Talk:Sorbus aucuparia

Subspecies
Perhaps the list of subspecies can be omitted from this page, since they have changed since that part of the page was written, and have been quite fluid for a long time (so I would expect them to change again in the next few years). Nadiatalent (talk) 20:51, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Should this page be combined with Rowan?
There's a lot of overlap between this page and Rowan. Perhaps Rowan should have just the cultural/folkloric text and s. aucuparia the botanical? Hoogreg (talk) 22:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That sounds fine to me. Nadiatalent (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Revert of rewrite
I rewrote the whole text because I thought the old article was not good: it had no discernable lead and was missing essential content. That was reverted as "too radical" and because it consituted "unexplained deletion". I would say: it's a total rewrite, of course that means replacing the content. I'm not an oaf who copies text together, I did research in several libraries and followed all the rules on citing sources, copyright, and close paraphrasing, yet my work was thrown out just like that. How was the old revision better that all my writing is thrown out? Hekerui (talk) 22:10, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't dispute that you may have made significant improvements to the writing, but it's the facts that I have a problem with. When you remove statements such as that the species is native to parts of Asia, that needs to be explained (see the cited map here). Your statement might even be correct, using some different definition of the species, but where did that Europe-only view come from? The remainder of your text also seemed to have a Eurocentric bias, repeatedly using the name "Rowan", which applies to the whole genus, not just this species. If you can install your changes at a pace more suitable to the consensus-building style of wikipedia, then other editors can consider your changes individually, some of which may indeed, as you say, be excellent. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:14, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Hekerui (talk) 17:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I removed the Bachofer/Mayer source: the other books describe the species as Euro-Sibirian and I assumed the mention of the Volga restriction in their work was a good way to describe how Kazakhstan and the rest of not-so-Northern Asia was not in the distribution, but yes, the river is very long so its mention might come across as contradictory with the Northern Russia and Siberia statements
 * the old revision of the article actually used "rowan" to describe S. aucuparia, but I can see that a reader might then be confused about the existence of the article rowan, so I made changes - still, I don't think using the name "rowan" for S. aucuparia is bias, since the Subgenus and the other species in it were were clearly named "rowan" because of similarities with this plant
 * since I rewrote the whole article I'm unsure how I can make the change gradually, so I posted the revised version, please check if you think there are still issues (the claim of effectiveness in medical use against human cervical cancer is not mentioned as an adopted usage in other literature, and the paper mentions S. a. as one among a number of species tested, so I don't think this is significant)

Name
I think "Amur mountain-ash" is not a good name choice to put next to "rowan" and the others, because it concerns a plant that on the GRIN website is mentioned as merely a subspecies, and I'm not sure it is even that, because a quick Google Books search shows "Sorbus pohuashanensis" only listed as a distinct species and no mention with it as a subspecies. Also, why use the Oxford Dictionary of English (without page number) to source "quickbeam" as one word, when that is among the spellings listed at the ars-grin.gov website? Hekerui (talk) 10:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * on page 80, lists Sorbus pohuashanensis as a synonym of S. aucuparia. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:45, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Today I checked and it list it as a separate species with a mention that it is indeed "closely related" to S.a. on page 851. So one good source contradicts another. I don't assume McAllister says anything more about the relationship? The Botanica states that Sorbus pohuashanensis is over 20 m tall and native to the mountain regions of Northern China. Hekerui (talk) 20:27, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The GRIN source gives a lot of possible names but no hierarchy, so I leave the ones called common English names by a book source in the lead per the style of Banksia integrifolia and put the rest in the names section, which is the place for detail. I corrected the spelling of some names according to GRIN, and removed "European rowan", which is not in that source. Hekerui (talk) 12:45, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

ENGVAR issue
One of the changes Hekerui introduced was a change from British spelling to American spelling, particularly the introduction of "centimeter", "meter", etc. There's no good reason for the change in an article about a species which is not native to North America. The units issue can be dealt with by returning to abbreviated units, as was the case before. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:30, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Suggest merger of Sorbus aucuparia-specific content in Rowan with Sorbus aucuparia
Much of the content of Rowan is specific to Sorbus aucuparia and is reiterated here. Is there any good reason why this material should not be merged with Sorbus aucuparia, thereby shortening Rowan into a disambiguating hub article for the Rowans? Plantsurfer (talk) 09:53, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I definitely agree that the articles need sorting. As far as I can tell, the situation is this. "Rowan" was originally a genuine common name, used for Sorbus aucuparia and whatever looked sufficiently similar to non-botanists to be called the same.  From this it has become used in at least two other senses: (1) as one of the names for the entire genus Sorbus; (2) as the name for Sorbus subgenus Sorbus, which is what the taxobox at Rowan implies.  Its original(?) sense as the common name or part of the common name for those species of Sorbus which closely resemble Sorbus aucuparia also seems to be used.  So "Rowan" is far too ambiguous to be used as the title of an article.  I suggest the structure:
 * Sorbus aucuparia for the species. The culture-relevant Rowan information can go here.
 * Sorbus subgenus Sorbus for the subgenus, to retain the taxobox and other botanically relevant stuff from Rowan.
 * Sorbus for the genus with some cross-reference to Rowan.
 * Rowan to become the title of the present Rowan (disambiguation), or perhaps just a redirect.
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 08:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You're clearly more awake than I am this morning, but your proposals look good to me. Plantsurfer (talk) 09:12, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Support the merge. It is weird to have no interlinks at all in Rowan - all interlinks go to this page, and this is where all relevant content must be collected too. 24.138.76.31 (talk) 22:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Formatting
Very funny "typo" I've just fixed: (in previous article revisions, it caused many useless paragraphs listing measurement units to appear on the page). Take care. --Djadjko (talk) 04:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)