User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 4

Some boba for you!

 * Thank you for the recognition, and thank you for your work creating articles. Plantdrew (talk) 02:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Fossils
Hi, several extinct species are only known from fossils (several thousands of years old) and old accounts, and are studied by palaeontologists, therefore they belong under the palaeontology project. You should read or skim through the articles before removing such banners. FunkMonk (talk) 20:29, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

thanks for the taxobox
...on spotted lanternfly, you were faster than me. this being my first insect article I didnt know which one to choose. Should the photo not go into the taxobox? Any other suggestions? --Wuerzele (talk) 03:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Species collaboration?
Hi, Plantdrew, how are you? I was wondering if you might be interested in collaborating on editing species articles (any species). Thanks,  Bananasoldier  (talk) 04:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Ulmus boissieri deletion proposal
A brief description of the species proposed for deletion has been added to the article on Ulmus minor, under the section on subspecies, varieties, and species sunk by Richard Hook Richens, author of 'Elm' (1984) CUP. Richens was Director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cambridge, and drastically revised the taxonomy of British elms, an action now supported by DNA analysis. If you still think redirection preferable, then please go ahead. Regards, Ptelea (talk) 08:41, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the redirections, still not completely au fait with Wiki procedures. Interesting to note that DNA analysis was to posthumously prove Richens right, whereas his Dutch contemporary Leeuwenberg, who sank a similar number of buddleja species, was posthumously proved wrong, alas not before his taxonomy was adopted by the monumental 'Flora of China'. Regards, Ptelea (talk) 21:16, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure what to do with Ulmus canescens. The Plant List (which is the source we usually follow for plant synonymy) still lists it as an accepted species. TPL sometimes gets things wrong, and more frequently isn't up to date with the latest research. I'm not quite comfortable redirecting U. canescens yet. Is Coleman's 2009 book the source for the synonymy? Plantdrew (talk) 21:34, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Regret don't know whether Max has covered the more exotic U. minor; will enquire. Richens (page 279 note 80), included it '..as coming within the circumscription of the Field Elm'. The species is sunk as U. minor by Danin, University of Jerusalem, in the recent Flora of Israel., but Peter Coxhead thinks canescens should stand. Ptelea (talk) 09:46, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would leave Ulmus canescens for the present, based on TLP and the underlying WCSP (in review), but of course note that not all sources accept it as a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Max Coleman reports that he has not investigated U. canescens, so accept it should stand as a species until DNA profiling proves otherwise.Ptelea (talk) 16:04, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Fish color issue
Hi Plantdrew! I was wondering if you might be able to help me out at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life. Regardless, thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia!  Bananasoldier  (talk) 05:35, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Herpetological Conervation and Biology
is there a way to fix this wiki page. Currently, the address needs the underscores removed from teh name Herpetological Conservation and biology because Google is not picking it up unless you place underscores in its name. Ideas?

Eggplant
Hello, Plantdrew -- I was looking at your most recent edit to Eggplant,, and I wanted to discuss a few concerns with you. First, let me say that I am not a botanist, but I have an interest in it. So please forgive my ignorance of botany. My interest lies mainly in polishing the prose of articles.

1) I assume you removed the sentence that appeared later in the article because you felt it was repetitive, but isn't the article primarily about the plant, and secondarily about the fruit? Shouldn't the name of the plant be given first, and then later the name of the fruit, even if the fruit has the same name as the plant? I think a statement such as the one you removed makes it clear that the fruit has the same name as the plant. That information just has to be placed in the right place (haven't looked to see if that was the best place). It could be mentioned both in the lead and in the article.

2) Here is the first sentence of the article as it is now:


 * Solanum melongena is a species of nightshade grown for its edible fruit, commonly known in American and Canadian English as the eggplant, in British English as the aubergine and also known as melongene, garden egg, or guinea squash.

(a) The way the first part of this sentence is worded, it is not clear ("commonly known as...") whether it is giving the name of the plant or the name of the fruit. If it is giving the name of the fruit, I would add "which is" before "commonly known as". (Then it looks as if the plant is not being named.) If it is giving the name of the plant, I would either add "of the same name" after "its edible fruit" or leave "grown for its edible fruit of the same name" to after the various names, perhaps a separate sentence.

(b) The sentence is a bit long and cumbersome. It also sounds as if it is missing something:


 * commonly known...


 * in American English as the eggplant


 * in British English as the aubergine, and...


 * as melongene, garden egg, or guinea squash [in...? Where?].

I also wonder if the word "commonly" could be left out, at least as regards the U.S. It is only known as "eggplant" in the U.S., so "known as" would be sufficient (or is the word "commonly" needed to indicate the common, as opposed to scientific, name of a plant?). - CorinneSD (talk) 22:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi CorinneSD. Yeah, I didn't address removing "It bears a fruit of the same name" in my edit summary but I thought it was redundant with "...nightshade grown for its edible fruit" now in the first sentence. I'm not really sure what the best phrasing is. I thought the ambiguity of the current phrasing might actually be helpful. "Eggplant" (or whatever) IS ambiguous in English, although in context the meaning is usually clear; "I have some eggplants in my garden" vs. "I ate some roasted eggplant". Eggplant is even a little worse than the other terms on the ambiguity front; at least you could say "I have aubergine plants in my garden" to reduce ambiguity.


 * How about?:


 * Solanum melongena is a species of nightshade grown for its edible fruit. The plant and its fruit are commonly known in American and Canadian English as eggplant, in British English as aubergine and in South Asia, Southeast Asia and South Africa as brinjal. They are also sometimes referred to as melongene, garden egg, or guinea squash.


 * Plantdrew (talk) 23:02, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's much better. What do you think of adding the word "Both" before "the plant and its fruit? Not absolutely necessary; it would just make the point that both are called by the same name. Also, I assume by now that you've seen Sminthopsis84's "citation needed" tags; they will need to be included in this new wording. CorinneSD (talk) 23:08, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "Both" sounds good. I was kind of tempted to add "cn" tags to the phrasing I suggested here on my talk page. Sminthopsis's edits are an improvement. I would still like to see "brinjal" moved up; I think editors sometimes forget that there are more than two varieties of English. India is now #4 for en.Wikipedia page views by country, barely behind Canada . Plantdrew (talk) 23:24, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't argue with you; seems like a good idea, but looking at your rewording, it looks like it is in the second sentence in the lede. Were you referring to something else? I have to defer to Sminthopsis84 (and you) regarding content. CorinneSD (talk) 18:37, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I meant the version on the article after Sminthopsis's edit, not my suggestion above. I've now changed it in the article. Plantdrew (talk) 01:45, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Plants cleanup listing available
Hi, the cleanup listing is available if you want to put a link on the Plants project page. There are a couple of linking options. The reason that most of the articles are in the New articles section is because I recently updated the categories that the bot is checking from plants to plant. --Bamyers99 (talk) 02:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello to you both. I took the liberty of having a look at this report - very useful. For the section "Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. in editors", I noticed that many of these were from stubs I created. I went ahead and resolved them and this should reduce the count in this section by about 100. Specifically they are Azadirachta excelsa, Chisocheton *, Dysoxylum *, Heynea, Sandoricum beccarianum, Walsura pinnata, Weinmannia fraxinea, Xanthophyllum *, Xylocarpus moluccensis. Declangi (talk) 09:44, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for getting the listing running Bamyers99 and working on some of the issues raised in the list Declangi. My internet connection is choking when I try to access the whole list, but I hope I'll be able to see more of the list once they're not all flagged as New articles. It seems like this will be a useful compilation once it loads for me. Plantdrew (talk)
 * I have removed the "New articles" from the category listing. The file size dropped from 5.8 Meg to 3.7 Meg. The alpha listing is 2.6 Meg. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's more manageable. Plantdrew (talk) 19:04, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Class of plant SIAs
There seems to be some inconsistency in the class used in the WikiProject Plants template for plant set index articles, e.g. those with plant common name present. My understanding was that these should have list rather than disambig, partly to be clear that SIAs are not subject to the same restrictions as disambiguation pages. What's your understanding? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:20, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I tag them as lists, but I'm kind of wavering back and forth on whether to convert DABs to SIAs, which has left some inconsistencies.


 * Folks that work on DABs don't seem to really have resolved how much deviance from MOSDAB is allowed before something is better off as a SIA. One very active DAB editor aggressively converts common name DABs to SIAs (and tags them as "list" class). Another active DAB editor has been converting some animal common name SIAs back to DABs, on the grounds that they're close enough to MOSDAB compliance and it's better to have DAB bots watching the incoming links. The stricter MOSDAB position would have the current version of mountain cranberry as a SIA, but probably would accept this previous version as a DAB. I don't really care enough to argue over MOSDAB, but I think the current version of mountain cranberry is superior, and would rather call it a SIA than revert to the old version so it can be a DAB.


 * As far as SIAs go, organism common names, roads and geographical features are mostly tagged as list class for the appropriate WikiProject. However, the largest groups of SIAs, ship and chemicals, are tagged as DAB class. Ship SIAs are tagged as DAB class for WikiProject Ships, but mostly don't have a WikiProject Disambiguation template. Chemical SIAs seem to be mostly tagged just with WikiProject Disambiguation (no WikiProject Chemicals banner).


 * Anyway, I'd say to call pages with plant common name "list-class", unless we want to think about setting up a "SIA-class" (I have a gadget enabled in my preferences that displays class rating on the article pages; this gadget recognizes a "SIA-class"). Plantdrew (talk) 19:38, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your detailed reply. I had actually just begun to think about SIA for plants. I do think the freedom to include images and other explanations makes SIAs useful (as we have discussed in the past) so I think they should be marked out as distinct. But on the other hand, do we want to keep increasing the number of classes? Um... Peter coxhead (talk) 20:57, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm not super wild on yet another class. It'd be nice if MOSDAB was more permissive and we could just leave them all as DAB class (since, as you'd commenting on below, some common names will have to stay DABs anyway). Plantdrew (talk) 22:34, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Related but distinct issue
I didn't add the plant Wikiproject banner to Talk:Mock orange on the grounds that not all the disambiguated items are plants – this is definitely not a plant SIA. But maybe if most of the items are plants, it should be added, as you did – I haven't been doing this. Another question not likely to interest many other editors, I suspect. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:02, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * My take on it is that if all the items are plants, it should be a SIA. If there's at least one non-plant use and two or more plants, it should stay a DAB, but I use the |plant parameter in the DAB template, and add the Plant banner to the talk page (which does produce some redundant categorization with the page both in Category:Plant common name disambiguation pages and Category:Disambig-Class plant articles). I'm not sure that spinning a plant SIA off from the DAB is worthwhile (as long as MOSDAB isn't causing problems yet), but I'd like to have the plant common name DABs flagged or categorized somehow. There is one case I know of where a SIA was spun off from a dab; Cowslip and Cowslip (vernacular name), but I don't think it works very well.


 * I've recently been slowly working my way through Category:Disambiguation pages. If, at a glance, a title looks like a potential common name for a plant or an animal, I check it out and tag it if it is a common name. I've been leaving the animals as DABs for the most part (trying to follow what seems to be the most widespread practice, but snake common names are mostly SIAs, so I've been changing those over). Animal common name was created fairly recently and isn't widely used yet. I probably should bring it up on ToL and various animal project pages to see if there's consensus to move over to SIAs. Plantdrew (talk) 22:34, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * That seems a sensible approach, which I'll try to remember to follow. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:30, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Marjoram
I recently converted Pot marjoram to a SIA from a redirect, because the BSBI list uses it for a different species than the original redirect. But actually I wonder if Marjoram shouldn't be a SIA, with names like "sweet marjoram", "pot marjoram" inside it. Google searches suggest to me that this definition is accurate: "any of several aromatic herbs belonging to the genus Origanum, of the mint family, especially O. majorana (sweet marjoram) having leaves used as seasoning in cooking." What do you think? Am I being too picky? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:30, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * If anything is changed, I'd suggest perhaps splitting out a stub for O. majorana and leaving marjoram as an article for "the stuff in the herb aisle of the grocery store labelled as marjoram" (rather than reducing marjoram to a list/SIA). As I look into it (Original Research), I'm becoming increasingly less confident whether the grocery store stuff is O. majorana; or alteratively whether onites/majorana are distinct species and/or pervasively misidentified. I just looked at some herbarium specimens IDed as O. majorana and O. onites, the majority of specimens onites seem to be marjorana (according to the very outdated key I have right now; I'm working on getting ahold of a more recent one). Incidentally, this old key recognizes a genus Majorana distinct from Origanum, but lists "marjoram" as a common name for Origanum, and no common name for Majorana; umm, well maybe a SIA is the way to go. And this article points out an interesting problem with oregano in cultivation (with similar concerns for several other Lamiaceae species used as culinary herbs). Plantdrew (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Plantdrew The Richters article is interesting, and conforms to my experience. (I've paid money for Lavandula 'Munstead' which turned out to have pale flowers. I've also bought Penstemon 'Sour Grapes' from the RHS Wisley Garden, no less, only for it to be Penstemon 'Stapleton Gem' when it flowered. Beth Chatto is still mislabelling this cultivar here. The moral is never buy plants not in flower!)
 * Clearly more research is needed on "marjoram" before it's sensible to decide what to do. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

SIA class again
I've edited WikiProject Plants so that setting SIA acts as an alias for list. So if we use "SIA" instead of "list", it makes no difference now, but in the future an SIA class could be created and would have some content. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll go ahead and tag with the SIA alias in my future edits. Plantdrew (talk) 21:55, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * From a lurker: interesting whole discussion above.  This is background, I see, to what we're working on at wt:DPL and should get resolved over the next month or so, in line with views of both of you.  Interesting about the prolific dabbers going on with their conversions back and forth.  Such activity would be reduced if not eliminated by dint of our efforts achieving clarity about dabs vs. sias, i hope.  I would be happy to support putting clear guidelines into wp:DPL's documents, to serve as definitive reference in settling that.  Those two dabbers could be invited to help in the conversions which do need to be done, perhaps. -- do  ncr  am  18:08, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Bienertia in the family Amaranthaceae?
Hello Plantdrew,

I have never seen Bienertia sinuspersici put in the Amaranthaceae family. Numerous sources (from 2005-2014) all say that it is in the family Chenopodiaceae. Can you show me where you got your information?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by DsCCzk (talk • contribs) 03:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)


 * DsCCzk, thank you for creating the article on B. sinuspersici. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has lumped Chenopodiaceae into Amaranthaceae since their initial 1998 publication (with further publications affirming the lumping in 2003 and 2009). At this point, there is a pretty strong consensus in the botanical community to follow the APG system in most respects, including no longer recognizing Chenopodiaceae as separate family. When Akhani described B. sinuspersici in 2005, the consensus was not as strong. Wikipedia follows APG for family level classification, and the Wikipedia article on Chenopodiaceae refers readers to Amaranthaceae. You can see some information about APG's concept of Amaranthaceae here, and The Plant List includes Bienertia in Amaranthanceae as can be seen here. Plantdrew (talk) 04:58, 25 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Plantdrew, thanks for your reply. I'll look through those resources.

Category talk:Steninae
Hi! Please stop adding the WikiProject Insects template to beetle-related articles/categories. There is a WikiProject Beetles for that already. Gug01 (talk) 22:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I missed adding WP:Beetles. I don't agree that removing WP:Insects is from beetle articles/categories is helpful (rather than having both projects tags). I know you're trying to drum up activity for WP:Beetles, but activity is still rather low. By removing the WP:Insects tag you make the article "invisible" to that project (and over the long term, WP:Insects has been more active). There's no harm to having seemingly redundant project tags, and some benefit. At present, there are 5,255 pages tagged for WP:Beetles, and 20,944 articles under Category:Beetles tagged for WP:Insects (and another several hundred tagged for neither project). With the current tagging situation, making use of WikiProject based monitoring tools for beetle articles requires looking at both projects. Plantdrew (talk) 22:42, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Gug01 (talk) 22:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * To clarify (although I think you probably understand this from my previous comment). Tagging insect articles with taxonomically redundant project banners (e.g. insects+beetles or insects+vespidae) enhances the chances that somebody looking at the talk page will find the project that most interests them and be inspired to contribute further. WikiProjects are inherently collaborative. You've suggested several potential taxonomic subprojects for Beetles on the WP:Beetles page. I hope you can find more people interested in supporting potential beetle subprojects, but creating a project banner for WP:Adephaga at this point will only divide interest among people who might be inclined to work on beetle or insect articles more generally. Plantdrew (talk)

The Fish Article
Hi, I would like to bring this to your attention & get your input on it.(Link Below) With this in mind. I would like to look forward to collaberating and creating accurate content and building this article up.
 * Link below
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spot_croaker#Response_to_Reliable_Sources
 * I do not feel that we should argue over the article and not make progress to correct it.

Cheatspace (talk) 21:10, 6 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I think our main difference of opinion is that you were saying that "spot croaker" is wrong/misinformation, and I was arguing against that particular position. That doesn't mean that I disagree with replacing "spot croaker" with "spot" throughout the article. However "spot croaker" should be mentioned at least once as an alternate "common" name (although it isn't actually commonly called spot croaker by anybody but a handful of scientists based in other countries). I've refrained from commenting on the move proposal, because my preference would be to use the scientific name for the title, which isn't a very popular position. How would feeling about having the article title Leiostomus with "spot" used throughout the text (except for a single mention of FAO's "spot croaker")? Plantdrew (talk) 21:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I favor the scientific name because it avoids all this pointless arguing over different common names on regional/global authorities approved lists (which may even be what the people most familiar with a fish actually commonly call it). Spot croaker is far from the only example where Wikipedia uses an FAO name instead of an AFS name for a species that's only in the US. Northern red snapper is commonly known as just "red snapper" (which is the AFS name). Unfortunately, many other fish are also commonly known as Red Snapper, and although the FDA only permits Lutjanus campechanus to be marketed as "red snapper", this law is rarely enforced (and there's absolutely nothing the FDA can do to stop a fisherman in Oregon from catching a Sebastes ruberrimus and telling his family they'll be having red snapper for dinner). Paddlefish is another case where Wikipedia has made a mess of things. In common usage in the US, "paddlefish" is what the FAO (and Wikipedia) call American paddlefish. Plantdrew (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Isobel Wylie Hutchison
Hi Plantdrew. You very kindly pointed out to me that my article lacked citation. I have now started to remedy this error. You also said that there were other issues which needed attention but you did not specify these. Can you now enlighten me about these other issues. Thanks once again.Peter DC (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I left a couple more comments at the Isobel Wylie Hutchison talk page. Let me know if you have any other questions or need help. Plantdrew (talk) 22:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Plantdrew, That is exactly the sort of help I needed. I had wondered if my article was unencyclopedic. However as Isobel is such an interesting character I was trying to get this over by some day to day detail. Thanks also for pointing out my use of exclamation marks .I will work through the article again and edit it furthur.

Any other comments you feel should be made please add them. Thanks.Peter DC (talk) 20:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

About Dialium indum and Dialium ovoideum
Hi Plantdrew. I have a big question about the two plants called Dialium ovoideum and Dialium indum. Because, many sites classified them as two separate species. In Sri Lanka, the name Dialium ovoideum is still used as the scientific name of Velvet tamarind, and they classified it as endemic to the country. But in Wikipedia article, they indicate that Dialium ovoideum should be a synonym of the much more distributed Dialium indum. Also, Dialium ovoideum is not in the species list within genus Dialium as well. In |The Plant List, they also separately classified the two species. So, it is good to know what is the actual theory and classification behind this.

Thank You. Gihan Jayaweera (talk)


 * Happened to see this. I've updated the species list at Dialium to the latest version of The Plant List (1.1). This does recognize both species. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Gihan Jayaweera, I can't find any evidence that D. ovoideum should be treated as a synonym of D. indum. The article on Dialium indum is pretty confused overall. It looks like it covers information relating to several species that are referred to as "velvet tamarind" in English. Apparently D. indum only occurs in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia). The names in various African languages are for another plant. The Sinhalese "Gal Siyambala" should probably refer to D. ovoideum. Go ahead and make an article for Dialium ovoideum if you are wanting to do so.Plantdrew (talk) 15:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead Thank you for updating the recent list of species in the genus Dialium Hope you will co-operate in the future as well.

Thank You. Gihan Jayaweera (talk)

Plantdrew. Yes, thank you for updating me about that. So, it revealed that article about Dialium indum is about many species. So, Dialium ovoideum is accepted. Happy to hear that. Ok. I will make the article about Dialium ovoideum. Hope that you will keep on attention on the future as well.

Thank You. Gihan Jayaweera (talk)

Stub class articles
I create a number of new species articles, and when I have finished working on them I usually assign them to a wikiproject and rate them. If I don't do so I notice you often do, but articles I would rate as "start" you often rate as "stub". The most recent article I have created is Ischnura erratica and you have rated it as a stub. Please look at this FAQ page because I really do not think my new article, currently 4.1Kb, is a stub. The FAQ page defines a stub as "Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition", and my articles are usually fully referenced and cover the main aspects of the topic, in this case description, distribution, habitat and behaviour. Your comments, and those of anybody else reading this, will be welcome. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:22, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Cwmhiraeth Oops, my bad. I. erratica is certainly start class. I usually copy/paste the template with stub-class/low-importance filled in when I'm tagging new articles (since they're stub/low probably 90% of the time). I missed replacing "stub" with "start" when I tagged I erratica; it didn't help that I was tired and just about to go to bed when I tagged it.
 * Looking at the articles you've created recently, all the ones I checked are certainly better than stub-class. If there are any other articles you started where you'd like me to revisit the class rating, let me know. Plantdrew (talk) 23:20, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's OK. Now I know how your stub rating comes about, I can change it to start where appropriate. Thanks for all the work you do behind the scenes. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:15, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Mandrake move
You recently participated in a move request discussion at Talk:Mandrake (plant). I have posted a follow-up request at Talk:Mandragora officinarum if you are interested in participating. —  AjaxSmack  00:23, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Bryophyta
I notice that you have made this a "taxon disambiguation" page, but the category in which it is placed says specifically that it is for taxonomic homonyms, and not for different circumscriptions. Either the basic disambiguation needs to be restored, or else the category needs to have its description changed, or possibly a third sort of disambiguation started. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:09, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Changing it back to basic disambuation. I can't imagine there are enough dab pages handling different circumscriptions to bother with a new category. Plantdrew (talk) 20:17, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Aleurites moluccana / Aleurites moluccanus
Howdy - I see you marked the redirect Aleurites moluccana with the R from misspelling tag, indicating that the spelling given is incorrect rather than an acceptable variation. Two of the references given in the target article use this spelling - can I confirm with you that the -ana spelling isn't the correct pluralisation of he -us spelling please ? Cheers - TB (talk) 08:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Topbanana It's not a matter of plurals. Genus names have a grammatical gender and the species name has to agree with the gender of the genus ("-a" is a feminine ending, "-us" is masculine). In the vast majority of cases the rules of Latin grammar make it clear what the gender of the genus is, but there are a few cases where it's murky. Aleurites was one of the murky ones. In 1988, a provision was added to the rules governing plant names (the ICBN) that all genera ending in "-ites" should be considered masculine (with the "-us" ending used for their species). It takes some time for highly technical details like this to filter down through the literature, so some sources are still using "Aleurites moluccana". Prior to 1988, it was debatable whether "-a" or "-us" was the correct ending, but currently it is quite clear that "-us" is correct. Maybe "misspelling" isn't quite the right word for a situation where scholarly sources were previously divided on the correct spelling, but I think "alternate name" isn't quite right either. Plantdrew (talk) 21:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you - perfectly explained. Would R from former name better express the origin of the no-longer-correct forms ? - TB (talk) 07:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, although maybe I should just go back to R from alternative scientific name. There are other redirects with weird histories of spelling details in that category. Plantdrew (talk) 16:26, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

CAT:WRONG
Plantdrew, I'm scratching my brain trying to figure out how your common.js page has managed to wind up in . Any ideas? – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 09:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Paine Ellsworth I guess I managed to fix it, but I don't really know what was causing it. I've forgotten what little I used to know about Java. All of the code on my common.js page I've copied from elsewhere (most of it comes from Peter coxhead). I added one line from Peter's page that I didn't have previously (which looked to me like it was a comment, not active code), and that seems to have fixed it. Weird. Plantdrew (talk) 16:52, 5 April 2015 (UTC)


 * As I was going to tell you before all heck broke loose (medical emergency), I tested the code from your common.js in both my common.css and my common.js files and in both cases the pages wound up in CAT:WRONG. A good friend, Redrose64, explains it as follows:
 * It's a feature of the MediaWiki parser that code on a JavaScript page that looks like a MediaWiki template is processed as if it were an actual template, and so the page appears in the WhatLinksHere list for that template, and the template is also expanded to process any categories that it sets. Did by  help? Another way would be to split the double brace so that it becomes two separate single braces,.
 * So we see that there is more than one way to solve this. –  Paine   08:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry to hear about your emergency. I'm still puzzled why adding "//" made the parser ignore the template braces, but as long as it's fixed, I guess it doesn't matter. Plantdrew (talk) 14:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you, it all turned out alright. Parsers are funny animals. – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 23:12, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Cardón
Cardón seems to be used in Spanish for a variety of plants – see Cardón. I'm not sure if it's worth expanding Cardón or not, but I did add Euphorbia canariensis because cardón is the common name I've always used for it. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:23, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * At the moment, I'm not very focused on expanding DABs/SIAs. I know there are some other cases where we have a page on a Spanish common name that has more entries at es.wiki (Yerba buena and Yerba Buena comes to mind). While I'm trying to get all USDA PLANTS common names represented somehow (whether as redirects, hatnote mentions, dab entries, etc.), I've skipped some for a variety of reasons (Spanish etymology being one of the reasons). If cardón had been a red-link, I would have skipped it for now. I've got stuff I've skipped over but intend to revisit at User:Plantdrew/USDACommonNameAttention. Plantdrew (talk) 15:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I quite understand that "trying to get all USDA PLANTS common names represented somehow" is a huge task :-). (I've got distracted from the BSBI names for the present, but will get back to them, I hope.) I just happened to notice your edit involving "cardón". Peter coxhead (talk) 16:29, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject TAFI
.
 * Bananasoldier Thank you for the invitation. I'll check it out. Plantdrew (talk) 21:30, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

R to scientific name|plant
Hello, I see where you've fixed some of the redirects I've created by adding "|plant". I hate making work for others, and I could do this myself, but as it adds a few seconds of work, I'd like to know the reason for doing so. I guess what I'm saying is that if it's important, I'll try to improve my process, but I don't know why it is important. Similar question for R with possibilities. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   20:49, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * SchreiberBike Sorry, I didn't realize I had a second new message on my talk page while I was in the middle of that. Anyway, thanks for all the work you've been doing with organism capitalization and redirects. The "|plant" isn't super important, but the idea was that since all of the plant redirects pertain to WikiProject Plants, there should be a a category to track them as plants (rather than just dumping them in the larger category with a variety of organisms). With the different title policies for plants (WP:FLORA) and animals (WP:NCFAUNA) it helps to keep redirects to/from scientific names of plants and animals separate. Similarly, I've been using R plants with possibilities as a project based way of sorting species redirects to genus (these really should have articles made eventually). Category:All redirect categories has a number of other subcategories that are basically project based (mostly related to TV shows and other popular fictional works).


 * I know I'll need to periodically revisit categories such as Category:Redirects to scientific names to pull plants out, so it's not a huge deal if you continue on as you've been doing. It only took me 2 hours to go through 6 months of your work (and you've been very busy). But if you do want to add "|plant" to redirect from common to scientific names, I'd appreciate it. Redirects from species to genus are much harder to catch, but as long as you put them in Category:Redirects from more specific names, they're findable (Category:Redirects from subtopics is too large to to easily find anything plant related). Plantdrew (talk) 21:29, 8 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I think I've got what you mean. I'll try it for a while and if I have questions I'll ask here. If you see anything I'm doing that could be better, let me know. Keep up the good work. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   02:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Another barnstar for you

 * Thank you. I've been following the Mojave flora list you've been working on, and saw pygmy poppy as a blue link next to a red link for the Canbya a little while back. I knew pygmy poppy would need some further attention. The Mojave list is shaping up nicely, thanks for working on that. Plantdrew (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Common name redirects not in the species article, and sources, are on the way
You may be wondering why some (many) new plant common name redirects, that you patrolled, do not (yet) appear in the species article, and are not (yet) sourced in that species article when they do appear there. Going page by page through a shelf of California and desert plant field guides, government sponsored inventories of different regions of the Mojave Desert, and manuals (e.g., Jepson Manual), I have been putting many (hundreds) of common names into the list of flora of the Mojave Desert region article. I first put them in the list article without citing the sources. I then created redirects, again without citing sources, and without checking that the common name was actually in the species article that the common name redirected to. I have then been going back and adding the sources to the list of flora of the Mojave Desert region article. Once that is (mostly) complete, I will check that the common name is actually in the species article it redirects to, and add the source to that article from the list article. FloraWilde (talk) 23:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)


 * FloraWilde Thanks for letting me know what you're up to. It sounds like you've got a decent plan. You might want to consider going for autopatrolled status (I hope the patrolled alerts were grouped together rather than you gettting a couple hundred separate notifications; if that happened, sorry). You can apply for autopatrol here: Requests_for_permissions/Autopatrolled (or if you'd like, I can apply on your behalf).


 * I intend to create redirects from all the common names (with an existing article at the scientific name) in the Jepson eFlora, provided you don't get to them first . However, it will probably be a few months before I get started on that (right now, I'm working through creating redirects for all the common names in the USDA PLANTS database, and I'm just over half way through after two months). I threw together a quick list of taxa and common name redirects at User:Plantdrew/JepsonCommonName. The list needs a little more data processing to fix some issues with multiple common names before being used (and there's a fairly intractable problem in that list with getting proper name elements of common names capitalized (e.g. "Shasta County arnica"), although I have a couple tricks in mind that should catch a lot of the elements that need to be capitalized). Plantdrew (talk) 01:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)


 * How did you do the "quick" list of taxa and common name redirects at User:Plantdrew/JepsonCommonName? It looks like an incredible amount of work. (I have been avoiding shortcuts or tricks because I want to put the names (and images) into my own head, as a byproduct of improving Wikipedia.) FloraWilde (talk) 01:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)


 * It took me less than 20 minutes of work (interspersed with dinner preparation). I did a search under option 7 at Jepson eFlora tools for genus/species/infraspecific rank/infraspecific epithet/common name. I copy pasted that output into Microsoft Excel. I sorted the Excel file by common name and deleted all the species with no listed common name. I used Excel's LOWER function to lower-case all the common names in a new column (Jepson eFlora output had them in all caps; lower casing was an all or nothing approach, hence the problems with "Shasta County" et al.). I used Excel's CONCATENATE function put genus+species together into a single new column (eFlora output had them in separate columns) while also adding via CONCATENATE the Wiki markup needed to make links (i.e. and  ) for both the common names and the binomial (along the way I decided to dump the infraspecific taxa as they needed slightly different formatting to be linked). Then I copy pasted my binomial and common name columns from Excel to my Wikipedia page. Presto.


 * I used a slightly different approach for User:Plantdrew/USDACommonName (which the small section I'm actively working on of a 600 page database dump I downloaded from USDA PLANTS). It probably would've been easier to do my USDA list in Excel, but I didn't realize quite what Excel was capable of at the time. For the USDA list I used regular expressions (basically advanced search/replace functions) to add the Wiki markup needed to make links. Microsoft Word allows use of regular expressions as do several freeware word processors. I'll probably make more use of regular expressions when I get around to cleaning up my Jepson common name list. It'll be easy to fix the links for multiple common names with regular expressions, and I can catch some of the problems with capitalization that way as well. For example, I can use regular expressions to search for san/santa/los/las and capitalize those terms as well as the next letter after them (thus turning "san jose daisy" into "San Jose daisy").


 * Well, that last paragraph was pretty tangential. Something more relevant for you, but I don't know if it would help you much at this point with the Mojave list. Have you been making use of option 11 at Jepson eFlora tools? It allows you to create a checklist of taxa in a particular Jepson bioregion and might be easier than going through the manual page by page. Plantdrew (talk) 02:57, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Identification of some plants
Hi. I have a number of pictures (taken by myself) from some plants which I saw at a hill and I think I can use them at relevant articles in wiki. Can you help me to identify them? or introduce someone who can do that? Thanks. Mahdy Saffar (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Mahdy Saffar, I'd be happy to try to identify them if you give me a link to the photos. You might also try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants, where more people are likely to see your request. Plantdrew (talk) 16:06, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. For start, I uploaded two photos at commons, MMSplant001.JPG and MMSplant002.JPG. Mahdy Saffar (talk) 12:20, 9 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Mahdy Saffar Sorry, I can't help with these. I have some hunches for what family they belong to, but nothing I'm certain about. It's a lot easier to ID plant photos when flowers are shown. Plantdrew (talk) 18:40, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reply. First do you know any one who can identify them? Second, I have five flowers which you may know. MMSplant003.JPG, MMSplant004.JPG, MMSplant005.JPG, MMSplant006.JPG and MMSplant007.JPG. Mahdy Saffar (talk) 19:15, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Turret spider
It seems to me that several species of spider build turrets? I think the more exacting common name or Latin species name would be preferable. Thanks very much for your help with the articles I created. Wikiombudsman (talk) 01:34, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikiombudsman You're right, turret spider isn't a great title. I came across the article yesterday and did a little cleanup, before you created Atypoides riversi. I'd held off on creating a redirect for Atypoides riversi because I wanted to look into the situation more (whether the genus should be Atypoides or Antrodiaetus, and whether "turret spider" needed disambiguation). "Turret spider" does need disambiguation, and as far as I can tell, genus should be Antrodiaetus.


 * Thanks for creating the spider articles. It's not a big deal for me to add taxoboxes and categories, but if you intend to work extensively on articles on organisms you should learn how to do it yourself. You can usually copy a taxobox from article about the next higher taxonomic rank and paste it into the article you're working on, then add more details. Plantdrew (talk) 04:07, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

"Taxonomic group"
From an amateur enthusiast to an expert, what does the term "taxonomic group" mean? I came across and some similar categories and thought "Monotypic taxa" would be a better name. But the term redirects to Taxonomy (biology). Is there a difference between "taxonomic group" and "taxon"? (If not, we'll want to retarget the term to Taxon.) Thanks, BDD (talk) 17:08, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * BDD "Taxonomic group" is the same as "taxon", so go ahead and retarget the redirect and move the category. I guess taxonomic group is a little less jargony/clearer to the layperson, so there may be contexts where it is a good choice of words, but I don't think the category title is one of them. However, the phrasing in Psocodea (one of 3 links to the redirect) seems better to me with "taxonomic group" than it would with "taxon". Plantdrew (talk) 17:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! --BDD (talk) 17:39, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Introducing the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology!
Greetings!

I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 663 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in evolutionary biology.
 * Browse the new WikiProject page
 * Become a member today! – members have access to an opt-in notification system

Hope to see you join! Harej (talk) 21:06, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Hoodia confusion: You rule.
Thanks for the help with the Hoodia articles I contributed. Hoodia macrantha and Hoodia currorii gave me a headache. I didn't see your comment right away, but now I know to use Plant List as the go-to source. Thank you! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:17, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Bletilla
I was interested to see the dialog that took place between you and Peter Coxhead. I'd like to start up a dialog between us, as I intend to make ethnopharmacologically based information available in such a way as to satisfy even the most nittiest of nit pickers.

What is the motivation to suppress such infomation? Can you provide any guidance/insight? Chango369w (talk) 12:01, 26 July 2015 (UTC)


 * As I said to you earlier, you need to study WP:MEDRS. Those responsible for this policy will say that they aren't "suppressing" information; rather they are ensuring that misleading information isn't disseminated via Wikipedia. I think that sometimes this worthy concern does go too far, and have argued this in the past.
 * Content notability is another relevant issue; generally speaking it isn't notable, as opposed to a news report, that research is taking place into the medical benefits of a plant or plant product – the of the research is the concern of an encyclopedia. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Chango369w, hello. I'm not really one of the nit pickers. I do think ethnopharmacology, as a discipline, falls into a rough place with regards to MEDRS, and that's unfortunate. I don't think the people behind MEDRS have given ethnopharmacology much thought, so it might be worth engaging them to get some guidelines on how to better incorporate ethnopharmacology into Wikipedia. There are some ideas behind MEDRS that I think are pretty sound: not citing primary studies, not implying that animal/in vitro results might apply to humans, and using extreme caution with claims of efficacy.

I think Peter kind of reinforced my point about ethnopharmacology (which was partly about how boundaries of the discipline are drawn) with his reply to me on his talk page. MEDRS is mostly OK with ethnobotanical claims, chemistry claims (although that might be better suited to a page on the chemical than a page on the plant), and medical history claims (e.g. herbal Pharmacopeias in western medicine). The tricky stuff is active pharmacological research (ethno or not). Best tip I can give you is to look for secondary and tertiary sources (review articles, many books). If there's nothing but primary pharmacological studies out there on a particular plant, it probably isn't notable enough yet to be worth including pharmacology on Wikipedia. Plantdrew (talk) 00:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

One more thing. While I consider herbal pharmacopeias to fall more under history of medicine than ethnopharmacology, plants in the pharmacopeias are often well studied, so that's one area where you could likely find secondary sources. And there are non-western pharmacopeias (e.g. see Chinese herbology and List of kampo herbs, and there's an Ayurvedic pharmacopeia as well, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an article on it). Plantdrew (talk) 00:50, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thanks for the barnstar, and thank you for creating articles on botanists. Plantdrew (talk) 15:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Begging letter
I wonder whether you would mind casting your experienced eye over Tanakaea radicans, which I've just created. I know next-to-nothing about the conventions and templates for botanical articles, and could really use the help of an expert on this one... Yunshui 雲 水 11:42, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi. You had almost everything right. I added the binomial and binomial authority to the taxobox, and standardized the spacing there. There were a couple minor formatting issues as well. The one big thing is that when a genus has only one species, we use the genus as the title, with the species redirecting to it. But I don't think your sources mentioned that T. radicans was the only species in it's genus, so it's no big deal that you missed that. I did move the page to the genus title though. Plantdrew (talk) 20:43, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

continuing on plants & animal dabs & sias
Hi. I may have confused matters with you and by moving the Disambiguation pages with links subsection down and up. The key discussion point now is below the table now, at the bottom of Disambiguation pages with links. I have outlined category trees and the next step would be to go to CFD, with notice to animals WikiProjects. Others need only consider the category trees, not details about how the templates should work. (Later: Then create missing categories per whatever tree results from AFD. Then revise disambiguation template and sia template.  Then start reclassifying/converting articles out of animal dab category.)  Are you ready to go to CFD with the category tree as proposed? Could you possibly plan to take the lead on that, and plan to be the one opening the CFD? If you're not very familiar with CFD i could help. -- do ncr  am  17:42, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with doncram's efforts on this matter. I'm not sure what steps I am expected to take with respect to this, however. bd2412  T 19:10, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Doncram, BD2412. I'll try to go forward with this, but it's bad timing for me. I'll be away from the internet this weekend, and will have minimal access from August 25th-September 12. And I will be very busy with real life from the 17th to the 24th. I hope I can find time to do something about it on Sunday the 16th. Plantdrew (talk) 06:07, 14 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey, I think you should not worry about it now, and take part in real life instead. :) Minding a CFD if there is much disagreement takes time, and this would be calling for a lot of biology people to see, and maybe it would be better to have the CFD run while you're free to comment and respond to others.  Rather than opening a CFD now, if that is what you're meaning to do right now.  I was pushing ahead on it largely to respond to your apparent interest/need for restructuring to be done, so I am happy to defer it.  Starting this week I'm going to have much less wiki-time too, by the way, and i too may be more settled by mid- to late September.  You can go ahead or not of course, please do whatever works for you. cheers, -- do  ncr  am  04:53, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Urena lobata
I've only just noticed the link to Urena lobata on your user page. Reading the Diderot extract made me laugh aloud. What a wonderful quotation! I really hope that no over-zealous editor removes it. Just what I needed after a day spent trying to sort out 200 odd links to Berry. Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Too bad you didn't see what it looked like when I added it to my page. At that point it was just three sentences about the plant plus the Diderot section. It's more useful to the reader now, but the minimal earlier version struck me as profound and self referential commentary on the role of uninformative stubs in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia certainly has many articles that Diderot wouldn't have been very happy with. Plantdrew (talk) 06:22, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Wow, neat! From a talk page lurker.  Thank you both for sharing about this.  Very funny quote.  Worth noting: the creator of the "Urena lobata" article  established it really very well in 2011 with three sentences actually describing the plant, and four precious photos, and four wikilinks in an infobox, giving the reader an awfully lot more than the "first draft" (first edition?) of L'Encyclopédie's article on the topic.  And note that the topic itself and the whole world has changed:  in 1751 the plant was no doubt accurately enough described as "a plant growing in Brazil and on the islands of South America"; by 2011 it had become "widely distributed as a weed in the tropics of both hemispheres including Southeast Asia". Thank you to  who contributed the Diderot passage in 2013. -- do  ncr  am  15:48, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

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Congratulations
If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

. Buster Seven   Talk  15:47, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Buster7 Thank you kindly for the recognition. Plantdrew (talk) 16:30, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Documenting an extinct plant genus
Hi Plantdrew, I was reading Sam Vimes and was delighted to find out he was the namesake for "The Cretaceous conifer species Pseudotorellia vimesiana". I wanted to read a bit more about the species, but the Pseudotorellia article is about a genus of sea snails. I wanted to at least make a hatnote there, but it looks like the only other mention of the plant genus on Wikipedia is at 2015 in paleobotany. And Wikispecies only mentions the animal genus. It looks like the plant genus is part of Ginkgoales, but I'm not sure which family. (And it looks like ginkgos aren't true conifers?) I poked around some freely-accessible articles but couldn't find an answer. Could you find anything to point me in the right direction? I hope you don't mind me using you as a one-man reference desk. I hold you in the highest esteem on plant issues, and with great power comes great responsibility. :) --BDD (talk) 14:23, 28 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I happened to see this, and I'm interested in paleobotany. The article referenced at 2015 in paleobotany places the genus Pseudotorellia in the family Pseudotorelliaceae, order Ginkgoales. However, Pseudotorellia was originally created as a form genus for fossil leaves, and without reproductive structures, it's not certain what exactly they are. Taylor et al. (2009) associate Pseudotorellia (i.e. the fossil leaves) with fossil reproductive parts placed in the Umaltolepidiaceae, a different ginkgophyte family. The original paper describing Pseudotorellia vimesiana classes it as family uncertain, order Coniferales. Other sources – e.g. this – say that some species of Pseudotorellia are conifers while others may be ginkgoales. I can't find anything more recent on P. vimesiana, so on the evidence available, it's likely to be one of the Pseudotorellia species which are conifers. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Peter, I appreciate your input on this too. Ginkgoales is unreferenced, but it does say the order only has five families, and its list excludes Pseudotorelliaceae. Is that out of date? I'm mostly just looking to seed a few stubs with taxoboxes here. It sounds like maybe the status of Pseudotorelliaceae is unclear, that it could fall under Ginkgophyta or Pinophyta—is that correct? Maybe there's no information on Wikipedia because we just don't know. Are there examples of taxon articles with uncertain classification? --BDD (talk) 17:36, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The key point is the one made in the first sentence of Form classification: "Form classification is the classification of organisms based on their morphology, which does not necessarily reflect their biological relationships." A Pseudotorellia article would have to say that some paleobotanists treat the genus as a 'real' one and place it in the family Pseudotorelliaceae in the Ginkgoales, and others treat it as a purely a form genus and believe that some species are conifers and some ginkgophytes (in which case at some point they will have to be given different scientific names).
 * There are lots of articles with incertae sedis at one or more ranks. For an extant taxon, see the taxobox for Periconiella cocoes. For an extinct taxon, see Tarrantia. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:19, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

A request
Hi, I requested an assessment of Nembrotha cristata on the WikiProject Gastropods/Assessment page. You were the last editor for that page and that was almost a year ago. Please take the request because that page seems rarely looked at. Thank you. Tortle (talk) 16:40, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Remove banners from redirect
I have been going through Food/Drink stub and start looking for redirects primarily and I notice on some that I classify as redirects that you remove the banners and on others that you edit you don't; is there a reason to remove banners on a redirect or not to? Thanks. Falconjh (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Please help
I wrote a file on Arnold Benington and an editor with a name some thing like: "I dream of Horses" (or something like that), has made alterations to it which I doubt are correct for Wikipedia. He/she has changed to "Footnotes" what I considered "References". As you made earlier edits I would be grateful if you would be so good as to check whether these edits are as they should be.Osborne 18:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hasty edits: "from" -vs- "to"
Please be careful when changing "from" to "to" in an "R" template. I had them right the first time. Also, please don't delete secondary or tertiary reasons for more than one "R" template. Here's one where you got it backwards and where you deleted a valid template. We can have up to seven templates per redirect if called for. And, to and from are germane and not interchangable. Checkingfax (talk) 11:11, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Draft talk:Ardennes Marmot
I'm not sure why you removed the WikiProject tags. Just because it was declined once doesn't mean it isn't still a draft that can be worked on (or contents merged somewhere else). If the project is certain that no draft is feasible at the moment, then I'd suggest it be taken to MFD. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

TAFI
I have nominated several articles at TAFI. Some of them could need one more input and review to reach its three-threshold. If you find time for it please take a look.--BabbaQ (talk) 17:53, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Ping
I'm popping by because I think your perspective may be useful here: Talk:Feral_organism. Montanabw (talk) 20:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

October 2015
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Triadenum fraseri
I started and with my limited knowledge of plants have been improving Triadenum fraseri. I noticed you popped in a few days ago to improve the taxonomical information in the infobox. Are there resources you would know, as a biologist, that I could use to improve the article? Am I on the right path? JackTheVicar (talk) 18:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

JackTheVicar You're doing a fine job with the article. Unfortunately, T. fraseri seems to have slipped through the cracks of the internet; it's not covered in the first four sources I was thinking of recommending (two of which are works in progress that will eventually cover it, and two others that are spotty in what plants they cover with no intention of achieving any comprehensive listing). New England Wildflower society has a little bit on it here, though I think most of that is already covered in the article. NatureServe is a good source for conservation status (I'll add that myself), and has a little more information on distribution here, you'll need to expand the collapsed fields. Plantdrew (talk) 19:27, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!
Human3015 Thank you for the barnstar. And thank you for your work on ancient grains (I still think it's a marketing buzzword with no clear scope or firm definition, but I did notice some "ancient grain" pasta in the grocery store a couple days ago; I guess we might as well give readers something that tries to explain the term). Plantdrew (talk) 19:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for appreciation. Actually Ancient grains is the first plant related article that I expanded. I already thanked you on that AfD but I will like to thank you again for your positive criticism of that article, you were the only opposer and your oppose indirectly helped to improve the quality of the article. I am big fan of Sorghum and I don't like Wheat much, I like only Sorghum, but only while expanding that article I realized that Sorghum is an ancient grain. Now I'm feeling much better while eating Sorghum, at least Im eating something healthier than other grains.-- Human 3015   TALK   20:16, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

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Thanks
Ah, what would I do without you fixing things up behind me! (E.g. Talk:Udubidae.) Keep up the good work (including plant names, redirects, etc., which I see you're still engaged on – I've been distracted by spiders for the last month or so.) Peter coxhead (talk) 20:47, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the thanks. I'm not stalking you (this time); I'm just monitoring the new article reports and assessment logs for all the organismal Wikiprojects (which is also how I happened to see a spider family move to scientific name recently which I thanked you for). I spent some time about a year ago doing assessments for WP Spiders; I believe it's the only other organismal WikiProject (besides Plants) where all the taxa and categories have project tags (although it looks like I need to do another pass). Anyway, I'm glad to see you giving spiders some love. Plantdrew (talk) 21:06, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Acacia
I ask your help to move the Vachellia articles back to Acacia. I don't take kindly to these moves (by others) as wattle species have not been moved to Racosperma, where I think they should be. JMK (talk) 16:37, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

JMK I'm not an admin, so I can't make any moves that you are unable to do yourself. However, I'd be happy to help reverse Vachellia moves once we arrive at agreement on how to handle the underlying issue on Wikipedia. I assume you contacted because you saw the thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants; please contribute there.

Spiders (again)
Editors, like Sarefo, did a great job up to around 2007 setting up the spider pages, and, as you noted above, did classify them well in WP:SPIDERS categories. However, as I've discovered:
 * some of the sources used regularly in setting them up were not up-to-date at the time they were used, particularly Joel Hallan's lists, dated 2005 (see here), but obviously based on much older sources
 * a lot of work has been published on spider phylogeny since then, leading to many changes in classification.

I've been working on spiders solidly for about 6 weeks now; I'm not sure how much longer I want to continue. I see several problems:
 * there don't seem any other really active spider editors around to work with
 * the way the articles are set up makes updating difficult. With plants, we have genus lists at family articles and species lists at genus articles (both separately if long). With spiders, there's almost always a complete genus + species listing at a "List of FAMILY species" article, PLUS a genus list at the family article PLUS often species lists at the genus article. This makes for a lot of redundancy and makes updating unnecessarily tedious.

Anyway, I did decide, as you saw, to start subcategorizing new redirects; I'll do it for the common name redirects as well some time. I certainly won't have the time or inclination to go through all the existing redirects as we did for plants!! Peter coxhead (talk) 22:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)


 * The redundancy in the species lists sound pretty frustrating.


 * Subcategorizing existing spider redirects is pretty unfeasible if done by going through Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names. I doubt more than a couple hundred spiders synonyms (if that) have the template sans parameter. If I recall correctly (but I might not), there were around 4k plant synonyms and 8k non-plant synonyms when the plants were spun off to the subcategory. Now there are around 23k redirects in the main category (it's already up several thousand this month). And all the other redirect categories related to organism names have grown substantially since the bird decapitalization went down.


 * The only way to catch spider synonym redirects would be to go through the spider articles systematically (which would need to be done anyway to catch those that don't have the general rcat template yet). Lately I've been fantasizing about a tool that would show me redirects lacking an rcat for all articles in a given category and its subcategories ala CatScan. I wonder if AWB has any functions that would help with redirects. Plantdrew (talk) 23:59, 11 November 2015 (UTC)


 * That would indeed be a useful tool. Something can be done via searches, using some of advanced features. Thus searching for:
 * Talk: hastemplate:WikiProject_Spiders  insource:"class=redirect"
 * finds all talk pages tagged with WikiProject Spiders and having "class=redirect", and from the talk pages you can get to the redirects. But the real interest is in redirects that lead to spider articles regardless of whether their talk pages are marked as belonging to WP:SPIDERS, and this seems to need a tool. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I tried AWB again. I had signed up for it awhile back, but it kept crashing on loading, so I gave up on it; it's working for me now. It does have a recursive category search and a search for incoming redirects to an article, but I don't see a way to combine these searches. There's also an option to search for pages containing particular text which I guess must be based off Wikipedia's search feature.


 * Peter coxhead I didn't know about searching for "insource:". I got your example search to work, then tried "insource:#REDIRECT Plantdrew (talk) 17:55, 12 November 2015 (UTC)


 * See ; I only recently found this information.
 * However, my experiments suggest that "#REDIRECT" is a special case, and you can't find it in a search. Searching for
 * insource:/\#redirect/i
 * finds 370 pages in which "#REDIRECT", whether or not capitalized, occurs somewhere in the text other than at the start, i.e. where it doesn't mean that the page is a redirect. It looks as though its use to mean a redirect is a special case. Annoying! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 12 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Too bad that doesn't work. Plantdrew (talk) 21:01, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

November 2015 newsletter
– Sent by Northamerica1000 using mass messaging on 23:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
Hi, You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Elinor Francis Vallentin
Thanks for your edits and help with the above article. I've left a note on the article's talk page concerning the issue to do with her middle name. All the best. Ambrosia10 (talk) 02:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Amphibium
Drew, have a look at Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 November 30 and comment if you wish. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:09, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Concerning A. cordofolia
I've eaten the horrible plant, it tastes alot like spinach, but mercifully lacks spinach's laxative properties. It amazes me how people refuse to eat it. Spinach-phobia?--Mr Fink (talk) 03:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Did you try the tubers? Eating the weeds is a wonderful idea, but with so many people uncomfortable eating wild foods, I don't think it will ever be an effective strategy for controlling invasives. I had somebody refuse to eat some nettles I'd gathered on the grounds that "a deer may have peed on them". I can see a much more understandable reason to be skeptical about putting nettles in your mouth, and I think it's equally likely that vegetables in the grocery store may have been peed on by, if not a deer, at least a mouse. Plantdrew (talk) 03:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The tubers also taste like spinach, though, incredibly mucilaginous. Cooking neutralizes that particular property, and prevents its other property of "disintegrating into catarrh as you chew it" from occurring. Plus, a lot of people get uncomfortable about eating invasive weeds in general, at least, in the US and Australia (motions to the situation of kudzu).--Mr Fink (talk) 03:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, it made me angry when I saw a health food store with organic kudzu starch imported from Japan. While I understand that wild-crafted kudzu can't be marketed as organic, it's certainly possible to find stands that have never been touched by herbicides. There's no need to import it. Plantdrew (talk) 04:04, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Turkey bird
Just yesterday I wanted to remove the birdie thing from Turkey and noticed that IPs couldn't do such an important task. And it had been there for centuries! Thanks. Go Plantdrew! (You got a new fan. :-) --141.196.199.76 (talk) 19:00, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your kind words. Plantdrew (talk) 19:41, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Hoax species
Good catch with those three hoax species articles. I tagged them for CSD as blatant hoaxes citing your rationale -- no need to wait for PROD when it's that obvious, I think. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 00:10, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * hododendrites, thanks. I took a look at the CSD criteria, but wasn't sure if they qualified as "blatant". The only thing that really set off my bullshit detector was the claim that the liverwort glowed (well, and the formation of the names; the Pinguicula was the first one I came across and "agglutino" is a weird formation for a scientific name; I assumed at first it was a misspelling of a real plant and started looking into whether it should've been "agglutina" or "agglutinata".) The images associated with these articles should be deleted too; I don't have any experience with deleting stuff on Commons. If you do and would be willing to take it on, I'd appreciate it. Plantdrew (talk) 00:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm. As they've already been deleted, I'm not sure what the filenames were. I checked the user's uploads on both Wikipedia and Commons and don't see anything relevant, so perhaps they've already been removed? Maybe who deleted the pages can shed some light and/or tell us the image names (in Hericium fructum, Marchantiophyta Cristallum, and Pinguicula Agglutino). &mdash;  Rhododendrites  talk  \\ 05:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Rhododendrites No worries. I figured out the Commons deletion process when I didn't hear back from you right away. The files have been deleted from Commons. Plantdrew (talk) 15:13, 9 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Ah ok thanks. For my own future reference, though I'm roughly familiar with Commons deletion processes, I've not gone through them for purposes like this. Was there a specific criterion for hoax-related articles? &mdash;  Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 15:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Rhododendrites Hoaxes are mentioned under Commons CSD:G3 (see here). Plantdrew (talk) 17:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Moving titles
Hi! I'm posting here to contest your renaming of the Dogwood Twig Borer to Oberea tripunctata. You said that the scientific name is more commonly used that the common name, but in fact, when googling "Dogwood Twig Borer" you get 15,500 results, but when googling "Oberea tripunctata" you get only 3,700. This is a difference of over five times and even though google is not extremely accurate, immense differences such as these show that the common name is clearly more widespread and the title should be changed back to what it was, or to another version of the common name. Thank you. Gug01 (talk) 00:59, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Gug01 actually your figures aren't correct; you need to put quotes around the search term to find exact matches. The fairest comparison is always to search for occurrences of one term without the other and vice versa, since pages with both terms in them tell you nothing.
 * "Dogwood Twig Borer" -"Oberea tripunctata" → 1,270 hits
 * "Oberea tripunctata" -"Dogwood Twig Borer" → 1,920 hits
 * Google Ngram Viewer, which searches books, gives an even more decisive result: see here.
 * So the scientific name is indeed more commonly used than the English name. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Gug01 As Peter says, quotes make a difference. And Google Books is usually considered to give a better picture of usage than a general Google search (I get 577 reported hits for "dogwood twig borer" and 1190 for "Oberea tripunctata" on Google Books). At any rate, the title should not be the capitalized form "Dogwood Twig Borer" (see Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters); dogwood twig borer is an available title if you insist on a common name. Plantdrew (talk) 03:06, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Seriously, Synanthedon scitula moved to pecan Borer and not the far more commonly used name dogwood borer??? I'm all for helping readers access the article(s) they are probably interested in by common name searches, but relatively speaking, nobody is interested in "pecan borer". Plantdrew (talk) 07:04, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I messed up a bit, and I apologize. Gug01 (talk) 21:33, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No problem. Making redirects for dogwood borer now. Plantdrew (talk) 21:40, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Lythrum portula
I have just created an article about Garnetts Wood and Barnston Lays, and the SSSI citation at refers to "Water Purslane Peplis portula". Searching on Peplis Portula redirects to Lythrum portula, but no mention of Water Purslane or Peplis portula. Can you advise whether there is an error or just lack of details? Thanks. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Peplis portula is mentioned in the article – it's in the taxobox as a synonym of Lythrum portula, which is the accepted name according to The Plant List. I've just added the English name "water-purslane", as per the BSBI list. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:54, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Dudley Miles (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Dudley Miles as Peter coxhead explained, it was just lack of details at present, though I'm hoping to resolve more of the details soon. Peter has already put quite a bit of work into accounting for the common names used by the Botanical Society of the British Isles (which are the common names that appear in the SSSI documents). I'm hoping to begin tackling the rest of them next week. That'll still leave some gaps for British species where Wikipedia doesn't have an article yet, as well a potential gaps where SSSI documentation uses older scientific names (e.g. Peplis portula). But it should clear up a lot of things. 07:38, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, and looking at some of your (Dudley) other articles on SSSI's and other protected areas; check links to see if there is a more specific article on a particular plant or animal that makes sense in a UK context. Plant common names often go to a list of multiple plants with the same common name, but there is usually only one species by that goes by that name in the UK. Badger, otter, and dormouse in the context of native wild animals in the UK always refer to European badger, European otter and hazel dormouse. I'm sure there are some other examples like this. Plantdrew (talk) 08:12, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. I have been a bit lazy about providing links to species which are likely to be well known to readers, but I will try to give more. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:57, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

IP Question
May I know the time which Keranji available, as what I know, it's  not available whole year round.?
 * 219.74.142.110 According to the external link on the Dialium indicum page, in Thailand, the fruits are harvested in August and September. The timing might be a little different in Singapore. Plantdrew (talk) 07:37, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

About Zeugites pringlei - Zeugites americanus var. pringlei?
Thanks yet again, Plantdrew! Was just about to ask you for help, very moment after I clicked. According to Encyclopedia of Life, Z. pringlei is "Zeugites americanus var. pringlei". OK, I'm completely confuzzled about this. Pete "very not a botanist" AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Shirt58 I think it should be at Zeugites americanus var. pringlei. As you may know, taxonomy largely rests on opinion; there isn't a single universally "true" classification (although we pretend there is one true classification for pragmatic reasons in building Wikipedia, and we try to develop this from whatever consensus exists among experts). Some experts have recognized pringlei as a distinct species, others treat it as a variety of Z. americanus, and some don't recognize it as distinct in any way (making it a synonym of Z. americanus).


 * IPNI is the most comprehensive database of plant scientific names, but it offers no judgement on taxonomic opinion; it merely reports that a name has been published, but doesn't say whether or not botanists usually recognize a particular species. The Plant List is the most comprehensive database that attempts to give a single "true" consensus classification. We typically follow The Plant List on Wikipedia, but there are cases where TPL has demonstrably bad data, so it's worth checking other sources. Unlike IPNI (which offers no opinions) and TPL (which offers one consensus opinion), TROPICOS presents multiple opinions, without necessarily endorsing any of them as being right or wrong (which does make it a little confusing to interpret). Encyclopedia of Life in itself isn't a reliable source (it draws some of its data directly from Wikipedia), but it does often cite sources that are reliable. Then there are various specialty databases that aren't comprehensive for all plants, but offer excellent data for particular subgroups of plants.


 * TPL treats Z. pringlei as a synonym of Z. americanus, but TPL sometimes lumps North American plants that are recognized as distinct by most North American botanists. Most of the opinions presented on Tropicos treat it as Z. americanus var. pringlei. And Encyclopedia of Life ultimately draws its treatment of this plant as var. pringlei from a specialty database, The Catalogue of New World Grasses.


 * I don't see that sources really support Z. pringlei as a distinct species. We could follow TPL and make it a synonym of Z. americanus, but it looks like so far as there's any consensus, it's to have a distinct variety, Z. americanus var. pringlei. Plantdrew (talk) 23:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * And long story short, don't rely on IPNI entries to determine whether a particular plant name is in need of an article. Do use entries from The Plant List; it's not perfect, but it will usually steer you in the right direction. Plantdrew (talk) 23:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)