Talk:Seed plant

links and anthophyte
The content on this page references Magnoliopsida and flowering plants, where the first article actually redirects to Dicotyledon. The resulting fork is difficult to traverse when working through the classification tree.


 * I think this has been corrected.
 * Also, the figure within the article depicts the anthophyte hypothesis, in which the closest living relative to the angiosperms are the gnetales. Recent molecular work shows that the gnetales are nested within the conifers, and are possibly sister to Pinaceae (see Chaw et al., Soltis et al., and Bowe et al. referenced in the article).  If I get a chance, I'll upload a slightly modified version.  Thanks for posting the original! -- Jpwilson 04:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, the figure within the article depicts the anthophyte hypothesis, in which the closest living relative to the angiosperms are the gnetales. Recent molecular work shows that the gnetales are nested within the conifers, and are possibly sister to Pinaceae (see Chaw et al., Soltis et al., and Bowe et al. referenced in the article).  If I get a chance, I'll upload a slightly modified version.  Thanks for posting the original! -- Jpwilson 04:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

cladogram
I've removed the cladogram altogether. It neither reflects the references on the page, which postulate a close relationship between Gnetophyta and conifers, nor the Deep Green phylogeny from which it was taken, which shows a polytomy for the spermatophytes.--Curtis Clark 13:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I was wondering about that myself (and have seen them popping up in numerous articles lately--e.g., see Plant). Such diagrams should always have a caption in the article (not just in the original link) explicitly stating where it is taken from and whose phylogeny it is following. MrDarwin 13:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Drat, I thought I'd got it to match the deep green tree. The diagram is easily edited though, if you can let me know what to change (and/or make duplicates for different phylogenies from other sources). - MPF 14:56, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I now see that you were using the research tree rather than the teaching tree, as I had originally assumed. The research tree is at odds with the referenceds in the article, and a cursory look doesn't show a literature reference for it; I wonder if it doesn't show the current state of the project. Considering that there are at least three fundamentally different trees (including the Deep Green research tree), perhaps it's best to have no cladogram until things are a bit more settled.--Curtis Clark 04:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * "Angiosperms are now thought to have evolved from a gymnosperm ancestor, which would make gymnosperms a paraphyletic group if it includes extinct taxa." No. Just as birds are a subset of dinosaurs, angiosperms are a subset to gymnosperms. There are many extiinct angiosperms too. I haven't corrected the text. --Wetman 14:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Focus on established fact, not controversy
I have rewritten the end of the first paragraph to make it clear that all authorities (as far as I can tell from the rest of the article) agree that there are 5 monophyletic groups, and all the debate/research is (a) how those groups relate to each other, and (b) what names to give them.

If people like this approach, there are a lot of botany pages which could be tweaked somewhat along these lines. Kingdon 00:45, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't have the reference at hand, but I seem to remember one article with molecular evidence that the conifers were paraphyletic by removal of the gnetophytes. But I like your approach.--Curtis Clark 05:04, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right about confiers/gnetophytes. I should have deleted the word "monophyletic" above (in the article itself, I left it out from the start). Kingdon 12:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

suggest addition of a taxobox
Perhaps something like this should be added to the page? I haven't added it myself because I am not an expert in plant biology.

Bayle Shanks 21:58, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of molecular suggestions
There's a POV tag on this article with the comment "There are lots of molecular suggestions; the article should report what they agree on, or give each of them due weight." I've read a fair number of papers (now cited as references, at least most of them), and my conclusion was that gne-pine (or perhaps gne-conifer) was the hypothesis which should be given the most weight, but that we shouldn't treat it as a done deal. I'm not too attached to exactly what we say here, but unless I'm missing something, the evidence is strong enough to reject some ideas, such as the view of gnetae and angiosperms as sister groups. If so, it seems worth saying so somehow. I'd like to hear suggestions of what we should be saying - having a POV tag isn't going to help improve the article unless it helps produce more concrete suggestions for improvement. Kingdon (talk) 06:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've removed the tag per "marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure" at NPOVD and because no one has disagreed with my assertion that due weight, in this case, would give most prominence to gne-pine. I've posted both here and on the talk page of the user who put the tag there.  But if people have ideas about how best to cover all the various molecular studies and phylogenetic hypotheses, speak up, propose wording, or just be bold. It's not like what we have now is the last word by any means (for one thing, it doesn't say nearly enough about fossil spermatophytes). Kingdon (talk) 04:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggest adding gymnosperms as a category in list in description
Something like this:


 * gymnosperms:
 * cycads, a subtropical and tropical group of plants with a large crown of compound leaves and a stout trunk,
 * Ginkgo, a single living species of tree,
 * conifers, cone-bearing trees and shrubs,
 * gnetophytes, woody plants in the genera Ephedra, Gnetum, and Welwitschia
 * angiosperms, (or magnoliophyta) the flowering plants, a large group including many familiar plants in a wide variety of habitats.

Rationale: ease of understanding, easier to see the groupings, as angio- and gymnosperms are often put side by side for comparison. It would also reflect the hierarchy presented further down on the page.

-195.194.86.233 (talk) 11:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Rename to "Seed plant"
Per WP:COMMONNAME, which mandates the use of plain English names where they are in wide use and accurately match the group in question, we have "Plant" not "Plantae"; "Vascular plant" not "Tracheophyte"; "Flowering plant" not "Angiospermae". I suggest we should rename this article "Seed plant" in place of "Spermatophyte" for the same reason. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems sensible to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, let's boldly go... Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)