Talk:Flora of Great Britain and Ireland

Untitled
I think this list is cool (been contemplating trying to build one for Nevada). I have a few suggestions. First, instead of the synthetic 8-part division, which requires a table to explain it, break it down to per-order and/or per-family ( [ [ list of Asteraceae of Britain and Ireland ] ], [ [ list of Malvales of Britain and Ireland ] ] ), which also link conveniently from the articles on each taxon. Second, the table should list systematic name first, and skip common names if there are none, instead of the odd-sounding "a Dandelion". I'd also skip the tabular form and just do plain list, with common names and other info as parenthetical note after systematic name - tables just don't do as well across a range of screen widths and browser types. Stan 23:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. This is still very much a work in progress - some of the odd-looking stuff will appear less odd as I work on it - SP-KP 23:17, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

What are the criteria for inclusion? I see quite a few introduced species, but very far from all, and not even all species that are naturalised, but there are also one or two commonly planted species in that are not naturalised. There's also quite a bit of checking to be done that names (taxonomy and particularly common names) point directly to existing pages (I'll do some, but whether I can get it all done is another matter!) - MPF 11:29, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the offer of checking links. Keep with me for a little while longer and I'll add details about sources. I have a few other species to add, which may include your missing naturalised/introduced ones, but if not, let me know and I'll try to work out why they're not in the sources I used. - SP-KP 17:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

List of British hedgerow plants
The List of British hedgerow plants duplicates these pages - the great majority of British plants can be found in a hedgerow somewhere, so there is little or no value in having it as a separate list - MPF 13:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is, as you say, that the List of hedgerow plants has become a "List of plants found in a British hedgerow somewhere". If it continues to exist as a separate entity, it needs to be restricted to plants which have a pattern of occurrence as a constituent component of hedgerow habitats, and where we can support inclusion of each species by an inline citation. The NVC could be a sensible starting point for such a list. SP-KP 13:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Picture Index
Hi. I've started creating a picture index of plants of the British Isles to supplement this. It's very much in its infancy right now, but you can see the beginnings here. I'm contemplating a different category system to that used here, such as perhaps splitting things into where they are generally found, or something like that, since I imagined it being most useful to people with little knowledge of taxonomy, however that is for when I have more in it! I'm finding it quite hard to choose pictures, since I don't actually know a lot about plants, so I don't necessarily know which pictures show the most usefully identifying features. I have noticed that there are often a lot of pictures on commons, even when there isn't an article on a species, so it could be a lot of work getting this as useful as possible. I appreciate any help :-) Nice work on this list here, by the way! Most handy. Skittle 12:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Use of British Isles
Codf1977 (talk) 15:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Links to English names
Having every English name in the child articles as a link seems a horrible idea. In most cases the name of the article is under the scientific name, as it should be. By linking every English name, you get at best a redirect to the article under the scientific name or at worst a link to an unrelated article or a disambiguation page (e.g. Daisy). So you're either double-linking or just confusing the reader. I can't see any good reason to keep the English names as links. -- Fyrefly (talk) 22:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on List of the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071118191411/http://www.species.ie/ to http://www.species.ie/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 01:39, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Change of title
The term "British Isles" has a clear geographical definition as per its article, except for the inclusion or exclusion of the Channel Islands. However, it has become increasingly politically unacceptable to include the Republic of Ireland within a unit using the word "British". What was the "Botanical Society of the British Isles" changed its name to the "Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland" – which, one can speculate, has the advantage of having the same abbreviation, BSBI. So there's a case for this article being at "Flora of Britain and Ireland". However, it's a problematic phrase in my view, because of the ambiguity of "Britain" in this context – does it mean "Great Britain" or the "United Kingdom"? If the latter, then "Ireland" must mean the "Republic of Ireland". So I think that "Flora of Great Britain and Ireland" is a better title, and it corresponds to the five-volume work Flora of Great Britain and Ireland – but there does need to be a statement about the status of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which are not part of either Great Britain or Ireland. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, I agree Great Britain and Ireland seems the least controversial and most representative of the literature. Do you know why the two islands are talked about together in botany? Is it a geological reason or political? I feel each island should have it's own page really, and after looking at the lists themselves there is actually very little that separates them. Cheers, Jack (talk) 14:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * it's partly historical, I think, but also because it makes botanical sense. Realistically, the alternative would be a division along political lines (UK vs. Republic of Ireland), which doesn't make sense. Lists for each major island would have such a high overlap that I can't see the point. There's also the issue of the Isle of Man and Shetland. The "British Isles" are a sensible unit, whatever they are called. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Removal of key and using descriptive text in status column in articles
I have edited List of ferns and fern allies of Great Britain and Ireland to remove the key and add descriptive text rather than simply using * and e. I've also added colour as follows:

I think this improves the tables, as it removes a lot of whitespace whilst also allowing readers to quickly identify which plants are native, introduced and extinct. Personally, I found the use of asterisks unhelpful as I thought they were easily missed where they were placed in the cell (right next to the cell border) which is what prompted me to make this change. It also means if, for any reason, a section of the article was linked to a reader doesn't have to scroll all the way back up to the top to find the key.

I'd like to apply this change to all of the articles on the flora of Great Britain and Ireland, but I thought it would be best to ask for feedback before going ahead, e.g. do others support this change, is "Native" a suitable description or would another word be preferable, and are the colours used appropriate (I've tried to follow colour guidelines on accessibility). Adam Black talk &bull; contributions 15:21, 21 May 2024 (UTC)