Talk:Lobelia pedunculata

RFC Lobelia or Pratia?

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Most vendors and books call this plant a Pratia, as does the RHS: Pratia Pedunculata versus Lobelia pedunculata.

Wikispecies reckons Lobelia, as does Kew, in contrast to the Australian Plant Name Index which goes with Pratia. My amateur understanding is that the botanists consider Lobelia correct for these plants rather than Pratia (') (discussed at ').

Should Wikipedia follow Wikispecies, or does wp:Commonname rule here? Batternut (talk) 12:42, 26 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia policy is to use the current official botanical name; see e.g. Nasturtium. It calls the common garden plant with red and yellow flowers "Tropaeolum" as botanists do, not "nasturtium" as gardeners do.
 * According to this 2017 source, the genus Pratia was recently merged into Lobelia. If that is correct, this article needs to be renamed. I hope a competent botanist can find a better source for the merge; I have failed. Maproom (talk) 07:07, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

The topic-specific naming convention here is wp:Flora, which says 'The guiding principle of this guideline is to follow usage in reliable sources. In the vast majority of cases, this will be the current scientific name'. The nasturtium example shows the scientific name being favoured over vernacular name; counter examples are given in wp:Flora. The most common vernacular name for this plant is 'blue star creeper'.

The choice with this article is between the currently accepted scientific name versus a more commonly used scientific name (which is now treated as a synonym). For this plant, the older scientific name "Pratia Pedunculata" is more commonly used that the current name "Lobelia Pedunculata": Google book search gives about 700 for "Pratia Pedunculata" versus 73 for "Lobelia Pedunculata". Google scholar search also favours Pratia (83) over Lobelia (24). Publishers and academics may well convert to "Lobelia Pedunculata", but for now RS usage is with Pratia. Batternut (talk) 12:47, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Lobelia - per WP:FLORA we should use the current scientific name unless " reason to believe that the name change is contentious, use the new name regardless of usage in older reliable sources. It is not appropriate for us to retain archaic terminology while we wait for usage in older reliable sources to be swamped by usage in newer sources."
 * The policy directly states to use the current scientific name - and there are, as far as I know, no arguments over changing the scientific name for this plant back again. (pinging User:Batternut in case they wish to change their !vote) Keira  1996  07:04, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep, that bit of the wp:flora is pretty clear. I hadn't noticed it. I'll make it so. Thanks all. Batternut (talk) 17:09, 28 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.