Talk:Pseudotsuga

Pseudotsuga origin
Because of their distinctive cones, Douglas-firs were finally placed in the new genus Pseudotsuga (meaning “false hemlock”) by the French botanist Carrière in 1867. The genus name has also been hyphenated as Pseudo-tsuga.
 * Kortoso (talk) 18:36, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Requested move: both genus and species articles

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Technical close to feed the BOT Mike Cline (talk) 19:48, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

– The discussion about renaming Douglas-fir has brought up an interesting point. The term "Douglas fir" is well-known in consumers of forestry products, such as lumber and Christmas trees. This use of "Douglas fir" refers to trees in the species Pseudotsuga menziesii. Trees in the genus Pseudotsuga can be referred to as "Douglas firs", but that is not common outside of botany. Therefore, let us move the species article to its common name Douglas fir, and move the genus article to its scientific name Pseudotsuga. —hike395 (talk) 19:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Douglas-fir → Pseudotsuga
 * Pseudotsuga menziesii → Douglas fir

Discussion of double-page move starts here
 * Later: I find Skinsmoke's arguments quite persuasive, but they apply to the species Pseudotsuga menziesii -- that's the tree that is used in construction and Christmas trees. All of the other species in the genus Pseudotsuga are much rarer, and as far as I know, are not commonly used in forestry. Collectively, all of the species in Pseudotsuga could be called "Douglas firs", but that is not common English usage. Therefore, I currently
 * reiterate my Support for moving Douglas-fir to Pseudotsuga
 * Support moving Pseudotsuga menziesii to Douglas fir
 * I think we ought to have a second separate move discussion for the latter, though. —hike395 (talk) 11:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment: I would be prepared to compromise on that one, provided the tree itself moves to the common English name.  It wouldn't need a separate move discussion, the normal process would be to link that move into this move discussion and extend the discussion period to allow people a chance to comment on the combined proposal.  Skinsmoke (talk) 11:54, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Endorse Skinsmoke It makes sense, doesn't it, that the common meaning in English should be presented in its most common form, and that the scientific genus-name be presented in Latin; works for me, and gets rid of all those hyphens in ordinary passages (largely non-scientific, at least not botanical ones, e.g. geography of forest regions and parks). Common meaning in common name, scientific meaning in Latin.  Fairly straightforward when you look at it that way.Skookum1 (talk) 12:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: I'm no Pseudotsuga subject-matter expert, but I think I can be consistent in saying ditto to Skookum1 here (and Skinsmoke) and support Hike395's proposition #1 above, if I understand everyone correctly. Eric talk 16:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support both suggestions of hike395. There should be an article titled Douglas fir (with or without a hyphen), but it should be for P. meziesii. Tdslk (talk) 19:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support moving Douglas-fir to Pseudotsuga. Oppose moving Pseudotsuga menziesii to Douglas fir. "Douglas-fir", with the hyphen, appears to be more common in reliable sources (as indexed by Google Scholar) than "Douglas fir", without the hyphen. "Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." (Please see WP:MOSNAME.) Also, we don't usually change article titles that have been stable with no compelling reason to do so. That does not exist for the latter move, in my opinion. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support (just in case anyone was really in doubt). There are far wider reliable sources than Google Scholar about a species as common as Douglas fir.  This is not something that just has relevance within the scholarly scientific community, but is of relevance to conservation of the environment, commercial forestry, the construction industry and the celebration of Christmas, none of whose results show up in that Scholar search (which is heavily botany and genetics biased).  Taking a wider view, the results show that in reliable sources, the unhyphenated version has an overwhelming lead over the hyphenated version.  Even taking the Scholar results, many of those hyphenated hits are where Douglas fir is used as an adjective (Douglas-fir forests and Douglas-fir plantations are two obvious examples), and I think (I could be wrong) that there is a case that it should be hyphenated when used as an adjective, even though it is not normal to do so when used as a noun (as the article title would be).  Skinsmoke (talk) 10:04, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment if that's the case, then it is probably the case that scientific organizations and institutions may have an evolved styleguide or two/ and that they should be consulted; scientific/academic publishing houses, for example, may have some.  CANENGLISH for example has the old CP/CBC styleguide as did in the print days all the newspaper chains; now they use botcheckers LOL....I"m approaching this also from the "common reader" not the specialist academics, and feel that Douglas fir's primacy in normal (non-scientific) print isn't insignificant; if anything it begs the question "do academic/scientific styles distinguish in some way between the tree and the genus in the use of "Douglas fir"/"Douglas-fir".  If not why not??  Not that I think there should be a new paradigm, but despite observance of scientific accuracy WP:COMMONAME should apply unless there's exceptions in WP:TITLE and so on that validate this; but what do you do a field, say tourism or literature or the media where "Douglas fir" IS the norm....would it not be original research, or an imposed style, to go against their sources and insist on the hyphen?  MOS:HYPHEN doesn't answer this, but I've never understood the kill-the-hyphen thing, and my phone's spellchecker continues to break up normal compound words into two, so who I am to argue with "progress". I'm a pretty widely read person, and "Douglas-fir" looks downright odd - as does "Western redcedar"....Skookum1 (talk) 14:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, with Pseudotsuga menziesii moving to the unhyphenated Douglas fir. I am concerned that some of the 400+ incoming links to Douglas-fir may be intended to link to the genus. I did edit the most obvious cases where genus was intended (the other species of Pseudotsuga) prior to my initial move request, and the vast majority clearly intend to be about the species, but there may be a few incoming links that end up going to the wrong article. I can't check all the incoming links, but I suppose a hatnote should be sufficient.Plantdrew (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment The hyphen is intended to indicate that Douglas firs are not "true firs" (in the genus Abies). In my opinion, it completely fails at it's intended purpose. The only people who know what the hyphen indicates are already aware that Douglas firs aren't "true firs". The hyphen convention is sometimes carried to ludicrous extremes (e.g. Mock-orange, False-plantain, which already have common names that indicate that they are actually not oranges or plantains). The hyphen convention is not widely supported by botanists. The US and Canadian governments share a list of quasi-official common names for plants which follows the hyphen convention, although I'm not aware of any governmental or botanical style guides that REQUIRE the hyphen. Nevertheless, governmental usage has given the hyphenated form a higher profile in web searches. In actual common usage, the unhyphenated form is far more popular.Plantdrew (talk) 03:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment "Douglas-fir", with the hyphen, is the correct form. Some databases:
 * http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxon.pl?30191


 * http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=183426


 * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Tree&id=3357&lvl=3&p=mapview&p=has_linkout&p=blast_url&p=genome_blast&lin=f&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock


 * http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200005380


 * http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_1/pseudotsuga/menziesii.htm


 * http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/psemenm/all.html Krasanen (talk) 11:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Rebuttal All but one of the above are U.S. government websites, and likely all followed the lead (and likely via copy/paste) of the original promulgator of the erroneous hyphen, which I think might have been the USDA. As someone with long experience proofreading U.S. government publications, I can assure you that English language excellence is not a hiring criterion there, that people who write those publications are not doing exhaustive research to verify the validity of their work, and that countless incorrect terms and notions (including random capitalization of common nouns--oy vey!) are perpetuated daily in their publications. Many people in the U.S. government, including at least one former president, pronounce nuclear "new-kew-lur". That doesn't make it right. Some related reading: Argumentum ad populum. Eric talk 13:25, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Like Plantdrew mentioned above, the hyphen is used because Douglas-fir is not "true fir" (Abies). See e.g. the paragraph "What's in a Name?" here:
 * http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/boise/learning/nature-science/?cid=fsed_009737
 * For the same reason Thuja plicata is western redcedar (not true cedar (Cedrus).Krasanen (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment That was apparently the reasoning of someone at USDA once upon a time, based on that person's fantasy of how hyphens are used in English, not based on how they are really used. You will not find that hyphen in any dictionary I've ever encountered. Here are just a few examples of non-hyphenated, multi-word common names that contain technically inaccurate terms in them: Spanish moss, prairie dog, sea lion, sea lettuce. Eric talk 18:18, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Given that User:Mike Cline performed the first half of this move, I will restart the discussion at Talk:Pseudotsuga menziesii, and make a new entry at WP:RM. —hike395 (talk) 17:01, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

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Source for hyphenation explanation
, I do not have access to the source that you restored. Does it point to a statement of the USDA's reasoning for the use of the hyphen? If the source merely points to a passage where the hyphen is used, that does not support the statement regarding some people's (erroneous) belief that a hyphen used this way constitutes a wink and a nod to indicate that the species is not a true fir. Eric talk 16:54, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * From : "The hyphen in the name indicates that Douglas-firs are not true firs, not being members of the genus Abies. Most dictionaries don’t recognize this distinction, however, including Merriam-Webster and Webster’s New World College Dictionary." The "rules" behind the construction of the names used by the USDA are laid out at (though Doug firs aren't specifically mentioned with regards to hyphenation). Plantdrew (talk) 17:29, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * if you look at the American Conifer Society link you gave above, at the bottom it's attributed to Wikipedia, so must be ignored. The Biota of North America Program link matches very well the "rules" in the USDA checklist. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:42, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * BONAP forms the core of USDA PLANTS; my understanding is that John Kartesz contributed almost all of the vernacular names in PLANTS (he's acknowledge here, although vernacular names are mentioned. Plantdrew (talk) 17:54, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The original of the reference given is available here. There isn't a specific explanation of the name, but the principles behind the formation of English names are given on pp. 14–15. Point 4 on p. 15 is the key: "Where, under well-defined usage, the terminal element of the allotted name of a genus is properly restricted to another genus, the name should be written solid or, if necessary for visual reasons, hyphened. For example, ... hazel is Corylus, so witch-hazel for Hamamelis is hyphened." These rules appear to be widely used, both in the US and elsewhere – the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland takes the same approach. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that entire Conifer Society page is a copy of our article.
 * Well, Peter, now I can at last give a name to my pain: The United States Forest Service Tree and Range Plant Committee of 1953. Now all I have to do is construct a time machine to go back to each of those guys' childhood English teachers and convince them to add a hyphenation module to the lesson plans. I added some wording so it does not look like we are promoting the fantasy that hyphens should be employed as the Forest Service asserted in that handbook. Eric talk 18:05, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * it's not a "fantasy", it's a standard technique employed in formulating the English names of many species in different countries, as can be clearly referenced. The technique is well motivated and well understood by botanists. I can easily add more sources explaining the approach. What is your source for denigrating it? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:50, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * My primary source is my native fluency in English. The notion that a hyphen should be used as indicated by that old Forest Service handbook is utterly false. This should be clear to anyone with a good understanding of English usage. You may want to read this discussion from 2007: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Archive14. Eric talk 23:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of that discussion. My native fluency in English makes it clear to me that a hyphen should be used as indicated. As WP:HYPHEN says, "Hyphens indicate conjunction". "Douglas fir" implies two separate elements: a "fir", of the kind "Douglas". "Douglasfir" or "Douglas-fir" clarifies that a single conjoined meaning is intended.
 * However, neither your intuition nor mine is of the slightest relevance. What matters is what relevant reliable sources say, and it's quite clear that authoritative sources of constructed English names of plants and other organisms use hyphens in this way. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Peter, those "authoritative" sources are merely carrying forward a spelling error based on a linguistic misconception by a botanist at the Forest Service a long time ago and promulgated as policy in that 1953 handbook. It was his misguided notion that a hyphen employed in this way should indicate to a reader that the second term is inaccurate. Pure invention on his part. If you read the move discussions above on this page, and the one I linked yesterday in this section, you will find plenty of evidence that this hyphen use is not the norm, that it is an idiosyncratic mannerism employed by a niche community. My authoritative sources are dictionaries, and they do not hyphenate this term. I reiterate my view that the note regarding this hyphen use does not improve our encyclopedia article. Eric talk 09:49, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Authoritative sources for constructed English names of organisms are those produced by the constructors. Genuinely common, vernacular English names are another matter. (Dictionaries regularly fail to format other organism names correctly, such as scientific names, cultivar names and selling names. This doesn't make their formatting something to be emulated.) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:53, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by constructed names. But in any case, as I and others have pointed out, the hyphenated spelling is an aberration, does not follow English usage standards, and is in the minority across many sources. Eric talk 22:23, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

there are genuinely common names, spontaneous names that were created by and used by people for the plants and animals around them that they knew and used. I find these fascinating reflections of folk history, particularly the way that some of them have been bowdlerized (e.g. cuckoo pint). Then there are made-up, constructed names, created by organizations who wanted English names for plants and animals that didn't have them, or wanted a single "standardized" English name. I'm very happy to accept the authority of dictionaries for spontaneous names. But the authority for made-up, constructed names, just like made-up scientific names, lies with the authors and organizations. The general approach followed by USDA and the Forest Service for "Douglas-fir" has been followed by many other bodies that made up English names, namely to use a "binomial" system, as described in one of the latest such lists of which I am aware, namely made-up English names for British fungi (see ): "the majority of names in the published list are composed of two words; loosely, an adjective (for individual species) written first and a noun (for genus or distinguishing character) in second place". This often necessitates reducing two words to one (so in the BSBI list of the English names of plants, Festuca filiformis has the made-up English name "fine-leaved sheep's-fescue", where "sheep's-fescue" is used as a single word for Festuca). As I noted above, it's easy to demonstrate that this approach has been used when making up English names over a considerable period of time and in different English-speaking countries for many different groups of organisms. "Douglas-fir" isn't a one-off example, but part of a worldwide, principled approach to constructing English names for organisms. There are variations in the degree to which hyphens are used; older systems seem to me to use hyphens more, newer ones (particularly in the US?) more likely to run the words together. So perhaps if made up now the English name of the genus would have been "Douglasfir". There's a discussion of hyphenation in made-up English bird names here. In this particular case, what cannot be disputed, since it is well sourced, is (a) the use of the hyphenated form in reliable botanical sources that are definitive for information such as descriptions, distributions, etc. (b) the intention that the constructed English name should indicate clearly that the genus and species are not firs. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Well said, and thanks for the explanation. I just wish there'd been an English teacher present when part (b) was conceived. Eric talk 10:39, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * um... It's interesting to look at two-part words used for the genus part of the English name at List of birds by common name for reasonably common birds and then try them with and without hyphens in Google ngrams; see e.g. sparrowhawk or hummingbird. My experience is that the hyphenated form is most common until the early 20th century. So, given that teachers lag in their adoption of changing language practices, I don't think you can be sure what your hypothetical teacher would have said then! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:23, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Pseudotsuga genus common names
The heading of this article includes three common names for the genus Pseodotsuga: Douglas fir, Douglas-fir, Douglas tree, Oregon pine. These same names are included in the article on Douglas fir species. Is this use of the same common names to designate a species and a genus based in some reliable source? --Auró (talk) 20:02, 15 February 2020 (UTC)


 * well, I can source "Douglas Fir" for both the genus and P. menziesii to ; GRIN uses "Douglas-fir" here for the genus and here for the species. I don't know about the other two. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:15, 16 February 2020 (UTC)