Talk:Malvaceae/Archive 2

Malvaceae s.s. vs. Malvaceae s.l. and APG vs. "traditional" classifications
Berton apparently has the mistaken belief that I and other editors are arguing in favor of the APG classification of Malvaceae s.l. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I have tried to do is show that many botanists, both before and since the APG classifications, have challenged the "traditional" circumscription of Malvaceae, and also that many botanists who specialize in the Malvales have accepted Malvaceae s.l. I have no stake in this argument; I am not APG's biggest fan, nor am I a Malvales specialist (although I do have some knowledge of systematic botany and the taxonomic literature). I have no idea what consensus will emerge, or whether Malvaceae s.s. or Malvaceae s.l. or something in between is a better classification (although from what I've read, it seems pretty clear that Malvaceae will be expanded to include at least Bombacaceae). And even if I did have an opinion, it would be irrelevant to this article, which should be about facts, not opinions. My concern with this article is that Berton has, over and over, inserted a non-neutral POV in favor of Malvaceae s.s. and against Malvaceae s.l. (or anything in between), and particularly against the APG classification. He insists on wording the article in such a way to strongly imply that Malvaceae s.s. is the better system, and uses a list of taxonomists, all of whom are dead, none of whom were specialists in Malvales as far as I can tell, and many of whom published over a century ago--to support a "consensus" that never really existed and would be irrelevant in the face of new data anyway. (Enough "traditional" classifications have been proven to be flat-out wrong that I give little credence to tradition when it comes to classification.) Since he insists on retaining his sacred list of deceased botanists, my only alternative has been to provide a list of my own to show that this classification has often been challenged, and is being explicitly rejected by many of the Malvales specialists themselves (and who are not necessarily members of APG). If I appear to be arguing in favor of Malvaceae s.l., it is only because I am trying to balance Berton's advocacy of Malvaceae s.s., and he will not allow anybody to edit those sections of the article. Moreover, if I do ever come to the opinion that Malvaceae s.l. is better than Malvaceae s.s., it will be because the Malvales specialists have accepted it, not because the APG says so. MrDarwin 14:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I have added the dates for the various classifications systems that supported the "traditional" Malvaceae. If Berton insists on retaining this list, I am going to insist on retaining the dates to give readers of the article some historical perspective. Ideally, the date given should be the date of the volume in which the treatment of Malvaceae appears but I don't have that information at hand right now. MrDarwin 14:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * MrDarwin,

On February me and Mr. Hinsley achieved to a consent (you were absent of the discussion). I understand his (Mr. Hinsley's) position perfectly: he makes a great work to divulge the best available knowledge on Malvaceae (with excellent site on that), and he doesn't have sectarian position on the theme. As for me, my largest concern is as the stability of Taxonomy, I resolutely don't like radical changes, without justifications; but I am not intransigent, if I see that the best for Taxonomy is that families of Order Malvales should be gathered, in Malvaceae s. l., then I will accept willingly.

On the contrary, with regard to you (MrDarwin): you insist on distorting everything and just look to want to polemize.

Some explanations: Malvaceae s.s. or s.l. are POV. Malvaceae s.s., obviously, it is not non NPOV. The arguments that I mentioned in the article pro Malvaceae s.s. they are not non NPOV, because they are based fully (they are verifiable facts), and not mere opinion:
 * a) list of eminent botanists that accepted Malvaceae s. s.
 * b) historical consensus among these, with base on the morphologic data
 * c) homogeneity of the family, confirmed cladistically
 * d) wide diffusion of the acceptance of this circumscription: databases, herbaria, identification keys, etc

Moreover: I didn't write that Malvaceae s.s. was better. If you deduced that since then my arguments, so I did very well. Yes, I reverence very much the great taxonomists (died, like Jesus Christ, but alive in your great ideals), even I have learned languages (Latin, among them) to look for the knowledge that they transmitted, and that you, irreverently, look to despise. These " compilers ", like you say, they were not alone, they counted with an army of great specialist collaborators or they were supported directly (they compiled) in your works. Finally, in more a maneuver to minimize my arguments, you place dates, but everything well, go ahead... Berton 10:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that we have a common conception of a consensus, in the light of subsequent edits on your part, but I'll go ahead and rewrite the article and see what people think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:158.152.112.82 (talk • contribs)
 * Mr. Hinsley I should remind you that this is not a new Nupedia. Berton 12:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I changed the scope of my web site to Malvaceae sensu APG about 5 years back, and taxonomic stability was one of reasons. In the light of current knowledge greater taxonomic stability in the form of the retention of Malvaceae s.s. is more that offset by greater taxonomic stability elsewhere. There's several places where APG can be criticised for lumping (short of checking the literature in detail, Caryophyllales and Ericales come to mind, but this is in part be a result of the lack of formal supraordinal taxa) but Malvaceae s.l. is not, in my opinion, one of them. It is unfortunate that a well-defined group like Malvaceae s.s. is lost, but the impact elsewhere of retaining it outweighs this, especially because of the paraphyletic nature of Bombacaceae (even after Durioneae is excluded). SRH.
 * There is the cases of: Asclepiadaceae into Apocynaceae, Chenopodiaceae into Amaranthaceae, extinction of Flacourtiaceae, Scrophulariaceae, and so on (the future will say)... Berton 12:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * You may have falling into the trap of personalising the issue - of judging material by who wrote it, rather than by the content. (You might not be the only one to have done so.) I may well be further from your position that MrDarwin is. (For example, I think that there are good pragmatic reasons for WikiPedia to standardise on APG. But there are also good pragmatic reasons to incorporate entries for all the Cronquist families, orders, subclasses and classes.) SRH
 * I think that APG's classification is fad, it won't resist at the time, after a great revaluation of the genetic research and of the erroneous cladistic method and therefore it will be not officially adopted by Wikipedia. Berton 12:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The reason that your material is nNPOV is that you are selective in your presentation of facts. It includes authors that recognised Malvaceae s.s., but not those that didn't. It includes evidence for the monophyly of Malvaceae s.s., but not the evidence for the polyphyly of the other families. SRH
 * I would like to support the above statement fully:
 * "(For example, I think that there are good pragmatic reasons for WikiPedia to standardise on APG. But there are also good pragmatic reasons to incorporate entries for all the Cronquist families, orders, subclasses and classes.) SRH".
 * To some extent I also agree with Berton's statement that APG will pass, but only as far as any taxonomic system (based on best evidence as known at that time) is ephemeral. Whatever the future may think of APG and however long it may last, the fact is APG is here now, and all the Wikipedia's have adopted it de facto. This makes it the basic frame of reference (even if only to present the evidence of where it is likely to be wrong, or where it has been superseeded). Brya 18:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed "NPOV" text
Malvaceae is family of flowering plants containing Malva, the mallow genus, and its relatives. In common with many other plant families different botanists (sometimes the same botanists) have over the years taken different views as to which plants should have be included in the family. However, unlike the situation with many plant families, there are two different clusters of concepts which might be encountered by the contemporary reader - the traditional Malvaceae or Malvaceae sensu strictu, of which Malvaceae sensu Cronquist may be taken as an examplar, and the newer Malvaceae sensu lato, of which Malvaceae sensu APG may be taken as an examplar.

Malvaceae s.s. is a well defined group which historically has been nearly universally recognised as a family or part of a larger family. Nearly all 20th century works recognised it as a family. It is characterised by a combination of echinate pollen, stamen filaments fused to form a column closely enclosing the style, and unilocular, bisporangiate, anthers. It includes about 75 genera, totalling about 1,500 species, including the mallows, cotton plants, okra, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.

However the closely related families Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae and Tiliaceae, which together with Malvaceae s.s. form the core of Malvales of the Cronquist system were not so clearly defined, and recent studies of DNA sequences, from several loci, have found that all three of these families are polyphyletic, and furthermore Bombacaceae is paraphyletic with respect to Malvaceae s.s.. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's proposed resolution of this taxonomic problem is to incorporate the four families into a single, extended, Malvaceae which includes about 250 genera. The additonal genera include lindens, kapok, baobabs, balsa, etc.

Malvaceae sensu APG is divided (Bayer et al. 1999, Bayer & Kubitzki 2003) into 9 subfamilies.
 * The plants in Malvaceae s.s form the core of subfamily Malvoideae.
 * The plants in Bombacaceae are distributed between subfamilies Malvoideae, Bombacoideae and Helicteroideae (the genus Maxwellia is transferred to Byttnerioideae).
 * The plants in Sterculiaceae are divided between the subfamilies Sterculioideae, Helicteroideae, Dombeyoideae and Byttnerioideae.
 * The plants in Tiliacae are divided between the subfamilies Brownlowioideae, Tilioideae and Grewioideae.

Much recent literature uses Malvaceae sensu APG, but many botanical databases, flora, identification keys and herbaria continue to use Malvaceae s.s. Intermediate circumscriptions have been proposed, and it is possible that in the future a consensus will settle on one of these, rather than on Malvaceae s.s or Malvaceae sensu APG.


 * S.R. Hinsley, 158.152.112.82 13:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for making the effort. On a first reading I would be okay with this. It appears that this is not markedly superior to what MrDarwin wrote, or for that matter to what I wrote, but everybody has his own style of writing, and there is not much point in arguing about style. The two main points that are noticeable is that this draft sketches matters in broad outlines, a strategy which in my mind suggests that elsewhere additional material is available presenting matters in more detail. Or in other words to the average reader this is a little vague (if it remains limited to this). The second point is that I don't like the layout of the text dealing with the subdivision, and I feel that it would be more reader friendly to adopt a layout like:
 * The plants in (the former) Malvaceae s.s form the core of subfamily Malvoideae.
 * The plants in (the former) Bombacaceae are distributed between subfamilies Malvoideae, Bombacoideae and Helicteroideae (the genus Maxwellia is transferred to Byttnerioideae).
 * The plants in (the former) Sterculiaceae are divided between the subfamilies Sterculioideae, Helicteroideae, Dombeyoideae and Byttnerioideae.
 * The plants in (the former) Tiliacae are divided between the subfamilies Brownlowioideae, Tilioideae and Grewioideae.
 * Of course, it is not me that you have to convince. Brya 18:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm cool with that, except that "(the former)" is unnecessary, and implies the correctness of the revised characterisation (which would lead to complaints about POV). SRH, 158.152.112.82 20:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well "former" is perhaps not the best choice of words. I am just unhappy about using two (or more) names in the same sentence when each is used in a different classification. A plant cannot belong to both Tiliaceae and Tilioideae (sensu APG). The distinction could also be conveyed by the chosen tense of the verb, maybe
 * "The plants in Tiliacae would then be divided between the subfamilies Brownlowioideae, Tilioideae and Grewioideae."
 * might do? Brya 21:45, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * There's nothing particularly wrong with "former" - in other contexts I would use it myself. Other than that I seem to be more sanguine than you about readers ability to read material in context.

I haven't had the time or energy to deal with this lately. Obviously, I would prefer my own edits. One thing I would note is that S.R. Hinsley's edits rewrite the article quite a bit more radically than the ones I have been proposing, and for that reason alone it's hard to compare the two versions. MrDarwin 18:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * When it comes to style of writing, my preference would run 1) my own style, 2) MrDarwin's style, 3) S.R.Hinsley's style. Going by content I would like to see a synthesis of as much hard data as has been entered. The big question remains what would be acceptable to Berton as giving an adequate representation of his perspective.  Obviously none of us (except Berton) likes the WAY Berton has represented this, although clearly it does deserve to be represented.
 * So, I will go along with anything that is free from anything that is really objectionable (to any one person), so anything that is more or less acceptable to everybody. Brya 22:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * My concern is not so much with style as with content and layout. I think the proposed rewrite loses some of the information that is already in the article. I really don't think the original article as written is far off from being a good one, if only Berton would allow us to make the small POV edits he keeps objecting to. MrDarwin 16:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I will go along with that: the present version contains some quite decent parts. The only thing I really hate is the "consensus" bit and attendant text; also the idea that assigning rank follows some natural law. At this point I am quite unsure of what would be acceptable to Berton. If it is really necessary we could just override him, but I would rather avoid that. Brya 18:47, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * What information do you think should be kept and has been lost? I don't think we want the list of taxonomists whose circumscription of Malvaceae approximated Cronquist's (or works following APG), or the reference to IPNI, or the paragraph on Edlin (which currently serves the purpose of "balancing" the list of taxonomists), or the Perveen et al reference (demonstrating the use of the "APG" classification in the literature). (I'm not sure that the echinate/rugose pollen distinction between Malvoideae and Bombacoideae is valid.) S.R. Hinsley, Lavateraguy 20:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for taxoboxes
User:Brya brings up the point that the taxoboxes are excessively rigid. Take a look at how they dealt with it in the French Wikipedia: Article on Tilia which presents both the "classical" and the "phylogenetic" classifications for the families in the taxobox. A possible way to go for disputed families until there is a clear consensus among botanists and thereby reducing the confusion of us poor laymen. This is just a suggestion which you might want to talk over at WikiProject Plants or WikiProject Tree of Life. I got here and checked out the discussion as a result of a comparision I made at Talk:Tamarack Larch. (Where some chiming in on my proposed move/rename would be appreciated). Luigizanasi 05:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

List of Genera in Malvaceae s.s.
Apart from the problem of extracting a list of genera in Malvaceae s.s. from Kubitzki & Bayer when K&B don't have a Malvaceae s.s., the modified list is not based on Kubitzki and Bayer - Andeimalva and Bordasia are not in K&B (nor is Thepparatia, added earlier) and while you could make a case for adding Camptostemon and not Pentaplaris and Uladendron, you need to reference recent papers and not K&B to do so - Camptostemon appears to fall into a clade with Lagunaria and Howittia, and Pentaplaris and Uladendron are more basal. The modifications (if not original research) appear to be based on Malvaceae Info, but if this is the case leaving out Pentaplaris and Uladendron would seem to be original research.

I was never happy with the presence of the Kew list - it's fairly badly dated. For example the latest paper I can find accepting Notoxylinon is a 1947 paper by Hutchinson. (He rejects it in the Genera of Flowering Plants.) The sinking of Notoxylinon in Gossypium by P.A. Fryxell dates, I think, to 1965. Erioxylum is similar, and some of the other names are not current, or not commonly used. Lavateraguy 01:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, Lavateraguy, Andeimalva and Bordasia: I based on you and at IPNI website to complete the list, your merit.
 * With regard to Camptostemon the source is Heywood et al. 2007. Bayer & Kubitzki say (p. 237): "A number of genera (e.g. Pentaplaris, Camptostemon, Lagunaria, Uladendron) ... are intermediate and have been referred to either subfamily [Malvoideae or Bombacoideae] (Alverson et al. 1999; ...)."
 * With regard to Kew list is based on Brummitt, R. K. (1992). Vascular Plant Families and Genera.It is outdated, but I do not know any another that replace it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Berton (talk • contribs).

Species counts (generic)
The genus article for Sida says 125 to 150 species (but Kubitzki & Bayer says 100). My files have 122 species, plus 40 odd undescribed taxa from Australia (some of which may turn out to fall into one of the published species), but my files don't cover the whole of the world. 200 species doesn't seem impossible, though I don't know of a source. OTOH, Sida is polyphyletic, and one of these days someone is going to chop it into bits. (There are already quite a few segregates, but Dendrosida looks as if it should go back into Sida.) K&B suggest that many species should be transferred to Sidastrum.

Sida is not the only genus with problems. Hibiscus is massively paraphyletic, and one proposal is to sink several genera, including Pavonia in Hibiscus giving a Hibiscus with over 600 species. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:04, 17 November 2007 (UTC)