Talk:List of garden plants in North America

Origin
This list was seeded (ha ha) from The American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. Stan 02:53, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I dont understand the necessity of this page. Should it just be renamed "giant arbitrary list of plant genera"? If I start adding a list of bryophytes that ive managed to cultivate and encourage in my garden is it still relevant? I definitely agree, as suggested below, that at least a sentence or two describing the plants would be good and make this article useful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.82.228 (talk) 06:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Page size
Huge page - is it time to split it up by individual letters, or at least into four pages A-C, D-K, L-Q, R-Z? - MPF 14:55, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC) Doesn't seem that big to me... :-) It's not likely to get many additional entries, although it would be good to have more annotation-type text for each entry ("popular tropical succulents", etc) so that readers can get some idea of where they'll end up when they click on the link. Four pages is probably about right; it's a major pain in the posterior to manage the cross links between lots of little sublist pages. Stan 16:19, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Acca
I put Acca back, because even if it's only a synonym, it needs to be in the list at its usual alphabetic position, so that someone who doesn't know it's a synonym can find it. Especially given the brokenness of WP search machinery, indexes like this are often the only reliable way to find something by name. Stan 00:49, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * We've done something similar and fairly extensive at List of dog breeds because you don't know what people will be looking for. Elf | Talk 01:21, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Normal names
Hi, guys! This is the first time I've ever left a message in this WikiProject. I was wondering that if we could change the names of the "plant list". I mean that the scientific name is interesting but this might be confusing the people. For example, I've seen the scientific name in the list that says Tanacetum (tansy). This can be right but there are also other plants with different names but the same scientific name since the feverfew herb is also in the tanacetum family. Do you guys get what I mean? Typhoon2013 (talk) 06:21, 8 November 2014 (UTC)


 * This page is explicitly designed to be a list of garden plants ; possibly the title of the article should make that clear. I guess there could be a page for "list of garden plants by common name", although there's a List of plants by common name. Like the anonymous commentator above, I don't myself see the point of the page. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:13, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok. I've seen the other page you are talk about and it is good but "messy". How about I should make a sandbox about this and I'll show it to you when I'm ready. Nice to meet you. Typhoon2013  (talk) 06:56, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A serious problem for me with such lists is sourcing. It would be quite legitimate to tag every entry in List of plants by common name with "citation needed". Another serious problem is regional and national bias. For example, in List of plants by common name, "Silver Birch" is said to be Betula papyrifera, but in Britain and Ireland it's always Betula pendula and I've never heard anyone call this species "White Birch", which is sometimes used for Betula pubescens. There's a list of English names used in the British Isles – BSBI List 2007 (xls) – which could be used as the basis of a "List of plants by BSBI common name", just as one could have "List of plants by Jepson common name" or "List of plants by Flora of North America common name", but a generic list is almost inevitably going to be both inadequately sourced and biassed.
 * So how will you obtain the data for a list of garden plants by common name? How will you reference the entries? Will you try to cover all English speaking countries? How about non-English common names? How is "garden" defined – does it include all kinds of horticulture? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:11, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, yeah. It is kind of confusing to 're-develop' this page. I thought that we could add some images at the side if it is a good idea. Another way is to separate the flowers, trees, vegetables and herbs. As we know, there are hundreds and thousands of plant species discovered, so that's the problem about the page and how are we going to set it up. I think we need other users and admins contributing to this too. Typhoon2013  (talk) 08:39, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

"Index of flowers with entries in the Wikipedia" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Index of flowers with entries in the Wikipedia. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Regards, SONIC  678  17:51, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Pondering deletion
While this list comes from an authoritative source on the subject of gardening, it's just a single source, and I suspect its authors would admit to some subjectivity (and print page limits!) in the choice of what to include. When created, there were a lot of red links needing articles, but that's mostly filled in now. Googling shows a number of random gardening-related websites suggesting this list as a starting point for finding out more about specific types, but I didn't try to determine if they were popular, new, old, etc. That purpose could be equally well served by redirecting to Category:garden plants (this list is so old, it predates the category system), and that way we don't break incoming links. Stan (talk) 01:58, 13 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect to the category. I agree with deletion. I cannot see how it's possible to create a sensible neutral-point-of-view article listing garden plants in an international encyclopedia. You would have to merge lists from multiple national sources, with all the problems over synonyms, etc. There are other issues, too. Does "plants" here mean "species"? What about the innumerable cultivars of many popular garden plants – there are articles for cultivars in some genera (e.g. orchids, bromeliads, elms). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:42, 14 May 2022 (UTC)