Talk:List of descriptive plant species epithets (A–H)

Aha!
Since it looks like this is becoming a parent article with subarticles, that solves a problem. For those few entries in Coombes and Harrison for which Stearn doesn't even have related words, I can move those to the subarticles. So I'm removing these entries for now. - Dank (push to talk) 20:18, 14 July 2020 (UTC) The only epithets that were lost under the new criteria [from E–H] are, (Harrison): encliandrus, epiphyticus,  facetus, fecundus, hepaticus, hypoglottis. - Dank (push to talk) 13:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC) just from Coombes: ecalcaratus, ephemerus, eurycarpus. - Dank (push to talk) 23:37, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * anthelmicus also gone Johnboddie (talk) 15:52, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not at POWO. Anthelmius is in the current list. - Dank (push to talk) 02:16, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley
I do not see any fundamental reason why this article should not pass FLC, but I have some comments.
 * I do not like the title. Common-adjective is too obscure and not even accurate. You include nouns such as hedgehog. How about "List of descriptive plant epithets"?
 * No preference. Happy to let reviewers decide. - Dank (push to talk)
 * I would prefer one list, not divided as E-H etc. It would be more convenient for readers and with the alphabetical ToC the length should not be a problem. It would also comply with the FLC requirement that lists should be comprehensive. But would the length put off reviewers? You may want to ask the advice of the FLC director.
 * Whoa. Well, for a start, it would break MediaWiki by going over 2MB (according to WP:ARTICLESIZE), so I'd have to strip out almost all the images. And that would mean that this would become a parent list for some subarticles (none of which would go through FLC). I don't mind, and might even like it, but there would have to be rules ... do you mind if I ask about this at WT:FLC?
 * Fine. Up to you. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:43, 14 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The lead is far too short. The standard is 3-4 paragraphs, and there is much more you can usefully say, such as information about your three sources.
 * I forgot to say that I intentionally put the bare minimum in the lead so that reviewers could make the call on the rest.
 * Again up to you, but in my view a nominator should provide a full lead to minimise work for reviewers. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:43, 14 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The alphabetical ToC should be lower down, immediately above the list.
 * Will do.
 * The example row looks odd to me. I suggest conveying the information in a paragraph in the lead.
 * No objection, if it's all going into one list.
 * How about an extra column with codes showing which of the three sources is used in each item?
 * That information is already present in the table ... reference #3 is always Stearn, #4 is Harrison, etc. #8 and higher are Coombes. [inserted: now #6, and #10 and higher.] That all works because Coombes is the only one that needs page numbers (in the table). If this is going to be all one list, we need to aggressively look for ways to economize on presentation of the data.
 * Hope this helps. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:07, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It helps a lot. - Dank (push to talk) 13:05, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Further comments

 * Looking at the article again, the arrangement between the lead and the table looks messy to me. I prefer the look of my article Suffolk Wildlife Trust, although this is of course a matter of personal preference.
 * I'm sure that I don't want to move anything in the first paragraph in the Key section into the lead. For a large majority of readers, all of that would be metadata ... they don't want to know where the words come from, they want to know what they mean. (I say this even though, for me personally, much of the point of doing the list is in the metadata.) That was true even before I started combining twelve lists into one list, which makes it even more important not to highlight metadata. Having said that ... are there any specific changes I can make that will help? - Dank (push to talk)
 * Why is the Lang. column not sortable?
 * Done. - Dank (push to talk)
 * I do not see the point of having a ref column. I would prefer changing the heading to Sources, with keys for S = Stearns etc and items in the source column shown as e.g. S[ref]. The reader could then see at a glance which epithets are based on which sources without having to check the ref individually in each case. Alternatively, you could delete the column and move the refs to the epithet column. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:45, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I added (in the Key section) that sources are always denoted by the same superscripts, except for Coombes [which, for now, is always 9 or higher]. The only reason I hadn't done this already was that it seemed against the spirit of WP:SELFREF (though it's not specifically mentioned in there, I just checked.) Otherwise: I don't think I can do what you're asking. 1. It seems redundant to me to define, say, H as "Harrison" and then cite it to Harrison, since we don't need page numbers. One or the other should be enough. 2. It's not meaningful (in and of itself) whether an epithet appears in the vocabulary section of Botanical Latin (by Stearn), or in Brown or Gledhill. Lewis does have significance, but only for Latin. Every epithet in the table and footnotes appears in Stearn (except as noted), and page numbers aren't needed, so citing to Stearn would be redundant. That leaves Harrison and Coombes ... but I need page numbers for Coombes, so a simple "C" wouldn't do it. Bottom line: I have an obligation to be accurate, but the metadata isn't going to be the point for most readers, and I don't want to draw special attention to it. - Dank (push to talk) 13:48, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Dudley: changed my mind, I can add H, C and B (for Botanical Latin) notations ... I can even put each of them in their own sortable column. (I'll get to that soon.) A Gledhill column would be pointless, since he lists virtually every entry. The downside is that I'll have to strip Brown out of the list completely, because he's not always accurate on botanical epithets. - Dank (push to talk) 19:19, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Great. On my first point, I should have made clear that I did not mean moving the paragraph under 'Key', just moving the 'Epithets and links to species' heading above the alphabetical ToC and deleting the redundant 'A-Z'. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:46, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Done, but that leaves me with nothing left over for the (now MOS-required) table caption, so I named my table "Table". If anyone wants to change that, feel free ... I'm not a fan of the new requirement. - Dank (push to talk) 20:51, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not see why you need the 'Table' caption. I have always put the caption above the ToC and no one has ever objected. The caption is 'Epithets and links to species'. I would personally delete 'and links to species' as superfluous. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:21, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, deleting "and links to species". Did you see this RfC from a couple of months ago? I think Justin (Koavf) just got blocked over this issue, so some people take it pretty seriously. On another issue ... John and I have decided we're okay with stripping most of the images out, but not all of them, and that means A to Z would take us well over the MediaWiki limits for a page. We'll have to divide it up into two lists. - Dank (push to talk) 11:53, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Lewis citations will still go in the middle column, immediately after whatever word (Latin or English, and rarely, a synonym) appears in that glossary. - Dank (push to talk) 00:16, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Dates on date palm.jpg
 * Replaced. - Dank (push to talk) 13:10, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

List of descriptive plant species epithets (A–H)
I didn't think these two pages needed disambiguation when I created them, but now I've done 8 lists of plant genus names, so the word "species" is probably needed. If no one disagrees, I'll move the pages. - Dank (push to talk) 12:52, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Bayton
I'm adding some rows now from Ross Bayton's The Gardener's Botanical: An Encyclopedia of Latin Plant Names. I'm not usually checking Coombes for these (there weren't many species epithets in Coombes not covered by Stearn, and they aren't listed alphabetically). - Dank (push to talk) 16:25, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Now 894 rows. - Dank (push to talk) 22:15, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

New list series
I did some work on this in preparation for a new (longer) expanding the list series. I replaced a few non-seed-bearing species. I did a quick and dirty regex count: the number of a, b, c rows etc. appears to be: 192 54 221 117 66 112 69 63. Count for the I-Z rows: 86 8 1 79 95 40 55 181 2 80 188 109 24 75 0 2 0 5. This suggests dividing up the series as follows: A-C 467, D-I 427, I-P 545, Q-Z 485. - Dank (push to talk) 18:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Until late November 2021, this list excluded "some repetitive suffixes for plant parts and colours". I got an objection at FLC that implied this might not be sufficiently precise, so I've replaced that with an exclusion of compound nouns in general. (That is, if the usual meaning has to rely on two nouns, I've eliminated the row.) It's not that many rows. Besides, a lot of the eliminated rows are better off eliminated: for instance, we don't have anything beginning with acanthus (thorny) now because Stearn's Dictionary and Botanical Latin list only acanthocarpus, a compound word ... but some species epithets refer to the genus Acanthus, not the general concept of thorniness, and there's an argument that it's not helpful to list words such as acanthus here when they already appear in the genus lists. - Dank (push to talk) 16:17, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

What does “cf.” refer to?
There are a number of instances like “albidus [...] off-white. Cf. albulus.”. What does the “cf.” here refer to? The most straightforward explanation, that it's just a note that there exists that related word, would just open another question: Why here in this list? Why not simply link “albidus” to Wiktionary, where these things are much better explained than can be expected here? The only reason I can see to include it here would be that it is specifically relevant for plant epithets. If so, then the question is: What is the relevance? If it sometimes occurs in epithets, then why not include it in the table like the other related terms? If not, how else can it be relevant? ◅ Sebastian 12:00, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The key used to have a line that said:
 * Cf. = "Compare with" (from sources other than Stearn's Dictionary)
 * Would that help? If you'd like to add Wiktionary links, for instance to albidus, that would be great. - Dank (push to talk) 16:21, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The explanation of “cf.” might help some people, although I think per WP:AUDIENCE we can assume the audience knows its meaning. The parenthesis adds some specific information, which may be useful, but I'd rather look for a more measured way to provide that, instead of adulterating a common abbreviation for one specific purpose. Neither of these address the point of my question: What exactly do you want from the reader? It seems, you understand “confer” differently from me. For me, it's basically an imperative. So, when you tell a reader to compare two things, she might say “Mmkay ... the two words look similar, so what?” ◅ Sebastian 19:06, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No objection. I'll remove "Cf." and add the corresponding rows "Also". (Btw, since you like the lists, you might want to look at the Main Page on Friday ... one of them will be "Today's Featured List".) - Dank (push to talk) 03:09, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Changing “cf.” to “also” is an improvement, since it takes away the imperative. However, the underlying problem remains; the intention of the reference is still not communicated to the reader. It's ambiguous whether the word following “also” is another descriptive plant species epithet, or just another Latin word that may have the same or a similar meaning. Adding the corresponding rows, as you originally intended, would have been unambiguous. Why did you change your mind? ◅ Sebastian 14:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * My health isn't as good now as when I wrote these lists; when I reviewed them yesterday, I saw the wisdom in giving less weight to some entries by not giving them their own rows, but I'm not sure that I'm entirely up to speed. I'll look again when I'm feeling better. - Dank (push to talk) 15:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The wish to somehow express the weight of entries is a good one; as long as it is intuitively understood it should help the reader. Maybe you could use parentheses, or a smaller font (I'd personally prefer the latter, but there might be accessibility problems, although I don't see that at Accessibility dos and don'ts), or bold for the more important ones. Anyway, get well soon! ◅ Sebastian 19:39, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Parentheses work for me if they work for you. - Dank (push to talk) 19:55, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, that's why I suggested them. ◅ Sebastian 02:26, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

clypeatus
It seems botanical names often contain ‘y’ when the original Latin contained ‘i’ (as in sylvestris < silvestris). Is that the same with clypeatus < clipeatus? The example given here is Nepenthes clipeata, which does not use the same spelling. Shouln't then at least clipeatus be included in the first column, too? (And maybe clipeolatus, if that occurs in epithets.) How common is the ‘y’ form – are there any examples? ◅ Sebastian 12:08, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm required to follow (and I do try to faithfully follow) the spelling in the particular sources I'm using here, especially for Featured Lists. If there are differences in spelling among the sources, I note that. Scholars have been switching "y" and "i" in Latin without much consistency for centuries. It's possible that, some day, people will want to add sources, and then we'll have to list more spellings, but I had trouble finding other sources that are as respected, and comprehensive, as the ones listed here. - Dank (push to talk) 16:10, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * What do you need the source for? For the Latin spelling with ‘i’ or for an example of a plant having the epithet with the letter corresponding to the entry in column 1?
 * The first shouldn't be a problem; at least my Langenscheidt school dictionary has all the words spelled with ‘i’. (But none of the spellings with ‘y’, BTW.)
 * The second is the opposite of a problem in the case of clipeatus: The list already contains the example of Nepenthes clipeata, and if that shouldn't be correctly cited, then we'd have more to worry about than this one entry in the list here. All that remains to do is just to add that spelling to the first column.
 * We have more than a dozen articles with clypeatus, so I don't see a problem here, either. If you really feel a need to back that up, why not just use one of the references used in one of those articles? An even easier fix – that would however not make the article easier to read – would be to add a link to any of those articles to the fourth column.
 * It's a little different with clipeolatus, since we have no plant with the ‘i’ in its epithet. (While we do have Alocasia clypeolata.) But I see no problem there, either: There already is no entry for that in the first column, so there's nothing to worry about.
 * Or did I misunderstand your concern? ◅ Sebastian 23:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't follow; this doesn't seem to be responsive to what I said. That's okay, of course. If you have concerns, go ahead and edit the list, and I'll take a look. - Dank (push to talk) 23:33, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was meant as a response to what you said. My first question of that message was oversimplified; let me try if it's clearer like this:
 * Why do write “I'm required to follow [...] the spelling in the particular sources I'm using here”? This begs a number of questions:
 * Who requires you to only use these particular sources? (Cf. my first bullet.)
 * Is the spelling clipeatus in any of your sources?
 * If not: Why don't you feel that requirement for clipeatus?
 * If yes: Why don't you list it in column 1?
 * The rest was all an effort to reach your concern; they aren't my concerns. I just hoped by listing possible answers to my first question I'd make it easy for you to just pick what you meant, but I now realize that that didn't help. ◅ Sebastian 04:44, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Botanical Latin mentions the Classical Latin word clipeus but gives only the cly- spelling for the epithet. Coombes has what is almost certainly a typo (clypeoplata); but Coombes rarely has typos like this one, and I've removed this reference until I have a chance to research this. Otherwise, the spelling I give is what the sources give. On the question of which sources should be used ... well, that's one of the main questions, isn't it? I asked many times at WT:PLANTS and got feedback several times, on that page and on various user talk pages; and of course, the point of the source review and the whole review process at WP:FLC is to provide a forum for these questions, and reviewers seemed to be satisfied with the answers, so you might want to look at the relevant WP:FLC pages for these lists. I'm not saying that anything requires us to use only these sources, but I think it's useful to repeat that WP:V requires us to follow the sources. WP:V is followed somewhat more stringently in Featured Articles and Featured Lists than elsewhere. Also, when a list is about language, then we have less wiggle-room than we do in lists that merely use language to study something other than language. - Dank (push to talk) 15:36, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, I'm beginning to understand. So there are two levels in some of your sources; clipeus is an example for the intermediate level: Latin✓ epithet✘. When you write “the cly- spelling for the epithet” I presume you mean not clypeus, but clypeatus, right? Yes, in this case I agree with the way you dealt with it: Keeping clipeus only in column 3.
 * The FLC process seems to be different from what I'd do, so you should take my words with a grain of salt. E.g. earlier I suggested links to Wiktionary, but I now realize that today's FL contains none of them, so the people who decide about FL seem to see that differently.
 * You lost me with your point about WP:V: That requires us to use verifiable sources, and even specifically includes books published by respected publishing houses, so why shouldn't you use a generally respected dictionary as a source? ◅ Sebastian 21:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The rare times when there's been an argument over including dictionaries, I've usually been on the side of including them. The usual dictionaries have been a little disappointing in their spotty coverage of plant epithets and etymologies, and so far, you're the first person to speak up in their favor. But if a discussion at WT:PLANTS or at FLC results in support for including some dictionary for some purpose, that wouldn't bother me at all. - Dank (push to talk) 21:33, 25 February 2022 (UTC)