Talk:Phylloclade

Merger proposal
A Google search for the terms cladophyll, cladode and phylloclade return 5,800, 12,300, and 25,500 results, respectively. Cladode redirects here to cladophyll, but it seems cladophyll and phylloclade are redundant articles, as is herbaceous stem. I propose merging cladophyll and herbaceous stem into phylloclade (this article). -- BlueCanoe (talk) 19:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that this material is better handled by wiktionary. As noted in the discussion at cladophyll, that page is quite confused, and I'd like to get it deleted. Nadiatalent (talk) 12:16, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the merger tag because this has been largely cleaned up. Nadiatalent (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * For the record, note that "Cladophyll" has been deleted as an article; it's now only a redirect to Petiole (botany).
 * What's not clear to me is why the general term "cladode" redirects to Plant stem, while the more specialized term "phylloclade" has its own article. Given their occurrence in cacti, for example, cladodes are more common and more widespread than phylloclades. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That isn't a good situation. Note that if you follow the link for Cladode you get to a definition with another link to Cladode; this time that resolves to the wiktionary entry. There has never been a proper page for Cladode in wikipedia, do you feel energetic enough to create one? I think that people object to long page names, otherwise I'd favour "Cladodes and phylloclades". Nadiatalent (talk) 20:24, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As noted by your kindly expressed sympathy on my talk page, I don't at present have time for what I am currently trying to do. However, I would myself find "Cladodes and phylloclades" acceptable as a title. I guess it could be argued that "Cladodes" alone would be ok, since phylloclades are a special case (when is a cladode sufficiently leaf-like to become a phylloclade?), but given that "phylloclade" produces more than twice as many Google hits as "cladode", perhaps it should be in the title, although maybe a redirect would be enough? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It does sound good to just call the page Cladode and have Phylloclade as a redirect, with a subsection and photos to explain it. Perhaps I'll get around to putting in a small version of that change later today. Nadiatalent (talk) 12:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Contradicting definitions
Two very scholarly references completely contradict one another on the distinction between cladodes and phylloclades. I've asked the Biodiversity Heritage Library if they would consider scanning the 1905 English translation of Goebel's book, which is so often mentioned as the ultimate authority for all questions about plant development. In the meantime, here's a small quote from page 448: "Phylloclades and Cladodes. The more the segmentation of the nodes and internodes disappears, and the distichously arranged leaves become reduced, the more does the shoot-axis diverge from its ordinary habit, and if at the same time it assumes limited growth it acquires a striking resemblance to a leaf, and is designated a phylloclade. This name is best reserved for such leaf-like shoot-axes of limited growth, whilst other widened axes may be called cladodes." Nadiatalent (talk) 11:49, 2 April 2012 (UTC)