Talk:Charophyta

Number of species
This article should say how many species are found in this division. --Savant13 13:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Charophyta concept in Lewis and McCourt
According Lewis and McCourt (2004, p. 1541), land plants are included in Division Charophyta, as Class Embryophyceae. Charophyta and Streptophyta are two names for the same clade.--Euzomo (talk) 11:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * That is information about the word "Charophyta", not about the group currently covered in the article by that name. Information about words belongs on Wiktionary.  Most major taxonomic names have been applied to more than one circumscription of taxa.  There is more than one meaning of "Charophyta" in current use, and there is no concensus on the application of labels or ranks to clades at the base of the embryophytes.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Modernizing needed
"Charophyta are a small but important group of plants which show marked differences from both the Thallophyta and the Bryophyta." Is this text a leftover from EB 1911? Both terms (which I've linked and am queried about from dabBot) are not in current usage in their former, broader senses. What is the real distinction being made here? Can a good botanist restate this?--Wetman (talk) 15:30, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree, there is a lot of arrant nonsense in this section, which was copied from somewhere and parachuted in by an ip user 182.177.44.240 on 29th January 2013. Among the gems of misinformation there is that "The Charophyta are plants whose stems are either green or grey;..." which presumably excludes most of them, and "The phylum contains only one family, Characeae, with six genera and about two hundred species." which is wrong on so many levels it is difficult to know where to start. Most of the later discussion appears to relate exclusively to the Charales, and thus has a distorted perspective in relation to Embryophyta. The article needs these sections, but not with this content. Plantsurfer (talk) 15:59, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Please note that the stance that land plants are not algae was criticized in as "artificial". Presumably the same is true for excluding Embryphyta from Charophyta.Jmv2009 (talk) 18:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Charales, Charophyceae, and Charophyta
This article should be about Charophyta, the paraphyletic division of Streptophyta that includes 6 distinct classes, one of which is Charophyceae, with order Charales, or stoneworts. The others (Zygnematophyceae, Chlorokybophyceae, Coleochaetophyceae, Klebsormidiophyceae, and Mesostigmatophyceae) are known by these names, and other names refer to other groups. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.116.98.59 (talk) 19:52, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

new basal + divergent phylogeny of others
Streptofilum appears to be a basal streptophyte. However I'm NOT following the other claims of the cladogram in the ref, as it deviates too much from other refs (This ref claims Zygnematophyceae are basal Phragmoplastophyta, as well claiming that Mesostigmata, Chlorokyboceae and Spirotaenia together are sister to Phragmoplastophyta.)Jmv2009 (talk) 00:48, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Rank
Assigning formal taxonomic ranks to higher plant taxa such as the Charophyta is fraught with difficulty: where sources use ranks, they don't agree; where ranks are used, they clash with those widely used for subordinate groups; many sources don't use ranks, treating such groups as clades.

If the Charophyta are treated as a paraphyletic group excluding the Embryophyta then the rank of division/phylum can be made to work (i.e. not produce inconsistent rank orderings with subordinate groups). If the Charophyta are treated as including the Embryophyta, then problems arise in assigning the rank of division, since many sources still treat groups within the Embryophyta as divisions.

The taxonomy template for Charophyta used in the autotaxobox system has to contain a single choice of rank. At present, I favour using "unranked" here, which means that the traditional rank of division can be used lower down the hierarchy. An alternative is to use "superdivisio", for which there are sources. Comments welcome. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:20, 20 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Don't treat Charophyta as paraphyletic just because the ranks get consistent. That is madness. Under the mantra wikipedia:be_bold I changed it to superdivision for [Chlorophyta], [Streptophyta] and [Charophyta]. Look at my contribs. Feel free to revert. It's not done yet for spirotaenia, Mesostigmatophyceae and Chlorokybophyceae yet, which taken together would, according to the current trees be even above superphylum, on an even level with Chlorophyta and Streptophyta combined. Jmv2009 (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * "Unranked" doesn't mean "paraphyletic"; it's just an alternative to "clade" in most cases.
 * Are there sources for this rank for the taxa you've made superdivisions? You can't do it just because of the position in cladograms – this would be WP:OR – there has to be a source that explicitly uses this rank. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:48, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Rogiera et al has charophya as a superphylum/infrakingdom Jmv2009 (talk) 16:44, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually Ruggiero et al. (2015) have Charophyta as both a superdivision/superphylum and its sole division/phylum, not as an infrakingdom – the infrakingdom is Streptophyta. (I added Ruggiero et al. (2015) to Charophyta in the first sentence to support superdivision.) But what are the sources for Chlorophyta and Streptophyta as superdivisions? Since Ruggiero et al. treat Chlorophyta as a phylum/division and Streptophyta as an infrakingdom, either (a) you are assigning ranks not based on sources, which is WP:OR or (b) if there are sources that make Chlorophyta and Streptophyta superdivisions, then you are mixing classifications from different sources, which is WP:SYNTH. Either way, it's a problem.
 * For the record, their classification is as follows (where I've used division for phylum):
 * Subkingdom Viridiplantae
 * Infrakingdom Chlorophyta
 * Division Chlorophyta
 * Infrakingdom Streptophyta
 * Superdivision Charophyta
 * Division Charophyta
 * Superdivision Embryophyta
 * Division Anthocerotophyta
 * Division Bryophyta
 * Division Marchantiophyta
 * Division Tracheophyta
 * Note that Ruggiero et al.'s superdivision Charophyta is paraphyletic, since it excludes Embryophyta. (They use other paraphyletic taxa too.)
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 20:27, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

You are correct. However, predictably there is already pushback against using paraphyletic groupings. This is "get with the program" or "perish" adage, which of coarse takes time to settle. See e.g. Tedersoo's particular proposal for charophyta is to let Charophyta die. For wikipedia, I would actually propose to merge the charophyta and streptophyta articles, as some authors regard them (cladistically correct) as synonyms. See refs. ,, and. Jmv2009 (talk) 07:18, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Adl et al (2018) defines Charophyta as a synonym to Streptophyta, a phylum. Jmv2009 They also have the "kingdom" Enbryophyta as part of the "class" Phragmoplastophyta. How to deal? (talk) 20:05, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see those constructions in that source. In case I have missed them, could you please provide their precise locations within the paper. Plant surfer 23:25, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

"Streptophyta Bremer & Wanntorp 1981 [Charophyta Migula 1897, emend. Karol et al. 2009; Charophyceae Smith 1938; Jeffrey 1967; Streptophyta, Mattox and Stewart 1984]"

Streptophyta (P)
 * Chlorokybus atmophyticus
 * Mesostigma viridae Klebsomidiophyceae (F)
 * Phragmoplastophyta (C)
 * Zygnemataceae (F)
 * Coleochaetophyceae (O)
 * Characeae (F)
 * Embryophyta (K)

G = genus; F = family; O = order; C = class; P = phylum; K = kingdom

Please note that currently the taxonomic system follows these recommendations already (and I have not had a backlash) Jmv2009 (talk) 04:01, 3 February 2019 (UTC)