request to Common). In any event, I did change the description... to my consolation. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 18:53, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hummm, it gets more interesting: I was finally able to figure out how to submit the rename request...............But now its Commons image page says "Looks like this image was renamed already. Please remove the rename template". Ha! but alas! when I check the file name, it is still the same name with the incorrect "Lagartijo gigante" wording! Whatever, I give up. I was hoping I wouldn't be an instrument for propagating wrong information in the Internet, but whatever! It's probably not worth the time. Thanks anyway, Mercy11 (talk) 19:17, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I just thought Id drop by to inform you why I changed the name,You see in 2012 a study was published which called for the splitting of Anolis into several genera (This is where xiphosurus cuvieri comes from).Although some scientist have accepted this classification most generally reject it as being confusing and unnecessary and so opt to retain the genus name Anolis for all species.Anolis cuvieri is also the name that most people would know it as thus the article stands a better chance of being seen under this name.--Jamaican college grad (talk) 05:11, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't worry too much about file names on Commons. I don't think it's worth the time. Commons file names are pretty low visibility when it comes to propagating wrong information (working directly on Wikipedia is a much more effective way to get correct information out there). There's really no end of work that could be done with Commons file names if so inclined; so many of them are meaningless numbers assigned by the camera, many pictures of organisms use outdated scientific names, and I've come across a few that have been miscategorized because the file name uses a common name that refers to different plants in different countries (I've fixed the categorization in these cases, but haven't bothered with the file name itself). Plantdrew (talk) 20:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Drew, not that it matters to me, but FYI, someone moved Xiphosurus cuvieri to Anolis cuvieri. Perhaps this doesn't surprise you , or whatever. Just FYI. Mercy11 (talk) 01:47, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads-up. Current scientific name wasn't something I was very sure of. From their edit history it looks like User: Jamaican college grad probably has a much better idea about how to handle Caribbean reptiles than you or me. Plantdrew (talk) 04:58, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Atya lanipes

I created this article about a crustacean of the Toro Negro Forest. I know its not a plant or a land animal, but a freshwater creature. However, I needed a break from the plants/animals article creation. It was also a easy choice since it's the only one I had a free picture/image for. But, alas, I soon discovered there are separate websites for water-based creatures (WoRMS). So the Tropicos and USDA sites did not help (I didn't try the Plants List so obvious reasons!). I hope you can take a look at Atya lanipes and give it your "blessing." Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I went through it. I think most of the changes are pretty well explained in edit summaries (though I forgot an edit summary when I added the Arthopod Project on the talk page). I removed some of the ranks you had in the classification in the taxobox, and added others, following the taxoboxes in Atya and [[Atyidae]; I don't know enough about crustaceans to be sure this is the best way to present the classification, but at least it's consistent with the taxoboxes used on the next rungs up the latter.Plantdrew (talk) 20:20, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 03:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cyathea arborea

I created this stub article, translated from the Spanish Wikipedia. I took some short cuts, plus Tropicos, USDA, and Plant List, none are mentioned. It's something in the ferns group but I couldn't figure out for sure if it is present in Toro Negro. In any event, I think the article should be added to the English Wikipedia, so I created it. When you get a chance, if you could take a look to verify everything is well, I appreciate it. Any rough edges I can work on them if you comment. Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 03:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I modified it a little, but it was a good stub as you created it. I'm certain it grows in Toro Negro, but don't have a source you could cite for that. It is very common in Puerto Rico, and it's good to have an article for it. I collected it myself ~50 km east of Toro Negro in Carite State Forest when I visited Puerto Rico. Plantdrew (talk) 04:46, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Please look at the Cyathea image pictured in HERE, in the Toro Negro State Forest article.

My question is, how do we know that the photo of the Cyathea in THIS other article (the images are the same one), and which the caption indicates is a Cyathea medullaris, how do we know that it is indeed a Cyathea medullaris and not something else? This is a picture that the uploader himself took (Kahuroa), and even if he claims to be into botany, it is not the same as getting a picture from a source like Tropicos, Kew, USDA, Plant List, etc (which presumably have the "blessing" of authorities in the field of botany). Do you understand what I am saying and asking? That is, unlike editing text in an article, "editing" with pictures -- where the editor makes an unverified claim -- seems to be more difficult to challenge. Am I clear now? For example, if I edit the article about the Moon and stated that the first touchdown to the moon by a human spacecraft was made at an impact of 40.7 mph, I could be challenged with a Citation Needed tag, and I could have the info removed if I don't provide the requested citation. But how do we enforce WP:V from someone who shoots his own picture of some plant growing wildly in the middle of some forest somewhere and then uploads the image as Cyathea medullaris as it happens in Cyathea? And how do we know that the image of Cyathea arborea in the Cyathea arborea article is, in fact, Cyathea arborea and not something else similar (the list of possibilities is very long; see HERE), except that the uploader (Xemenendura) says that it is Cyathea arborea. I hope my question to you is clear. Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 19:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A very good question, and one that's come up before (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Archive61#Identification_problem_at_Featured_Pictures_project, follow the links). Also, User:Peter coxhead and I were discussing a particular photo a little further down on my talk page (User_talk:Plantdrew#Stenanthium_leimanthoides, see the end of that section). I'm not sure that there's really much we can do with Commons photos. USDA Plants does have some images that are not copyrighted (although many ARE copyrighted), and which presumably are more-or-less authoritatively identified. But there's still not a lot of detail about who identified the plants in the USDA images. As far as the Cyathea medullaris photo goes, well, presumably we can trust that it was taken in New Zealand. That gets us down to the 12 species of Cyathea that grow in NZ. A botanist familiar with New Zealand Cyathea might be able to eliminate a few more (but usually the things we need to see to identify plants to species won't show up very well in most photos). So it is a huge WP:V issue, where we've got to trust that the photographer is competent at identifying plants. Plantdrew (talk) 19:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Quite eye opening! Mercy11 (talk) 18:29, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Prestoea montana

Another transplant from the Spanish Wikipedia. I seemed to have hit a goldmine with this one because it is certainly one of the most common at Toro Negro. However, as I finished the article, I started to realize that the accepted name appears to be "Prestoea acuminata var. montana." I did't know if we should create an article with all those names (and off and on italics), so instead I created it under Prestoea montana and decide later what to do about the oddly long name. Well the later is now. Can you review this instance and decide what needs to be done? Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 14:13, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I left Prestoea montana as one of the synonyms in the infobox; that way, if the article has to be moved, then montana would already be listed as a synonym. Otherwise, you can just remove it. Thx!Mercy11 (talk) 14:25, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As you've no doubt noticed, somebody else came across it and there's been some discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants#Which_synonym_--_taxonomy_question. Plantdrew (talk) 19:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I just found out from a belated notice someone posted in the article's Talk Page postmortem. I will let the titans figure it out because it's not "up my alley". Like my dear old grandmother used to say, "Most of it is Greek to me"; meaning, it is not where my strength/forte lies. Thank you! Mercy11 (talk) 01:15, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Montezuma speciosissima

Last week I meant to create an article on Montezuma speciosissima, but then I came across (in Wikipedia) that Montezuma speciosissima redirected to Hibiscus grandiflorus. I presummed that M.speciosissima was a synonym of H. grandiflorus, and I left the whole thing alone and just wikilinked the Toro Negro State Forest article instances of Montezuma speciosissima to Hibiscus grandiflorus via the pre-existing Montezuma speciosissima redirect. However, I have since come across THIS article that provides a description of the tree that appears to be quite different from the description of the Hibiscus grandiflorus in the Hibiscus grandiflorus article. What do you suggest I do? (Please compare with Thespesia grandiflora; I am confused what's what!) Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 02:15, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch. M. speciosissima is a synonym for Thespesia grandiflora. Hibiscus grandiflorus is another plant entirely. I changed the redirects to go to the right article. Plantdrew (talk) 15:41, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hibiscus elatus

Hi. When I look at this HERE it says "Hibiscus elatus Sw." Now, "Sw." is a standard author abbreviation for Olof Swartz, and it is the abbreviation to use when citing a botanical name. However, THIS publication from the Govt of Puerto Rico states "En el Bosque se sembraron plantaciones de especies introducidas como mahoe (Hibiscus elatus Sw.)..." (Translation:"The forest was transplanted with introduced species such as mahoe (Hibiscus elatus Sw.)... "). Note the "Sw." in the text which, when expanded, would then be equivalent to saying "...such as mahoe (Hibiscus elatus Olof Swartz)... " . The question is, What does Olof Swartz have to do with Hibiscus elatus if, when you check Hibiscus elatus, it states "Talipariti elatum Fryxell". That is, it seems the binomial authority for Hibiscus elatus is someone named Fryxell, and not someone named Swartz. Can you help me sort this out so I can determine if I need to create a new article. Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 15:44, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The binomial authority was messed up. It should be "(Sw.) Fryxell". I made the correction. Plantdrew (talk) 16:10, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

According to THIS ITIS source, the name Hibiscus elatus is the accepted name whereas Talipariti elatum is 'Not Found'. Also THIS Tropicos source says Hibiscus elatus is the Legitimate name. And The Plant List HERE says "Hibiscus elatus Sw.is an accepted name". Wouldn't that mean that Hibiscus elatus should be the title of the article currently titled Talipariti elatum? Thanks, Mercy11 (talk) 18:14, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also THIS site lists 249 references to Hibiscus elatus to 9 references of Talipariti elatum. Mercy11 (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good sleuthing, and I'd be inclined to have the article at Hibiscus elatus for now (this is why I didn't use The Plant List as a reference for H.elatus as a synonym; I didn't want to misrepresent that source). But an admin is needed to move the article. Digging a little deeper, it gets really complicated.

There are two questions: is Talipariti a good genus (i.e., recognized by most botanists as distinct from Hibiscis), and is elatu(s/m) a good species (distinct from tiliaceu(s/m))? TROPICOS doesn't have a lot of references for this, but shows that one source thinks it's the same species as tilaceum (and places it in Talipariti) ([[3]]) (ignoring the publication by Fryxell). One other source ([[4]] goes with Hibiscus elatus. There's not really enough information to settle the species question (though there are other sources outside of those listed in TROPICOS (e.g. ITIS) that think elatus is a good species). Moving onto the genus question, The Plant List thinks Talipariti is a good genus ([[5]]). Checking Talipariti tilaceum in TROPICOS ([[6]]look at the References and Accepted Name tabs), shows 3 recent sources that keep that species in Hibiscus and 4 recent sources (excluding those by Fryxel) that have it in Talipariti. Not much of a consensus there, but I'd be inclined to go with The Plant List and recognize Talipariti (although this is the only Wikipedia article on a species of Talipariti; at least 3 more Hibiscus article would need to be moved to the new genus). The Plant List actually has an error here; since they choose to recognize Talipariti, and they are getting their data on the genus from Tropicos, they should either be recognzing T. elatum, or treating it as a synonym of T. tiliaceum (but not H. elatus). The Plant List uses an algorithm to figure out how to handle records from TROPICOS, and this isn't the first time I've seen TPL get something from TROPICOS wrong; it usually happens when the TROPICOS record has very few sources cited in the References/Accepted Name/Synonym tabs.

A couple general comments about TROPICOS. TROPICOS will tell you that a name is wrong on objective grounds. Where you linked to it calling Hibiscus elatus "legitimate", it is saying that a supposed 1788 publication of the name by Swartz has some technical problem, and can't be used as a source of a scientific name. The 1800 publication by Swartz is "legitimate" and can be used as a source of a scientific name. However, TROPICOS does not tell you if a name is right or wrong on subjective grounds. The questions about whether elatus is a good species, or Talipariti a good species are subjective; different botanists may have different opinions. TROPICOS strives to give citations of the various opinions, but doesn't try to give a definitive answers (unlike USDA Plants, ITIS, The Plant List which all go for a definitive answer). TROPICOS has far more information about the names then the other sources, but it can be pretty confusing to use.

So, that was a very long and dense explanation with no real answer. Sorry. I'd leave Talipariti elatum as is for now. It might be good to move the articles on other species of Hibiscus that are now placed in Talipariti.

Of course, it is possible that someone might think Talipariti is a good genus, but that it's better to keep elatus in Hibiscus. But it doesn't appear that anybody has actually made this claim. TPL's listing is apparently erroneous. Plantdrew (talk) 20:31, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As for the number of results at Biodiversity Heritage Library, Talipariti was only split off from Hibiscus 11 years ago, so there's a pretty overwhelming number of historical results for H. elatus. We should be looking at recent results (which are certainly far from unanimous). Plantdrew (talk) 20:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would generally start with IPNI for a plant name. Government sources, US, Puerto Rico, tend to be less reliable, in my experience, except for Australia. The plant editors are not too active lately, but they can also be helpful as a group, as there are a couple of taxonomists and/or botanists in the group. Also, I left the one above open for a few more days since I was negligent in posting the notice on the article's talk page. Whatever your level of expertise, you should feel free to comment in the discussion, or raise any issues you see. --(AfadsBad (talk) 21:09, 6 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Drew, botany is not my forte; I will need time to digest some of the stuff you stated above. For now, I am fine the way things are, I will be moving on to other articles, and thanks for your reply. Mercy11 (talk) 10:41, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agonostomus monticola

Hi! I tried my luck with fish. Can you take a look at it please? I could not figure out the "subordo" and "superfamilia" parameters in the taxobox, but I don't know if it matters - seems not every species has evertything always accounted for in the taxonomy world. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! Mercy11 (talk) 16:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks pretty good to me. I added a couple things building on your good work, and decapitalized the common names (as far as I'm aware, fish don't usually have common names capitalized). Don't worry about suborder and superfamilia (especially since Agonostomus doesn't use them). Sub/super ranks are usually pretty unimportant (and in the cases where they are important, you'll find them in used in the taxobox for the genus). Plantdrew (talk) 21:41, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I am starting to understand how that LC status thing works! Mercy11 (talk) 03:51, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Pouteria multiflora

Hello Drew, would you kindly review this new article for correctness. I also did an assessment (Talk Page). Hope everything is well! Thanks! Mercy11 (talk) 17:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks pretty good. I fixed a link to The Plant List that had been copy-pasted (it went to the Prunus occidentalis page on TPL). Taxonomic authorities shouldn't be italicized, nor should ranks (such as "var." and "subsp."). I redirected your bullytree to bully tree (which covers several plants with that common name). You did a great job in creating the common name redirects though, and good work creating this well-referenced stub.

My talk page is getting pretty long. I'm going to archive older discussions soon. Feel free to make a new section alerting me to any other organisms articles you make. Plantdrew (talk) 23:34, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Got it! Thanks for the offer. Your help is appreciated. (BTW, I did use Prunus occidentalis as a boiler plate/template - for this article but, of course, you knew that already anyway!) Mercy11 (talk) 01:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Genus Categories

I just want to say thanks for updating some of my stub articles to use their Genus category instead of the Family category. I've applied the same change to other stubs I've created. Declangi (talk) 08:27, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. I only hit the ones you created in the last ~3 days and then got a little discouraged when I saw a bunch more Tabernaemontana's in the Family category. Thanks for cleaning those up, and thanks for your work creating the stubs in the first place. Feel free to make new genus categories if you'll be making stubs for several species in a genus. Plantdrew (talk) 17:48, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Plant common name disambiguation

Hi, could you have a look at a couple of pages that I've built up, to see if you'd want to change the style of them, so that I can learn to go straight to whatever format is preferred? Butterfly tree and Orchid tree. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't really a preferred format (established by consensus). Of course, I've got my preferred format, but if you've got any suggestions about how I might do it differently, I'd be happy to hear them. Anyway, they both look pretty good; using {{Plant common name}}, talk page has {{WikiProject Plants}} and classifies as List class, and similar names listed under See also.

I prefer the lead sentence format you have in Orchid Tree over that of Butterfly Tree. I.e., "Foo is is a common name for several trees..." over "Foo may refer to". I think the former format gives a little more precision and justifies why the names are listed in a SIA (they are all plants sharing a common name). The latter format is the usual DAB style, and in DABs the listed subjects have little in common beyond the name. I also go with "several" rather than giving a firm number; there's also the possibility of more plants going by the name than are currently listed in the SIA.

If there are any salient features (e.g. habit, flower color, edible fruits, etc.), shared by all the plants with a particular common name I try to include that in lead sentence, especially if it's a feature that has a bearing on the common name. In your examples, all of them are trees; "orchid trees" all have showy flowers and presumably are named for the showiness of the flowers (though that's getting into Original Research).

If the plants can be readily distinguished by salient features, I think it's good to include this information with each listed plant (although I don't always do so). The butterfly trees can be distinguished by native range, but I'm not sure about a concise way to distinguish the orchid trees. Habit, flower color, range, leaf shape, might all serve to distinguish (and if photos are available, it might be good to include those too). Plantdrew (talk) 18:22, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you're still watching my talk page, I saw your edits and the reversions to List of plants known as oil palm; the disadvantage to set indices is that they don't have the maintenance that DAB's do (i.e., bots checking for large numbers of incoming links). The advanatge to SIAs, is that they don't have to follow the minimalist DAB style. Multiple blue links per line, extended descriptions in each line, photos, and references; all are fine in a SIA. Take advantage of the looser format and make the SIA/list informative. Plantdrew (talk) 07:05, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of article title of Whitebark pine

You are welcome to join the discussion at Talk:Whitebark pine#Requested move to scientific name. —hike395 (talk) 04:26, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Monogeneric plant families

An useful category, which I regularly forget about, so thanks for adding it to two redirects I created (so far).

Interestingly, all the articles in the category should be redirects, since WP:PLANTS policy is to put articles on monogeneric plant families at the genus. But they're not! Peter coxhead (talk) 15:46, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they should all be redirects. I was working through the category recently and moved a bunch of the articles to the genus title. Most of the remaining monogeneric articles at family titles require an admin to make the move (there might be a couple more I can move myself, will double check now). Plantdrew (talk) 15:56, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tallying. Ancistrocladaceae, Aponogetonaceae, Degeneriaceae, Lanariaceae need admin tools to move (otherwise straightforward, the genus redirects to the family). Joinvillea/Joinvilleaceae, Nelumbo/Nelumbonaceae, Penthorum/Penthoraceae have separate articles for genus/family. These could be merged and redirected. Hydatellaceae's sole genus is Trithuria; I guess this is like Caprifoliaceae/Fabaceae/etc., where the family name is based on a genus that's not currently recognized. Pterostemonaceae was recognized in APGI & APGII, but not APGIII. I'm not sure what to do with this one; there's some use in having articles for important historically recognized taxa, but Pterostemonaceae is pretty minor. There's no Pterostemon article, so nowhere to merge the family presently. Getting these 9 families to genus title is on my to-do list, but isn't something I'm tackling right now. If you want to work on them, please do. Plantdrew (talk) 16:25, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I saw your request to Rkitko. For Pterostemonaceae, I think I would leave a short "this family is obsolete" article.

I went through all the APG3 families checking the opening, but didn't check for monogeneric families. The categories are also an issue – very inconsistently set up. See the lists at User:Peter coxhead/APG3 family list. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:03, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nettle

If you have time you might like to comment at Talk:Nettle (disambiguation)#Alternatives. The discussion above this subsection got a bit confused; it seems that Paul venter and I were talking at cross-purposes on several occasions (using words differently), so it's probably not worth reading it all. I think that we agree now, and that the ultimate choice is between a single disambiguation page for all uses of "nettle", and a disambiguation page + a set index article for the plant name uses of "nettle". Peter coxhead (talk) 21:40, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Commented on that talk page. With the present situation, I'm inclined not to split out a SIA, but I guess I should inquire about getting DAB bots to patrol the articles in Category:Set indices on plant common names. I'm worried that might be contentious (DAB folks seem to have pretty rigid standards about anything that even looks like a DAB). Plantdrew (talk) 21:54, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Belated Welcome

Hello Plantdrew! Welcome to WikiProject Food and Drink! We are a group of editors who work together to better organize information in articles related to food and drink.

The goals of WikiProject Food and Drink:

Consensus about the organization of food and drink related articles.
Coordination of editing on food, drink, and restaurant related articles.
Categorization of food, drink, and restaurant articles.
Creation, expansion, and maintenance of food, drink, and restaurant articles.
To help maintain the food portal.

What you can do right now:

You might wish to add {{User WP Food and drink}} to your userpage.
If you haven't done so already, please consider adding your name to the list of participants.

Once again, welcome to the project!

Sorry, due to an error in formatting, your membership in WikiProject Food & Drink was put on the wrong page, I have fixed and wanted to say Welcome!--Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 06:47, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the welcome. I think you might still have some issues with the project page. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Food_and_drink/Members and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Food_and_drink/participants are basically redundant. Depending on what project subpage I'm on, the navigation tabs to other subpages are different. I.e., from F&D's home page, I see a Participants tab. If I'm on the /templates, /Assessment, /tasks, /stub_templates or /to_do subpages, there is a tab to the Members subpage. I think I may have signed up on the Members page, when I should've signed up on Participants. Plantdrew (talk) 16:09, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Stenanthium leimanthoides

Do you have a source for maintaining Stenanthium leimanthoides as a separate species as per your revert at Stenanthium? I was thinking of merging the two articles, on the grounds that a reliable secondary source, WCSP, treats them as synonyms. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:24, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's the Zomlefer & Judd reference that's already cited in the Stenanthium article (if your IP doesn't have full text access through the links given, try this: [7]. From a Google search, it looks like botanists in the southeastern US are following Z&J in recognizing S. leimanthoides. And Z&J is cited for the statement "two [species] added from Zigadenus sensu lato"; S. leimanthoides and S. densum are those two species. Plantdrew (talk) 15:56, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, but (a) it's a primary source, and we really should use secondary sources to establish the existence of a species (b) it's dated 2002, whereas the WCSP entry is dated 2011. I'll search for some more sources, but failing a reliable review-type source, I think that we should go with WCSP. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh right, SECONDARY source. I've added one. S. leimanthoides is being recognized by many of the state natural heritage programs (which are performing conservation assessments), and Weakley's recent digital-only flora ([8] which I'm not going to cite in the article since it's a 54MB PDF). It really looks to me like the consensus, in recent sources covering the floristics of the region where this grows, is to treat it as a separate species. Admittedly, splitting might be chiefly motivated by conservation concerns, there are still lumpers, and the split hasn't filtered into the major national databases yet (USDA Plants still has S. densum in Zigadenus; but ITIS actually recognizes S. leimanthoides, the first time I've seen ITIS following a more recent treatment than USDA Plants does). Plantdrew (talk) 20:09, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think it's the other way round, i.e. earlier when in a different genus they were treated as separate species; then two names were provided in Stenanthium; then they were lumped. On her website, Zomlefer now hedges her bets, saying 3-5 species in the genus. Anyway it looks as though we should keep them separate for the time being; some other pages need to be fixed accordingly. (Although I'm sceptical about regional floras which often don't keep up with taxonomic research and which generally hate their favoured regional species being merged or downgraded.) Peter coxhead (talk) 18:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Zomlefer's chart dates back to 2003 or earlier [9], and reflects the state of things prior to her work. The chart has Zigadenus s.l. with 19 species, and no Anticlea, so a pretty different concept of Stenanthium is represented. There hasn't been any long-standing consensus to lump; both species have long been recognized in Zigadenus; the major late 20th century floras of the eastern US (see [10] Fernald; Gleason & Cronquist; Radford, Ahles & Bell are standard references) recognized Zigadenus leimanthoides. Lumping was suggested by McDearmann in 1984, the Flora of North America lumped in 2002. Zomfeler and Judd published in 2006, and mentioned 3 other lumpers (one of whom, Weakley, now recognizes both species in the Flora he edits). USDA Plants continues to recognize both species (albeit in Zigadenus). WCSP actually seems to be the first source that has explicitly lumped the combinations in Stenanthium. Z&J acknowledge that lumping may be appropriate, but published sources going that route are very thin. Plantdrew (talk) 23:48, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've now fixed, I think, all the articles affected by keeping the two species separate. I have to say that for those families it covers, it does make life easier to stick to WCSP's species list for article titles, while of course acknowledging variant treatments in the text.

A bigger area where different taxonomic views are beginning to cause problems are the "lumped" families in APG3. It seems increasingly clear that the APG's Asparagaceae and Amaryllidaceae are not accepted by many specialists. E.g. Hyacinthaceae is used in recent papers far more often than Scilloideae. Quite what we do in Wikipedia as regards taxoboxes and article titles I'm not sure. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I messed around with the common names ("pine barren death camas" is pretty clearly associated with S. leimanthoides, except in FNA's treatment lumping the species, and I'm not finding anything associating "Osceola's plume" with S. leimanthoides, just S. densum. Also, I removed the photo from the S. densum article; photo description on Commons is following a lumped concept (and from Zomlefer's description, photo depicts S. leimanthoides). I'll check some floras tomorrow to see whether they provide any characters that can be used to confirm the plant in the photo.

I can see the merits of following one source (i.e. WCSP, although maybe that should be The Plant List since WCSP is incomplete; of course TPL is somewhat less reliable than WCSP). Regional floras and authoritative regional databases probably will have more of a tendency to split than any global database. Sigh. I don't think there's really going to be any consensus on a hard and fast rule we can adopt to reconcile competing treatments at the species and genus level. But we do have consensus for a rule to use APG III for the higher classification, even if it's not followed by experts in some groups. It's complicated, for sure. Maybe APG IV will go back and unlump?Plantdrew (talk) 22:51, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see you did some further work with the photo. I checked all the floras I mentioned above that split the species; racemose vs. paniculate inflorescence is the major distinguishing character (along with bulb coat texture and pedicel length which would be tough to determine from a photo).Plantdrew (talk) 14:51, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I assumed that a named botanical drawing done before the change of genus and any lumping would probably be correct.

Mis-identifications in Commons are a serious problem. Whenever I look for images for taxa I know something about I'm almost always unhappy about the names (Eucomis being the latest). Mind you, I'm guilty myself: twice I uploaded photos taken in botanical gardens to Commons under names which assumed that the labels were authoritative, only to discover with more research that they were wrong. We require reliable sources for text but we can't reasonably do this for images.

Yes, it will be interesting to see what APG IV says (assuming there is one!). The only serious difficulty with sticking to APG III for me has been when names were provided in sources for subdivisions of split families which should be one rank lower in the lumped families in which the split families are subfamilies, but no name seems to have been published at this lower rank. It's very tempting just to change the termination! Peter coxhead (talk) 19:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you take a look

at A. africana, which has just been stripped of its explanatory text? Just a quick matter, I hope. Perhaps there is nothing that can be done, but I wonder if a set index article is the answer to this sort of pro-obfuscation stance, and I consider myself inadequately trained on the various formats. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:22, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like User:Nadiatalent started adding the explanatory text to entries in Category:Species Latin name abbreviation disambiguation pages, and got as far as A. arvensis (proceeding alphabetically). There was some pushback/reversion while she was working on it. Aside from the handful Nadiatalent worked on, the rest of the abbreviation dabs seem just to have "X. foo may refer to:" as the lead. Personally, I think Nadia's explanatory text is a little excessive, but I would like to see something more than just "may refer to". Maybe something along the lines of "X. foo is an abbreviation of the scientific name of several species of organisms:" (ideally with some expansion of Binomial nomenclature so there is a stand alone section on abbreviating that can be linked to rather than the more general "Writing binomial names" section I linked). I don't see working on adding explanatory text to the 1,630 abbreviation pages myself though.

I don't think going to a set index format is necessary. For the most part, folks who take a strict view of WP:MOSDAB have left taxonomy related disambiguation pages alone. After the recent edit, A. africana still has a red-link for one species, and some redundant text (e.g. " the African squid, a squid species") that a strict MOSDABist might object to. And the pages in Category:Genus disambiguation pages fly completely in the face of WP:2DAB (on top of which, many of the ambiguous genus pages only have one blue-link). I think we can keep the taxonomy disambiguations as DABs without too much trouble. Plantdrew (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So it seems that trying to do anything consistently about this would start an edit war, and effort might be better spent in wikispecies, and perhaps adding links to wikispecies from all those misleadingly simplistic pages here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Food

It would be appreciated if you joined in the conversation ongoing at WT:Food regarding the layout and presentation of the project's main page. Northamerica1000^(talk) 03:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Pinaceae -- low

Did you really mean to assess the Pinaceae as a low importance plant family with Araceae, Fagaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Cyperaceae as high, or was this an error? I have opened a discussion requesting guidelines at the project talk page and your input is requested, as an editor involved in plant article importance assessments, particularly to monitor the discussion so that we wind up with something useful at the end. Thanks. --(AfadsBad (talk) 15:15, 5 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Okay; initially I was not sure, but then assumed that Pinaceae was just a type. --(AfadsBad (talk) 18:20, 5 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

I meant to have it High, but was getting tired, and I've been typing "Low" a lot more than anything else (I've caught myself typing "Low" for the class assessment more than a few times). Plantdrew (talk) 18:25, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously. Sorry for the somewhat snide edit summary. lol --(AfadsBad (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Thanks for correcting my miscategorizations

There are quite a few pages set up in the following way. If "Redirect" is a redirect to "Target", then "Talk:Redirect" is set up as a redirect to "Talk:Target". (I think I copied this pattern in the past, although I now know it's wrong.) When assessing some plant redirects recently, I followed "Talk:Redirect" redlinks and then added the WP:PLANTS banner. Mostly this was correct, but sometimes I didn't notice that I actually ended up at an empty "Talk:Target" page because of the redirect pattern noted above. You corrected most of my errors, and I think I've now fixed the rest. So (a) thanks (b) be aware of this possible pattern of redirects when assessing plant articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:37, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed most of the redirecting talk pages resulted from moves. Would you suggest unredirecting the talk page at the old title when a page is moved? Not moving the talk page when the article is moved seems like a bad practice to me, but I could see undoing the redirect that results from a talk page move. Plantdrew (talk) 17:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What seems to happen when "A" is moved over an existing article "B" (regardless of whether "B" is a redirect or not and regardless of whether it's a user move or a full admin move) is that the talk pages change place, i.e. the content of "Talk:A" moves to "Talk:B" and vice versa. So you have to sort out the banner(s) for these manually after the move. Writing this reminds me that I didn't do it for Aphyllanthes and Aphyllanthoideae, so just now Talk:Aphyllanthes claims it's a redirect page and Talk:Aphyllanthoideae claims it's a stub (I'll fix this immediately!). So the redirecting talk pages don't result from moves; they have been deliberately set up as redirects (as I said above, I did some like this until I realized it was wrong). Hence if you find any, you should feel free to change them by adding the appropriate redirect banner. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:31, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I follow. With Aphyllanthes/Aphyllanthoideae there was a talk page/banner for both articles. I moved Geissolomataceae to Geissoloma, and the current Geissolomataceae Talk page is just a redirect. So should I make it stop redirecting (and do the same for the talk pages with any future moves)? This may not be the best example; I'm not very interested in adding banners to all the common name/synonym redirects (a truly massive task), but it does seem important to put a banner on the redirects that exist because of WP:FLORA's stance on monotypic taxa. So, as a general practice, should I unredirect talk pages after a move and put a plants banner on them? Plantdrew (talk) 18:51, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't now think I understand either! I just tried some tests with pages in my user space (which I can therefore move freely), and when I move "User:Peter coxhead/A" to "User:Peter coxhead/B" using the "move tab" and do nothing else, the talk pages change place. If one is empty, then the "emptiness" moves to the other one. I never get a redirect set up at a talk page. So if you just moved Geissolomataceae to Geissoloma and nothing else, I wouldn't have expected Talk:Geissolomataceae to end up redirecting to Talk:Geissoloma, but it does. Puzzling!

What I did (in the past) is quite different: I edited a talk page to make it a redirect to another talk page, which I think shouldn't be done.

Anyway, my view is that you are right that there should be a banner on redirects which exist because of monotypic taxa, so I would definitely "unredirect" such talk pages which end up as redirects.

I also forgot that {{R from monotypic taxon}} should go on the redirect pages of monotypic taxa redirecting 'downwards', and {{R to monotypic taxon}} from redirect pages redirecting 'upwards'. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:29, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing out the monotypic redirect templates. Talk page redirects seem to be created for any moves I've done in article space. I'm thinking maybe there's a difference in how pre-move titles might be viewed in most of Wikipedia, and how Plants (and Disambiguation) people see them. If a page on a person is moved because of incorrect diacritics, or a page on a complex topic is moved to a slightly different phrase (e.g., any number of titles might be used for the content at Military history of the United States during World War II), there's really no reason to be further concerned with the old title and its talk page. If we move something from a common name to a scientific name, we may very well need to go back and turn the common name page into a set index, and if somebody is moving an ambiguous term to a parenthetically disambiguated title, they absolutely will need to go back to the old title to turn it into a DAB. Plantdrew (talk) 19:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Taxoboxes for monospecific genus articles

I see that you had some difficulty getting these to work properly. You use {{Speciesbox}} to get the species shown for a monospecific genus article; see Aphyllanthes or Alania (plant) now. Note how the authorities are set using "parent-", "grandparent-", etc. There's a subtlety in getting all the relevant taxa shown in bold in the taxobox. It's essential, for example, that at Template:Taxonomy/Aphyllanthoideae the link is to "Aphyllanthes". Then when the wikimedia software detects a wikilink back to the same page in the Aphyllanthes taxobox, it replaces the wikilink by bold text. In the same way, at Template:Taxonomy/Alania the link field must show "Alania (plant)", i.e. the exact title of the page to taxobox is on. It's not (quite) as complex as it seems!

The documentation at Template:Speciesbox/doc really needs to explain this case. I'll put it on my "to-do" list. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I think I get it; I'll see if I can make it work next time I come across this situation. Plantdrew (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good catches on plant family importance assessments

I forgot about families that are not currently accepted in APG III, and I see you are assessing them as low rather than mid. Good catch. --(AfadsBad (talk) 03:58, 8 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Well, I've since decided to skip assessing non-APG III families for now, pending discussion on the Plants project talk page. Having them unassessed for the moment serves as an informal means of categorizing them. It'll be easier to find them to categorize them (and assess them) in a few days. Plantdrew (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Waiting is fine; but I had not considered in the initial discussion that non-APG families should be assessed differently. --(AfadsBad (talk) 00:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]