User talk:Sminthopsis84/Archive 10

Mesotrophic grasslands in the British National Vegetation Classification system
Sminthopsis84, I came across this article, and I see "mesotrophic grassland" is a red link. I'm surprised that there is no article, or section in this article, that explains what "mesotrophic grasslands" means. I searched for information on it after I read about two types of grassland in the lede of Mendip Hills. CorinneSD (talk) 22:31, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That seems an appropriate link from Mendip Hills. I've linked the component words in mesotrophic grassland now. I don't know if there are mesotrophic grasslands in other places that are referred to as such. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2015)

 * No thanks. I don't want to participate in that endless battle to (re)establish that there are two definitions of berry, the botanical one and the one that is currently conflated with it in the lead. The lead and the associated image has drupes as berries, and Rubus as berries (though which of the anti-botanical claims is being made, that an individual drupelet or the entire aggregate fruit is a berry is not clear). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:28, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Zucchini
I see you decided to clear out your talk page and start fresh. I don't know if you are watching Zucchini, but if not I thought I'd ask you if you agreed with this edit: Even if you think it is correct, what do you think of "X over zucchini"? CorinneSD (talk) 15:48, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know what British usage is. In Australia some years ago, a marrow or vegetable marrow was not a zucchini, it had a white skin and a different texture from a zucchini. "X over zucchini" does rather bring to mind a sauce. I would use such a construction in colloquial speech, but not in written text where clarity is important. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:29, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd noticed this edit and had been thinking about it (I've had an interesting e-mail conversation with the former editor of a US gardening magazine about differences in terminology between the UK and the US – I don't know about Australia and Canada). It's wrong just to say that a marrow is a mature courgette/zucchini. They are produced by different cultivars. A marrow, which would be at least 2 ft long when mature, can't be grown on a bush cultivar as it would break the stem. It has to be grown on a ground-hugging vining cultivar. So although the species or cultivar group from which courgettes are obtained may be the same as that from which marrows are obtained, the cultivars definitely aren't the same. Courgettes come from bushy cultivars; marrows from vining cultivars. (Although you can pick very small fruits from vining cultivars and use them as courgettes, they won't be quite the same in texture and skin thickness.) I need to source all this! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:02, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you Peter. I have never seen the terms courgette or marrow used in Canada. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:08, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sminthopsis84: Ask a French-Canadian! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Ehem. "used in Canadian English", then. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:10, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Or the U.S. CorinneSD (talk) 17:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Certainly what is called a "Boston marrow squash" here isn't what I would call a marrow! There's an illustration of a "real" marrow here. People don't grow them much these days: you need a large amount of space, and they don't taste as nice as courgettes/zucchini (in my view anyway). They were grown by people who needed to grow food to eat; you get a lot of bulk in a full sized marrow. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting, I have seen those ridged marrows, but am not sure where. That Boston Marrow isn't new-fangled either, it appears here, and there is reference in that text to a C. maxima Autumnal Marrow in the Vilmorin catalogue. The marrow that I knew in my youth looks like this and is described here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. The observations that they are popular with the "working class" and as food for "hogs" supports my view that the vining cultivars capable of carrying very large fruits were grown for bulk, not taste. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * My memory is that they have a particularly smooth texture, and that with white sauce flavoured with lemon rind and bay leaf and lots of black pepper are not bad. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Putting it another way, they are bland and smooth textured, so need to be spiced up to be "not bad"... Apropos "courgette", I've been reminded that in the Loblaws we frequent when in Ottawa, the staff definitely knew what a courgette is. I guess that further from Quebec it would be less likely. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:34, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess I've seen the "Boston marrow squash", the big, bright orange squash with a narrow neck, in country markets, but I've never tasted one. I've never seen the one Peter calls a "real" marrow nor the one Sminth remembers from his/her youth. CorinneSD (talk) 00:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

You might both like to look at Talk:Zucchini. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:20, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Berries and fruit classification
Like you, I at first assumed there must be a substantial number of botanically defined berries used as spices, but searching suggests not; like Piper nigrum most of those loosely called "berries" seem to be other kinds of fruit, especially drupes. The same seems to true of dyes: e.g. the list here, which would be a reliable source, has virtually no berries.

Apropos general fruit classification, I now know more about it than I previously wished to and hence realize that it's a very tricky subject, with substantially different classification systems in use. Thus although I'd written without a source that an aggregate fruit can be considered to be composed of individual fruits, and happily changed to "fruitlets" when you pointed out my "error", actually this is correct on some views. My old Foster & Gifford (1973), Comparative Morphology of Vascular Plants has on p.719 "an aggregate fruit is said to consist of a collection of more-or-less separate simple fruits". It all depends on whether you take the basis of fruit classification to be a single carpel, a single ovary or a single gynoecium – all three exist in the literature. If the first is used, an aggregate fruit is a collection of fruits; if the second and particularly the third, an aggregate fruit is a collection of fruitlets, where a fruitlet is to a fruit as a leaflet is to a leaf (according to Foster & Gifford) – so that "compound fruit" would have been a better name, perhaps. Foster & Gifford also point out the difficulty in defining "accessory fruits". Since the receptacle comes away with the rest of the fruit in blackberries, they could be called "accessory fruits", like strawberries, whereas closely related raspberries, where the receptacle remains on the bush, aren't "accessory fruits". But this seems a very artificial distinction and I haven't seen it made, but surely it's strictly true of blackberries?

I'd really like to add something about berries and "seed dispersal syndromes" but am still searching for good up-to-date sources. The article is something of a personal essay, and needs quite a bit of work. Any ideas? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:48, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh, I hadn't thought to look at Foster & Gifford. It turns out that my edition, the third, 1988, has fewer pages, nothing at all about fruit, and the name changed to Morphology and Evolution of Vascular Plants. I generally rely on who was clearly aware of the differences in terminology, but laid down the law a bit. "If one considers the fruit to be the product of the total gynoecium and any other floral parts that may be joined with the gynoecium congenitally or ontogenetically, the terms accessory, false, and spurious as applied to fruits become obsolete. Four characters suffice for a foundation of an inclusive morphologi classification of fruits according to the broadened definition of the fruit.[54] (1) aggregate fruit, carpels not united with one another; (2) unit fruit, carpels united; (3) free fruit, from a superior ovary; (4) cup fruit, from an inferior ovary embedded in a "cup" of non-carpellary tissue or from a superior ovary associated in fruit with a cuplike hypanthium." Reference 54 is  which is not in our library here or in BHL (I haven't searched further).


 * doesn't make a direct statement. He says "if the fruit is derived from one apocarpous flower, in which the carpels are not united ... it is referred to as an aggregate fruit or etaerio'".


 * I wonder if the older edition of Foster & Gifford was simply out-of-step with other botanists at the time. The FNA glossary says for "fruit": "Any unitary seed-bearing structure of a flowering plant, consisting of the matured or ripened pistil(s) of one or more flowers along with any other floral or vegetative tissue(s) persisting adnate to them", and for "drupelet": "a distinct constituent in an aggregate fruit".


 * Perhaps, some day, drupe could be worked up with spices such as pepper and sumac added, but I won't be doing that today.


 * It seems, unfortunately, that articles like seed dispersal syndrome and pollination syndrome run a constant risk of having lots of esoteric material added by the latest graduate student assigned a project related to the topic. I find it too arduous to keep such pages on my watchlist. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Actually like Esau the old Foster & Gifford edition explicitly endorses the Winkler system; the bit using the very restricted definition of "fruit" that I quoted comes from explanations of other systems which are then criticized. So Esau (1977) is very much in step with Foster & Gifford (1973).


 * The FNA definition of fruit is very broad: the "one or more flowers" classifies a mulberry as a fruit – a particular kind of fruit, true, but still a fruit – whereas Foster & Gifford (1973), following the Winkler system, roundly condemn any definition which muddles up morphologically distinct structures such as flowers and inflorescences.


 * On the FNA definition, a blackberry should be classified as an accessory fruit as it fits "including some tissue of non-ovarian origin". The Rubus entry says "Fruits aggregated drupelets ... separating with or without torus attached". The torus is defined as "basal to the flower" so those fruits in which it is attached should be described as accessory fruits, but never are. However, I'm applying computer science standards to botanical definitions, which is clearly wrong! Still, I do think that "accessory fruit" is a poor concept, as per the sources discussed above.


 * Yes, trying to rewrite seed dispersal syndrome and pollination syndrome to conform to Wikipedia standards would be very arduous, which is why I hastily stopped looking at them! If I get round to adding something about ecology to Berry (botany) I'll start from the beginning with new sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:51, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I suppose we need a page or large section about fruit-classification systems. It is frustrating that Winkler's article is not available in this city, falling as it does into that gap after 1923 when so much is locked away under copyright restrictions. Perhaps it can be cited with "as cited by" using one of the citations that is available online. That section in the older Foster & Gifford sounds interesting, I'll look it up. John Lindley was clearly influential in English usage, and he made errors in fruit analysis of which I'm only aware of one involving the medlar fruit, and one that is mentioned at Multiple fruit; I hope there aren't more that would need to be discussed. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:36, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, if there had been a well-researched page on "Fruit classification systems" it would have been a great help! I can't find Winkler's article anywhere either. There's also an article I'd rather quote than Spjut's website, namely Spjut, R.W. (1994), "A systematic treatment of fruit types", Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 70: 1–182, which doesn't seem to be online either.


 * Incidentally when trying to find sources to support the brief accounts of "non-berries" at Berry (botany), I discovered that the Flora of North America never describes Rubus fruit as "aggregate fruits". The most usual description in the species accounts I've checked is based on the structure "drupelets [number range], [degree of coherence], [separating with torus attached|separating from torus]". To support the statement that Rubus fruits like blackberries or raspberries are aggregate fruits, I had to use the Flora of China, which, as you pointed out, has a much less rigorous approach to terminology. In the UK, Stace describes Rubus fruit as a "head of drupes", a phrase that also occurs in Mabberley. All very confusing! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:19, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * That is a very strange definition of fruit from Spjut; it throws the notion that the Angiosperms are the fruiting plants right out the window. I think that either a spruce cone would be a fruit by that definition, or a dehiscent capsule would not be. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:54, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I find Spjut & Thieret a bit evasive in the journal article: . Read one way (particularly the last sections) they seem to be suggesting using "pericarpium" for "fruit" (i.e. a matured ovary ± other parts of the flower) and extending "fruit" more widely, but it's not spelt out. I don't have access to Spjut, R.W. (1994), "A systematic treatment of fruit types", Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 70:1-182 – do you? If the Spjut terminology for what has been "aggregate" and "multiple" fruits catches on more widely, we are in for a lot of confusion – see below. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:16, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have access to the article on paper. I'll send you email about that. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Redraft of Compound fruit
There's a redraft of this article at User:Peter coxhead/Sandbox2 which helps to sort out some of my confusion over terminology, caused by using Spjut-based sources alongside traditional ones, without realizing the radically different usages. Sigh... I doubt I'll have time to polish up the draft to "release" standards for the next week or two. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:56, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Fresno pepper
An article that you have been involved in editing&mdash;Fresno pepper &mdash;has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Falconjh (talk) 13:06, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Falconjh (talk) 13:06, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Herbaceous plant
I was looking at the article Forb, and I saw near the beginning "a herbaceous...plant". I was surprised at the use of the article "a". Does that mean that the "h" in "herbaceous" is aspirated (pronounced with air)? In American English, "herb" is pronounced with a silent "h", so why would "herbaceous" be pronounced with an aspirated "h"? Then I looked at the article herbaceous plant, and the first sentence reads:


 * An herbaceous plant (in American botanical use simply herb) is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level.

There are two things I want to say about this sentence:

1) I notice that the article "an" is used before "herbaceous plant" this time. That is the way I would have expected it to be (American English, at least). So there is some inconsistency between this article and the Forb article.

2) I was suprised by the statement in parentheses: "in American botanical use simply herb". I thought an herb was a green plant that was used in either cooking or for medicinal use. Do botanists extend the meaning to all green plants that don't survive the winter (ie., die down to soil level)?

Just curious. Corinne (talk) 00:56, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I've heard people say "herb" as a sort of short-hand for herbaceous plant. I don't think anyone would write that, though. I'd consider it to be in the same category as saying "tarp" for "tarpaulin". I don't think it is an Americanism.
 * We of the other sides of various borders don't use a French-style aspirated h, I think that's what Americans use in "herb", though I'm not sure. We pronounce the h; it isn't silent. It is the same as the h at the start of "harsh", "harvest", "heritage"; I *think* that Americans don't silence those haiches, but I might be wrong. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:41, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


 * There have been some real edit wars over "an herb..." versus "a herb...". At Herb I eventually managed to get people to settle on the plural to avoid the indefinite article (there's an HTML comment, if you edit the page, saying don't change to the singular). Debates in the past showed that there's a difference within the US (if I remember correctly, those from the north east sound the "h" as we do in Britain, but southerners drop it). So my strong advice is to try hard to avoid the indefinite article before herb or herbaceous, unless the article is declared to be in an ENGVAR where the standard is clear. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:27, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I thought I had seen somewhere that there are regions of the US where the h is pronounced, but couldn't find that just now at English_articles. The complexity of British regional differences is daunting (my attempts at fake Cockney pronunciation are probably quite wrong, and on the whole it seems advisable to render rhyming slang with a non-Cockney accent). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:36, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, as far as I know, "herb" and "herbaceous" are not pronounced with the "h" pronounced in NE US. I asked Kwamikagami to point me in the direction of a discussion of the various pronounciations of words beginning in "h", and Kwami copied a paragraph for me at User talk:Kwamikagami. Corinne (talk) 22:23, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

According to the OED and other dicts, an "herb" is a non-woody and therefore annual or perennial plant, and especially one whose leaves or leaves and stems are used in medicine or cooking. So general use of 'herb' is the same as 'herbaceous plant'. That's not specifically American usage, and not a clipping. Most of the time, of course, people intend the specialized reading.

In the UK the /h/ started being added to the word in the 19th century, and hasn't really caught on across the pond. You do hear /h/ in the US, but it isn't common. Where I am (west coast), if you use an /h/ people will correct you. It sounds a bit ignorant, like a spelling pronunciation -- which, of course, is exactly what it is. — kwami (talk) 22:42, 29 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I can only say as a speaker of southern British English and a keen gardener, that I don't remember seeing or hearing "herb" used as a short form of "herbaceous plant" whatever the OED says. Nowadays it always has the culinary or medical meaning.
 * I'm assured by a native that educated Bostonians pronounce the h in herb, just as most say hot and God more-or-less as we do in southern England. But my informant is of a certain age, like me, so may be out-of-date. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:54, 30 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I disagree, the botanical use of herb to mean a non-woody plant dying down each year is common. Stace and Rose both define herb as such. The Kew plant glossary gives "herbaceous, 1. an annual herb or a herb with annual stems from a perennial root: 2. with the texture of a herb, soft and pliable". Medical/culinary uses are secondary, not involved in these definitions. Plant surfer  10:49, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The FNA glossary says for "herb", "Annual, biennial, or perennial with no woody (lignified) tissue in any part of the shoot; when persisting over more than one growing season, the parts of the shoot dying back seasonally." (I'm sure that I looked that up yesterday and no such entry appeared ...). So it is used by botanists on both sides of a pond. Mercifully, they don't specify pronunciation. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:19, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Herb" may be in the glossaries, but is it commonly used in descriptions? My quick skims of both Stace and the online parts of the Flora of North America suggest not. Thus in the FNA taxa seem to be described as annuals or perennials, rather than as herbs. Would you begin a Wikipedia article by writing "X y is a/an herb"? Peter coxhead (talk) 22:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)


 * At the risk of cluttering this page, here are 5 recent article titles from 2015:

Plue, Jan; Vandepitte, Katrien; Honnay, Olivier; et al. (2015) Isolation by 454-sequencing and characterization of polymorphic microsatellite markers in the tetraploid perennial herb Campanula rotundifolia. CONSERVATION GENETICS RESOURCES 7 (3) 721-722   Published: SEP 2015 Lee, Seung Youn; Rhie, Yong Ha; Kim, Ki Sun (2015) Non-deep simple morphophysiological dormancy in seeds of Thalictrum rochebrunianum, an endemic perennial herb in the Korean Peninsula. HORTICULTURE ENVIRONMENT AND BIOTECHNOLOGY 56 (3)366-375 Torang, Per; Wunder, Joerg; Obeso, Jose Ramon; et al. (2015) Large-scale adaptive differentiation in the alpine perennial herb Arabis alpina. NEW PHYTOLOGIST 206 (1) 459-470 Kameoka, Shinichiro; Higashi, Hiroyuki; Setoguchi, Hiroaki (2015) DEVELOPMENT OF POLYMORPHIC MICROSATELLITE LOCI IN THE PERENNIAL HERB HEPATICA NOBILIS VAR. JAPONICA (RANUNCULACEAE). APPLICATIONS IN PLANT SCIENCES 3 (3)  Article Number: 1400114 Lehndal, L.; Agren, J. (2105) Latitudinal variation in resistance and tolerance to herbivory in the perennial herb Lythrum salicaria is related to intensity of herbivory and plant phenology. JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 28 (3) 576-589 Shi, Changguang; Silva, Lucas C. R.; Zhang, Hongxuan; et al. (2015) Climate warming alters nitrogen dynamics and total non-structural carbohydrate accumulations of perennial herbs of distinctive functional groups during the plant senescence in autumn in an alpine meadow of the Tibetan Plateau, China. AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY 200, 21-29. The search list in Web of Knowledge from which these came ran to >700. Plant surfer 23:17, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Not clutter at all, but a useful survey. I'd much rather write "a perennial herb" in Wikipedia than "a/an herbaceous perennial" since it avoids the problem of which form of the indefinite article to use. It's just not a phrase that seemed right to me. (Is it significant that the surnames of the authors cited above suggest less familiarity with English?) Peter coxhead (talk) 00:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, the word is used by native English speakers from both sides of the pond, but it may be that ecologists and others attempting to summarize plant community structure and composition are more prone to use it than taxonomists would be. Gilliam talks about herb communities changing with time. A.G. Tansley (1939) in "The British Islands and their vegetation" talks, for example, of "41 grasses and herbs which are common to . ." two lists of grassland species.(p571 et seq.). J.R. Matthews (1955) in "Origin and Distribution of the British Flora", distinguishes between herbs, shrubs and trees. FE Clements (1916) in his classic work on Plant succession, referring to succession on two different substrates, writes "The corresponding life-form stages would be lichen, moss, herb, grass, scrub, forest and algae, herb, sedge, grass, scrub, forest." Plant surfer  10:41, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The plants in those article titles make an intriguing list; there seem be two distinct uses of the term "herb": (1) leafy plants harvested for eating or for medicinal uses, and (2) grasses + forbs. Campanula rotundifolia is edible and medicinal; Thalictrum rochebrunianum is poisonous, with alkaloids that seem to be of medical interest; Arabis alpina is edible; Hepatica nobilis var. japonica is medicinal; Lythrum salicaria is edible and medicinal; the "perennial herbs of distinctive functional groups" are the grasses Elymus nutans and Koeleria macrantha and the article refers to the "forbs" Vicia unijuga and Allium atrosanguineum, but when all four are mentioned together, they are called "herbs", so that is the same usage as at Plant life-form and in the FNA glossary. In the succession lists "lichen, moss, herb, grass, scrub, forest" and "algae, herb, sedge, grass, scrub, forest" I believe it is the same usage, meaning that a mixture of forbs and grasses gives way to pure grassland or sedgeland. The BONAP system doesn't define "herb", but uses the term when defining "forb".
 * To summarize, I think that papers about genetics or horticulture are using the term to mean useful leafy plants, and that papers about ecology use the term to mean grasses + forbs. The first meaning would also include the leafy parts of woody plants, for example, scholar.google.com produces many articles about the "herbs" Buddleja officinalis, Myristica fragrans (leaves are used medicinally), Albizia julibrissin, Myrsine africana, which are all shrubs. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:26, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Virola
Sminth, I happened to come across the article on Virola through a link at Myristica fragrans, and I saw a lot of external links, and a tag about them, at Virola. I didn't know if you had seen them and whether you wanted to do something about them, so I thought I'd just point it out to you. Corinne (talk) 17:43, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Citrus micrantha
I appreciate your work in moving the article out of The Twilight Zone. :) Hamamelis (talk) 11:24, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a pity these sources are all so confused. It would be nice to find a picture, which I'd bet is already somewhere in Commons, and to have some sort of disambiguation between the variety name microcarpa and Citrus microcarpa, but Sorting Citrus Names, a source I generally find very helpful, has that as a synonym of Citrus madurensis, a name that wikipedia sneers at (the calamondin was formerly identified as ... C. madurensis), and Commons is using Citrus microcarpa. And then there is at least one other variety microcarpa, C. nobilis var. microcarpa. It's no wonder that most editors choose to stay away from Citrus pages. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I realized Citrus was confusing a while back, but you've illustrated just how confusing nicely here. Yikes! Hamamelis (talk) 12:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I knew I'd screw something up, particularly as I've done rephrasing in haste. Thanks for being watchful. If you could do better for the samuyao part, I'd appreciate it... As for the picture, there's nothing on Commons. These are great, but not free :( No such user (talk) 18:04, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Species and synonym list problem
Hi, I was wondering if you could be able to help me with my article on Iris aphylla. I have a large list of synonyms in the infobox but it seems several are not being displayed and if I add the refs to it - they disappear. Is there a maximum limit to synonyms ?? It is probable something simple but don't seem to be able to fix myself ! DavidAnstiss (talk) 11:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi David, I've moved the citations to the synonyms_ref parameter, which has the advantage of getting them out of the way for debugging, but I can't see any documentation that explains that "..." that appears, which must surely be produced by template:Species list. I haven't come across this before because I don't use that template (I just pull synonym lists from theplantlist.org, using the program that is linked from my user page, and it formats the lists). Perhaps Peter Coxhead might be able to explain how the template works, if he has time. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:17, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a fixed number of species that can be displayed, which is probably reasonable, since the taxobox gets very unwieldy otherwise. See the advice at the WP:PLANTS page – there's no need to list all the synonyms. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sage advice from a template expert and WP:PLANTS expert, thanks Peter. DavidAnstiss I've made a change to the page which is just a suggestion, please feel free to revert. I've used the downloadable program listed at the top of my user page. One copies the text from theplantlist.org into the window that the program supplies, and it discards any that are listed there as "low confidence". The infraspecific taxa were discarded, such as Iris aphylla subsp. dacica (Beldie) Soó. Anyway, for your current problem I suggest that this is a workable solution. And by the way, there is no limit that I know of to the number of synonyms that the program can handle, unless Javascript imposes some limit; for an example of a really long list see Sorghum bicolor. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello
about my edit in Kazakhstan article wasnt a test I just added its name in persian which is one the languages used in that country and also the stan in kazkhstan means province in persian language and its completely persian word means land of the khazaks and also in Gero bisanz and some article when I made them in persian wiki it didn't had link with persian eventhough I had all languages in persian page but in english it didn't show anything so plz say why its like that and also put the persian name of kazkhstan back in the article.ThanksSimsala111 (talk) 22:28, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please feel free to remove the message that I left on your talk page (or any of the messages there); when you have read it, there is no reason to keep it. I'm sorry that I couldn't see a reason for you to be adding those links to the FA wikipedia from the English one, so I thought that you were just doing it as a sort-of insurance. There is usually a delay before you can see newly added interwiki links at the other projects, but to be unable to see the links after such a long time suggests that there must have been a system problem, such as one of the servers being offline. For example, you made the interwiki change to Gero Bisanz at 8:41, 1 September 2015‎, and then changed the EN wikipedia at 00:04, 2 September 2015‎. I would not normally expect the link to be invisible for such a long time. Let's hope that everything works more smoothly from now on.
 * About adding another language to the first sentence of the Kazakhstan article. I disagree with doing that. The first sentence then becomes even more difficult to read than it already is. Farsi is used in Kazakhstan, but it is one of many languages that are used there. Kazakh is the official language of Kazakhstan, and Russian has a secondary status. I do not agree that the other languages should be added to that first sentence. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Sminthopsis84
Hello, it's Cityside189... I was trying to edit the petunia article and placed a note in the talk page there about my being new, and was looking for feedback. I am just a hobby gardener but have an interest in the science. I appreciate your correction on the species listing. I saw a red link for Petunia integrifolia and had the time today to try and create an article for the first time. I've asked my friends at the Tea House to take a look at it before I submit for review. Would you be willing to take a look as well and perhaps, if you had the time, to send me some feedback? The article is at User:Cityside189/Petunia integrifolia --Cityside (let's talk! - contribs) 00:16, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay. I made some changes. There is confusion about this species (which I suspect is why there was no page about it already). Sources that synonymize P. inflata need to be discounted for such matters as what the common names and native ranges are, since those two species have separate native ranges. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:26, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * user:Sminthopsis84, you are a ROCK'nROLL STAR with the P. Integrifolia article. Thank you so much for #1., the assistance, and #2., the education about this topic.  Where else can I go to keep learning i.e., (what would be your favorite introductory text for new students)?  People like you make Wikipedia fun.   --Cityside (let's talk! - contribs) 15:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It is certainly nice to meet someone who has had the fortitude to come back from a block and consider that Wikipedia could be fun. It is a surprising place, not very much like real life, I think. Anyway, if you haven't seen it already, have a look at WP:PLANTS and the associated talk page. It gets very technical there at times, but the people are at least 95% nice, possibly 100%, though it's hard to be sure when one only sees their virtual personas. It can be very helpful to ask a question on a project page that is active (some have little activity, but WP:PLANTS has quite a lot), because there aren't enough of us to notice all the things that happen on the talk pages of individual articles. Better luck with the interactions from now on! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I hops so too. Say, what is that main book you talked about on the P. agrisfolia talk page? The flower bible?  I'd like to get that one out of the local library??  And do pages on each of the 35 species over the next month or so.   ?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cityside189 (talk • contribs) 06:47, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi again, I'm not sure which talk page you are referring to. Do you mean ? I don't know that book personally, so it must have been someone else who mentioned it (who it was could, in principle, be discovered from the history of the talk page). The online version in Google Books can be searched for "Petunia", which shows what that part of the book is like. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Mir Jafar
Hi Mate, Thanks for reverting my edit on Mir Jafar. I was following a wrong wikilink but that's no excuse, I should have been more attentive. Thanks once again.--jojo@nthony (talk) 15:06, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not having come across your signature before, I checked your user page to see if you seemed to be a peculiar person. I guess it would be easy to get the Mir Jafar awards somehow mixed up with the Padma Bhushan Awards, but there's a bit of a difference in that recipients actually turn up to the award ceremonies of the latter and do not do so for the former. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that it was a simple mistake such as any of us could make, and not some new subtle vandalism campaign. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:13, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks --jojo@nthony (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Dymphna Cusack
Hi, Sminthopsis84. Thanks for removing more of the remaining material added by the IP plugging Tania Peitzker (currently at AfD). As for the paragraph you marked as needing a citation, it may be a quote from this which is subscription only. More likely, it is original and rather inappropriate prose. Voceditenore (talk) 17:28, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't have access to that source either. I'd suggest deleting the purple prose. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:47, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry
OK, sorry about that. It became a habit and I have OCD but I will try to stop, incrementally. Cold turkey would likely not be successful. Quis separabit? 12:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hope this is OK for starters. Quis separabit?  12:50, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You are not the first person to have thought that it would be helpful to remove stray spaces and line breaks, but it there is no difference in the rendered page, then it is better not to burden the databases with unnecessary edits. If you feel inspired to work through the rest of Upazilas of Bangladesh adding citations to Banglapedia where possible, feel free! The last one I did was Jhenaigati Upazila. At the rate I was doing that, it would take me several months to reach the bottom of the list. You sound like a useful person to have around here! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:18, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Orange tree
Should any of the redirects orange tree, orange (tree), orange wood, orangewood, orange trees and orange (plant) go to Citrus × sinensis instead of orange (fruit)? 17:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think they all should (working on it). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:35, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Persimmon
I accidentally removed a valid space, but why did you undo my removal of the deprecated usage of "Image:"? Simply adding the space back would have resolved the issue. VMS Mosaic (talk) 13:16, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * As far as I was aware, "Image" is acceptable. Where is it documented that it is deprecated? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:21, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Images paragraph two. Yes, it is acceptable to leave it for now, but getting editors used to using only File: is probably the right thing to do. VMS Mosaic (talk) 13:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That will be difficult to remember given that the taxobox template uses the parameter "image". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:42, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

George Formby Sr
Hello, Sminthopsis84 - I guess I don't understand logical quotes. I thought I was following MOS:LQ, specifically, the second paragraph, but I was reverted:. This editor and I have disagreed about the placement of quotation marks in the past. Corinne (talk) 19:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't seem to have online access to that source. There are a few places online that claim to be quoting it, and they are unanimous is placing the period inside the quotes, so perhaps the original does have the sentence ending with "but muddling through.". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:55, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems you are only looking at the first paragraph in MOS:LQ. If you read the second paragraph and the examples, you might decide differently. Corinne (talk) 15:10, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess you are referring to this Clearly I fell into the trap of taking "logical" at face value I guess I'll have to give up either (1) using periods, or (2) quoting text Fortunately, there are still capitalization and commas to fall back on when meaning needs to be conveyed Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:24, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No. Those examples don't help here because there isn't an example of a partial sentence. I'm referring to the second paragraph at MOS:LQ:


 * If the quotation is a full sentence and it coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark. If the quotation is a single word or fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside.


 * Marlin said: "I need to find Nemo."
 * Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo".


 * Look particularly at the second example, and the difference between the first and second examples. Corinne (talk) 15:36, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, although it includes the end of the sentence (we presume), it probably doesn't include the beginning After the revert, the text is: He also developed a series of stage characters, including that of "John Willie", which is described by the cultural historian Jeffrey Richards as "the archetypal gormless Lancashire lad ... hen-pecked, accident-prone, but muddling through." As an aside, shouldn't a "stage character" be referred to with the pronoun "who" rather than "which"? (It's tough avoiding periods; now I have to decide whether to end all sentences with a question mark, and whether that possible question mark should be enclosed in parentheses (?)) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * (As the world is generally quite baffling, I think ending all sentences with a question mark should perhaps be recommended to the majority of editors on here...) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:44, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Permanent odd polyploidy
Permanent odd polyploidy apparently occurs in Andropogon ternatus as well as Rosa canina. Redirecting the term to R. canina doesn't really seem appropriate. Your thoughts? Plantdrew (talk) 02:50, 24 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes indeed. (I hadn't been aware of it in that grass, though I have read a lot of Camillo Quarin's work.) It would be excellent if the principal page for this phenomenon could be called "Permanent odd polyploidy". Verne Grant's 1981 book "Plant speciation" has a brief section and establishes the term ("The term permanent odd polyploidy is used here to designate ..." chapter 30, pp 401–412). He says "This genetic system is found in the Rosa canina group (Rosaceae) and Leucopogon juniperinus (Epacridaceae), and is approached in the Cardamine amara group (Cruciferae). Of course, some of these plants are tetraploid, so it isn't odd polyploidy, but with Grant behind the term that issue should be irrelevant. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Flower


Sweet-scented flowers and fragrant leaves, interesting associations gathered from many sources, with notes on their history and utility ... Hafspajen (talk) 11:48, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * GOSH; it's Monday. Hafspajen (talk) 15:13, 26 October 2015 (UTC)



Gosh, thanks, that's an impressive assortment that you have gathered, and a magnificent title. Speaking of interesting associations, it is intriguing to note that the date of the third painting is 1853, and to wonder what Léon Foucault would have had to say about the position of the halo; perhaps it might relate in some way to his 1850 experiment that demonstrated that light travels more slowly through water than through air, or perhaps to his 1855 experiment with the rotation of a copper disc. So many possible connections that wikipedia doesn't yet explain ... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 09:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

TFA Cucurbita
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:50, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!


Happy Halloween!

Hello Sminthopsis84: Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!   –  North America1000 23:39, 31 October 2015 (UTC) Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message. Sent to users on my mailing list. To opt-out forever, just remove your name.

Cottonwood species in the Pacific Northwest
Hi, Sminthopsis. I see that you have some replaced links to the cottonwood section with links to the specific eastern cottonwood species. I wonder, though, if this is correct for the Pacific Northwest, where eastern cottonwood is not native. It could be that links to Populus sect. Aigeiros used to be dab links for cottonwood, and that those links refer to the black cottonwood? P. trichocarpa is native to the Pacific Northwest.

I'm specifically thinking of links that you replaced in Stikine-LeConte Wilderness, Snake River Plain (ecoregion), and Mount Meager; although there may be others.

What do you think? One super-expert is, but is only active on other wikipedias (e.g., Commons). I could ask him for his opinion over there. —hike395 (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Aha, yes, I'm sure you are right. There is also P. ×jackii which is so hard to tell apart from P. trichocarpa that presumably it gets called a cottonwood. I'll fix all my changes for Alaska by changing them to P. trichocarpa, and discuss this further at WT:PLANTS. Flora of North America makes it clear that there are large parts of the country where poplars from different sections of the genus could all be referred to as cottonwoods. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks! I suspect that all links to cottonwood in articles about Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska refer to Populus trichocarpa. If you could fix the links that you added to Populus fremontii, that would be super! Thanks again! —hike395 (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * FNA says that P. fremontii subsp. fremontii is also in Idaho. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * While the USDA county-by-county maps claim no native P. fremontii in Idaho. Not sure whom to believe. I'll do more research —hike395 (talk) 02:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Have fixed my earlier edits. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! —hike395 (talk) 02:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

You know, I wonder if all of this thrashing can be reduced by creating a set index list article called List of plants named cottonwood (looking something like Goat's head). Then we can link to that list article when it's truly ambiguous. (There's also the issue, which you alluded to, that the Populus species hybridize, so we're never really sure about any disambiguation of cottonwood. Perhaps they should all point to List of plants named cottonwood? Or List of Populus species named cottonwood ? —hike395 (talk) 03:13, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * An SIA is often the best way forward with these unclear English names. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Panama
Hello, Sminthopsis84 - If you have time, could you look at this edit to Panama? . The edit summary says the scientific name of the tree should be in italics, but the editor didn't put it in italics. Perhaps s/he didn't know how. I didn't know whether to put it into italics or not. In the subsequent edit, s/he removed the "s" on "tree" which I guess is right. Corinne (talk) 01:05, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks as if the editor hadn't discovered how to put in italics. All fixed now thanks to User:PaleCloudedWhite. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 04:16, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Cooking
In the section Cooking in Cooking, I found this sentence:


 * Nitrosamines, found in some food and may be produced by some cooking processes as well as generated from nitrites used as food preservatives in cured meat such as bacon, have also been noted as being carcinogenic with links to colon cancer.

I don't think this sentence is clear. Can you think of a way to simplify and clarify it? Corinne (talk) 01:05, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I worked on it a bit. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 02:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Microphyll
Discussion moved to Talk:Microphyll. Paging participants:  Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:30, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Pine
Hello, Sminthopsis84! - I have just begun to read the article on Pine. When I saw height measurements in meters, I decided to add conversion templates. I did add them to two height ranges, but after previewing (and then saving) I saw that the feet measurements come out in decimals. For example, 9.8 feet. As I think I might have mentioned to you two or three years ago, this is not very helpful to readers used to thinking in feet and inches. What do you recommend? I thought of three possibilities:

(a) Delete the decimal (by adding a zero to the template, I believe, to show no numbers after the decimal point, but I would check that);

(b) Round up (or down) to nearest whole number; or

(c) Figure out the inches, and change it to feet plus inches. 9 feet X inches; or

(d) Forget the conversion template altogether and leave it as just meters.

I noticed, right after I saved the two conversions, that the next measurement is feet then meters! Consistency is needed – either meters then feet or feet then meters, but a lot depends upon what you advise regarding the height ranges. Corinne (talk) 03:00, 15 December 2015 (UTC)


 * you can control the precision of the conversion. Thus:
 * → 173 m
 * → 173 m
 * → 173 m
 * -1 rounds to the nearest 10, -2 to the nearest 100, and so on. Also there's flip which reverses the order of the units:
 * → 568 ft
 * Hope this helps! Peter coxhead (talk) 15:14, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Ammi majus
I just happened to come across this short article on Ammi majus, and I noticed that there were three "citation needed" tags in it. I thought perhaps you could add some sources. Corinne (talk) 02:24, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm really puzzled by something. The picture in this article looks something like what I have always known as "Queen Anne's Lace", but it says it's from the Nile River valley (or something). When I do a search for "Queen Anne's Lace", it leads to a kind of disambiguation page, with two species listed. One leads to an article that says it is called Queen Anne's Lace in the UK, but the flower in the picture doesn't look anything like the plant I know as Queen Anne's Lace. If you look at the collection of pictures in Apiaceae, the plant I know looks something like the yellow flower at the left, but with the bunches looking slightly flatter, and the flower is white, not yellow. What flower is that? Is there an article on it? Corinne (talk) 02:35, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, I zapped one of those "citation needed" tags, which would probably have been inserted because someone didn't believe the statement (with good reason). The disambiguation page seems fine, with the primary meaning as Daucus carota, though easy to overlook in that first paragraph. Some people like to say that they can tell Queen Anne's Lace by the little dark red thing in the middle of the inflorescence, like a tiny cluster of leaves, which is the end point of the structure. In general, though, it is a very serious problem that so many umbellifers (Apiaceae) are hard to tell apart, particularly when the plant is young. There are horrifying stories of people dying from eating "wild parsnip" in North America, and there are the plants that burn the skin, like Heracleum mantegazzianum. The best advice, I think, for students and for anyone thinking of eating wild plants is to avoid all wild Apiaceae. I do that myself. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Because many white-flowered umbellifers look very similar at first glance, I suspect that 'true' vernacular names were applied fairly randomly. Then field guides decided what should be called what, based on the particular author's experience or prejudice. I'd never call "wild carrot" "Queen Anne's lace", but then, where I was brought up, we called Anthriscus sylvestris "sheep's parsley", which no-one else seems to. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:30, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That's a surprising one. (You have rare knowledge.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:10, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks both. I'm not interested in eating any of these plants, but would it be possible for you to add an image of the Queen Anne's Lace I see everywhere in rural areas in the summer? It looks a little like the image Sminth just added to the Ammi majus article, except that the little white flowers are a bit closer together and the surface is a little flatter overall. Corinne (talk) 18:57, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that's a good idea. I've added an image to the disambiguation page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I think that the "sheep's parsley" used for forage should be Chaerophyllum temulum, but may be Petroselenium crispum now. (Do sheep know the difference?)
 * The images are a good addition. A minor but important point: if Queen Anne's lace were a "disambiguation page" it wouldn't be allowed to have images by those that patrol dab pages. That's one of the advantages of "set index articles". Peter coxhead (talk) 13:39, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings!
Happy Holidays text.png Hello Sminthopsis84: Enjoy the holiday season and upcoming winter solstice, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, North America1000 19:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Brigalow Belt
I was just looking at the article on the Brigalow Belt. In the first paragraph in the section Brigalow Belt, it says, "The Northern Brigalow Belt covers just over 13.5 million hectares and reaches down from just north of Townsville, to Emerald and Rockhampton on the tropic..." What is "the tropic"? That's a phrase I've never heard. I think it should be either explained or linked to something that would explain what it means. Also, later in that section it says "near the tropic", equally mystifying. Corinne (talk) 02:53, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be the Tropic of Capricorn. I've linked it in the article. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I figured it might be that, but I had never heard that phrase before. I think it's interesting how some countries in the southern hemisphere mark where the Tropic of Capricorn is. I guess since the Tropic of Cancer doesn't go through the U.S., Americans never speak of it. I wasn't even sure which countries it crossed until I looked at the map in the article Tropic of Cancer. I was also surprised to see in a map in the Tropic of Capricorn article that Australia was once called New Holland. I had never heard that before. Corinne (talk) 15:19, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The tropic can be an important aspect of weather discussions, and the fact that it moves is, of course, intriguing, something to be taught to school children. It is also intriguing, of course, that New South Wales is somehow a part of New Holland (and that New Zealand has a lumpy topography, quite unlike that of Zealand). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:25, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The Tropic of Capricorn moves? How is that possible? Oh, my gosh. The more I read and work on WP, the more I realize how much there is still to learn. Corinne (talk) 16:21, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Kusamono

 * Thank you, how cute! I didn't know that word. That is much more elegant than the little ponds and plantings in stray objects that I generally make to line the window ledges. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wonder how often they need water... Hafspajen (talk) 18:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Every few minutes, I would think. My little plants mostly live inside plastic bags, which is inelegant, but keeps them happy. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe a glas-top would do too... like a miniature glashus. What's the name of those closed glass things they were sending plants over the seas from China and Tibet and Japan, those plant collectors? Hafspajen (talk) 18:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, a Wardian case. I have a big white plastic bucket with "Wardian case" written on the side. It has a structure inside to hold cut pieces of plants while driving long distances in a car. That is so that the flowers get a chance to open before the piece is put into a plant press. What??? There's no article for plant press??? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:59, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * That's it! Wardian case. Wilson was using it a lot. (you know, Wilsonii this and Wilsonii that...) What??? There's no article for plant press??? Hafspajen (talk) 19:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Our gardens would be very different now without Wilson and his Wardian case. There are almost no photos of plant presses in commons, and I don't have any either. We collect into plastic bags (the modern equivalent of a vasculum) during the day, then use the press at night, after it is too dark to collect any more. Hmm, can I persuade a colleague to pose for a photo of unidentifiable human seen from behind as they stand on a press to pull the straps tight ... probably not, they are all too sensitive about their posterior views. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)




 * Try Linnéus, there are surely some there. (photos of plant presses..) He won't mind. Hafspajen (talk) 19:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Bird is OK: looks lively. Hafspajen (talk) 19:45, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Bird says "oof!". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * THis? File:Drying herbarium specimens.jpg? Hafspajen (talk) 19:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Not bad. Would do to start a page. I'll see about getting a photo that shows the wooden construction of the lattice kind. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Page started. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

!
Situated near an unusual privy garden. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:01, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, you found the article! Hafspajen (talk) 21:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * What is this? Is it a bathtub? Corinne (talk) 23:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Miniature garden in a... something? The 7 Wise men? The imortals? Hafspajen (talk) 00:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wait they were eight, Eight Immortals. Hafspajen (talk) 00:54, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Not Hattifatteners. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * How do you pronounce Hattifnattar in Swedish, is it anything like Fafnir in Icelandic, with the fn pronounced as "b"? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see the garden. Where's the garden? It looks like little men about to jump into a pond with no water. Corinne (talk) 00:58, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a symbolic Zen garden...Hafspajen (talk) 12:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I't's likr beer and Beer jam. Hafspajen (talk) 13:03, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Must be quite symbolic, it comes in a chocolate flavour. (Think I'll stay with plain old reliable medlar jelly). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:29, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * OOH; medlar jelly!!!! Give me some! Hafspajen (talk) 13:36, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It will be good. Not quite made yet, medlars are still bletting. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:51, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ARE THEY? thought it should be frozen by now ... OR? Hafspajen (talk) 15:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Picked mid-November, have been bletting one-by-one in the 'fridge since then, put into freezer one-by-one. Will thaw and make jelly soon. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:29, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Is it early morning there on 31? Hafspajen (talk) 15:52, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Not where I am now. Here is is almost 11 am. In the other place it's early morning 1 January. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:55, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Hm, who are those who start first being 1 Jan?Hafspajen (talk) 15:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Those to your east who have already passed midnight include some people who are on daily-savings time, so they jump ahead another hour. In Mumbai it is now 9:30 pm, and in Tokyo it is 1:30 am. Eastern Australia has summer time (+1 hour), and it is 3:30 am in Sydney. (My computer tells me these things, and I'm impressionable enough to believe it.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:05, 31 December 2015 (UTC)




 * How very unbelivable. What happens if one flies in the opposite direction? Hafspajen (talk) 16:15, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You get to the date line, and as you jump across it (from more east to more west) you lose a day. That way you could miss the fireworks entirely. When you return, travelling east, you gain a second view of some other day. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:04, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * HM, going east then is right. Hafspajen (talk) 17:49, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Look, what I have found. Satish Jarkiholi - Hafspajen (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Wow. No FOP. Rather like if a tree falls in a forest ... Presumably that MLA of Karnataka won't have a page here for very long. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:46, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Same as Modern Dubai. Hafspajen (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a shame it will be deleted, it would have been a nice addition to that page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't really got the reason behind it, do you? Hafspajen (talk) 19:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No. I assume it is architects and their lawyers who have stopped FOP, or perhaps it is just a historical artifact that will eventually be changed. I hope that people will start telling architects "we don't want your building in our community because then we won't be able to use our photographs freely". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:40, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe it is some speciallyty of the country. I am not aware of any copyright about buildings - as far as photographing them. Hafspajen (talk) 21:05, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The countries where I go are mostly okay too. It would be good if Freedom of panorama had a history section, so we could understand what has caused this problem. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:37, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Click on this three times. Hafspajen (talk) 21:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you like the article Aurora? Hafspajen (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I find it rather too long, and many of the pictures are similar. People add their favourites, no doubt. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:55, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's what I thought too... pity. Hafspajen (talk) 16:19, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you fix Corinne's page? It looks .. weird. Hafspajen (talk) 16:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Is that better with "clear" instead of "-"? It looks better on my screen. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:05, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * You mean

and ? It doesn't matter for me, no difference - if that's what you mean. Change it. Hafspajen (talk) 17:21, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I must have been looking at an old version, you had already fixed it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:58, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Hearty reciprocation
I not only appreciate your seasonal good wishes in the usual senses, but esteem them as a great compliment from someone I respect in many ways. May you have a year in which you do not just make a difference, but a difference that you feel as gaining ground rather than grimly resisting the rising tide. I sometimes recall what Ambrose Bierce said: "In combat everything that wears a sword has a chance -- even the right. History does not forbid us to hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the majority of mankind is neither good nor wise." However, it is in that very majority that we seek minds and spirits that might catch the spark of hunger for knowledge, and nurture it for the power it wins. Humanity is on the brink of something very big; it might be disastrous or glorious, but it will be tremendous. Our history as a species cannot continue like this; I predict drastic changes within this very century. Meanwhile, the best that educators in the widest sense can do, is to increase the supply of sparks. Look after, go well, protect your morale and your strength, and keep up your efforts. All the best, Jon JonRichfield (talk) 18:12, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Jon, for your eloquent compliment. I'm sure that you know that I feel similar respect for you and your efforts both inside wikipedia and out in the more real parts of life. It is very rare indeed to find anyone who has thought so deeply about these issues as you have. As you say, we can but continue with hope, and find encouragement from those changes that seem to offer it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year Sminthopsis84
Thank you Fylbecatulous! They are much too cute to eat. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

2016 year of the reader and peace
Thank you for your good wishes! 2016 had a good start, with a Bach cantata (a day late) and an opera reflecting that we should take nothing to seriuz, - Verdi's wisdom, shown on New Year's Day, also as a tribute to Viva-Verdi. (Click on "bell" for more.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

New Year wishes
Thanks for your New Year greeting on my talk page; sorry to be slow in replying but I've not been around Wikipedia much over the holidays. Best wishes to you for 2016! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:14, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Just testing
Just typing in some tests here for a discussion with user:Corinne about how to use a complicated template.

Equisetum ramosissimum
Hi, in this edit you synonymized Equisetum ramosissimum Desf and Equisetum ramosissimum Kunth. However, they are not considered synonyms by TPL (based on Tropicos), and E. ramosissimum Desf. is used as an accepted name in the usually authoritative New Flora of the British Isles. So I've restored a separate article, at least for the present. Do you recall your source for treating both as synonyms of E. giganteum? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:36, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Egads! I've updated Equisetum giganteum now, to use the updated version of ThePlantList. It was the original version that had all those most-ramose names (three of them) as synonyms. Thank you for catching that problem! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:45, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, right. However, Tropicos does treat Equisetum ramosissimum Kunth as a synonym of E. giganteum as per here, although TPL 1.1 doesn't seem to have picked this up (but then, as we've found before, TLP's algorithm for extracting data from Tropicos is seriously deficient – I think that it often treats species names with different authorities as the same taxon). Peter coxhead (talk) 18:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah. I've changed Equisetum giganteum, hopefully okay now. Perhaps Tropicos has changed since TPL inhaled its contents. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

DYK for Hakea cucullata
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Ginkgoales
Hello, Sminthopsis84! I came across a plant article that is a stub: Ginkgoales. I thought I'd point it out in case you hadn't seen it and would like to expand it. Corinne (talk) 01:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't have energy for what would be a huge project, to extend plant classification to fossils. It would require access to a book that I don't have, Brief History of the Gymnosperms: Classification, Biodiversity, Phytogeography and Ecology (which is Series: Strelitzia Volume: 20). Fossil taxonomy has been in great flux as the old form taxa are replaced by binomials, and it really requires a specialist to lay it all out in wikipedia in a comprehensible fashion. There are quite a lot of images of fossils in commons that could make a good starting point, though. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh, O.K. Thanks. Corinne (talk) 23:02, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Pinophyta
1) I was just looking at the article on Pinophyta, and in the section Pinophyta is the following sentence:


 * In the latter case the name for the conifers (at whatever rank is chosen) is Coniferae (Art 16 Ex 2), which is also in widespread use.

I don't understand to what the phrase "in the latter case" is referring. What is "the latter case"? Corinne (talk) 01:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

If, by some chance, it means "Pinaceae (the pine family)", then I don't understand the sentence. The previous sentence described how higher taxa are named for a representative family within the taxa, or are given names that are descriptive, but what is the relationship between Conifera and Pinaceae? Is the sentence I quoted an example of how higher taxa are named? As a non-expert, I'm completely confused. Corinne (talk) 01:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * venturing to answer this question on Sminthopsis84's behalf, this is all based on Article 16.1 of the ICN. Higher taxa can be named in one of two ways: either after a "representative" genus or descriptively. In the first case, if "conifers" are treated as a Division they have to have a name ending in "-ophyta" that is based on one of the Division's genera, in this case Pinus. The modern practice is to construct the names of higher taxa in this way. Earlier, higher taxa were given descriptive names, where the endings don't immediately reveal the rank. Thus "Coniferae" (cone-bearers) is a descriptive name for the same taxon as Pinophyta. (Compare "Asteraceae" – family name based on the genus Aster – with "Compositae" – descriptive name meaning "composite [flowered] ones".) By all means try to clarify this at Pinophyta! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:58, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you ! I trimmed the text there a bit, but am still wondering how it became so dogmatically incorrect in the first place. Perhaps there was at some time a proposal that descriptive names be outlawed and that proposal failed. I think there might be more of that sort of material in wikipedia, and finding it may require some systematic searching (and some research on whether Papilionoideae is really a descriptive name). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:40, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, a lot of editors (and botanists?) seem to think that descriptive names are banned. They may be one day, but the ICN still allows them, even if few now use them. (Although I note The International Compositae Alliance, TICA, hasn't changed to TIAA.) Peter coxhead (talk) 13:48, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thermal Insulation Association of Alberta? Guess they need to be careful about what the default meaning is when Wikipedia still needs updating about so many acronyms (like the one I just added for ASPT). If descriptive names for the higher taxa were banned now, it would cause chaos as different circumscriptions mean that names for upper ranks need to be generated from many different genus names, and communication would be greatly impeded. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:22, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

2) In the section Pinophyta, is there any chance of putting a tiny bit of space between the right-hand edge of the Gymnosperm life cycle diagram and the column of numbers to the right of it? The numbers are right up against the outer edge of that diagram. Corinne (talk) 01:51, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I moved the image to the right, which fixes that problem and I think it probably better on small screens as well. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Dagnabbit, had to remove the image entirely because it labelled the seed scale of a pine cone as a carpel. I suspect that the entire page needs a major rewrite for which I don't have sufficient energy right now. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

3) In item 4 of that numbered list is the following sentence:


 * Along with integument cells surrounding the embryo, a seed develops containing the embryo. This is an evolutionary characteristic of the gymnosperms.

What's "an evolutionary characteristic"? Isn't everything in anything that is living "an evolutionary characteristic" in some form or another? Unless this phrase has a special meaning that I'm not familiar with, wouldn't this make more sense to say it is an example of an evolutionary adaptation that occurred in gymnosperms (or something like that), as alluded to in Pinophyta? If not, then what does this phrase mean? Corinne (talk) 01:58, 13 January 2016 (UTC) Or maybe that it is a characteristic that distinguishes gymnosperms from angiosperms (if indeed that is true)? A distinguishing characteristic? Corinne (talk) 01:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I've changed it a bit (it is a shared characteristic of all Spermatophytes). It probably needs more work, including merging that section with the previous one. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. I know so little about plants that I think I'd better leave re-writing to you. Corinne (talk) 17:34, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I think this is a case where Wikipedia doesn't have enough knowledgeable people to get the pages cleaned up and combat the tidal-wave of incoming nonsense. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's why you, Peter coxhead and others are so important to WP. . Corinne (talk) 18:05, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks as are you in your areas of expertise. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

ICN question
I think some of the information at Species description is either not quite right or is out-of-date for ICN names, e.g. "Once the manuscript has been accepted for publication and printed, the new species name is officially created (and the new species officially existent)" – isn't electronic publication ok now? If you have time, you might be able to check this section/article. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:09, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. The whole page needs severe trimming. I'm not sure, though, whether electronic publishing is working in zoology, given the kerfuffle currently happening on the Taxacom mailing list that involves, inter alia, journals that tell lies about their publication dates, and what looks like confusion about who is supposed to register names in zoobank and when. Do you know any zoologists who could help explain that? (Botany struck a committee who investigated how to make electronic publication work, and as far as I can tell it is working perfectly.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:55, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I do know some zoologists, but I seem to recall a distinct lack of interest in taxonomy! But I'll enquire. I suspect that as with other Code-based topics, it's probably better either to have separate articles or at the least separate sections of the same article covering the different codes (no-one here seems to know much about bacteria or viruses, I think). Peter coxhead (talk) 16:21, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Why you removed the Category:Crops originating from Europe of the page Barley?
Why you removed the Category:Crops originating from Europe of the page Barley? Daniel Steinman (talk) 20:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC).
 * I suggest you read Barley, and then you will be able to answer your question yourself. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:55, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you Peter., you could also read the edit summary that I used. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:57, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

About offense and trolling
My intention is not to offend and i want an explanation about Why my edition in talk page is trolling. - 201.81.64.163 (talk) 17:55, 9 February 2016 (UTC).
 * I've already deleted your additions here more than once, but you continue to add these demands again. Another editor has done likewise on their talk page. Can't you take a hint? As for your edits being reverted, the principal problem here (as explained by another editor) is that your written English is not very good and it can be difficult to understand you. It does not seem to be a worthwhile use of time to compose an explanation of complex matters of written language for someone who is having difficulty with the English language. Is it surprising that editors are not providing these explanations that you "want"? When you changed "colonialism" to "colonization" you changed the meaning from a general pattern, to something that could have appeared to the reader to mean a single event that took place in a short time. That was not an improvement to the article, and I reverted it with an edit summary "restored better wording". The previous wording was better. You are currently engaged in demanding explanations from several editors, which is rather aggressive behaviour. Please think about your edits before demanding explanations when they are reverted. It is not good writing to say that black hair is found in the pre-Columbian Americas, because the pre-Columbian Americas do not now exist; that is a problem with verb tenses, and you also removed Southern Europe, so you destroyed information and added a statement that cannot be true. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:12, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Most of this editors edits have been to remove any reference, in a wide array of articles, to non-european cultures being persecuted. I went through and reverted most of the stuff that was egregious, but your attempts to communicate will fall on deaf ears. There is no way an real person from Brazil(where this ip supposedly originates from) would make such an effort to do what they have done to Wikipedia articles. Has to be simply trolling. Dave Dial (talk) 19:48, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

National Children's Task Force
Why do you think it isn't a youth organisation? It may, of course, also fit into other categories.Rathfelder (talk) 20:35, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, a definition is sorely needed at List_of_youth_organizations, so I really don't know how to answer the question. This one sounds like an entity that calls the government to account, a function that might also be performed by a judicial review. "The NCTF was established primarily to monitor the implementation of the National Plan of Action, adopted in 2002-2006, against sexual abuse and exploitation of children including trafficking.[1] It has expanded its role to monitor other child rights issues, and raise concerns to hold duty bearers accountable as well as continue to create space for participation of children in decision making." That doesn't sound much like the International Union of Guides and Scouts of Europe. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:50, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Santosh Gupta (journalist)
Why undo the edit of category bangladeshi hindus, when from his name and from the references quoted stating that he was cremated it seems he is a hindu thanks Sidsahu (talk) 18:25, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Replies on your talk page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:29, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Kajal Bandyopadhyay
he is the president of the hindu buddhist christian unity organisation of bangladesh thanks Sidsahu (talk) 18:27, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * So you are saying that he is not allowed to be a Buddhist or Christian because he has a name that is usually associated with the Hindu religion? Please do not add unsourced material to Wikipedia, and please also see WP:CAT/R. Whether a person is alive or has died, it is not appropriate to make statements about their beliefs that are not confirmed by reliable published sources. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Spelled/spelt
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- Can you respond to the question just posed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Spelling? – Corinne (talk) 02:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments there. While you were there, did you happen to see the section just above it about Australian spellings? – Corinne (talk) 02:51, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Mr Sminthopsis84 thanks for your Response in Wikipedia, I'm Mr. Nijamahmed
I looked up at your contributions you are improving Bangladeshi too many Related articles, but I think you didn't get anything from anyone who are living in this country, and I hope you are a mankind. You can improve Moju Chowdhury Hat article this page is needed another languages for others people's who want read it in his /her own languages, hope you are doing well  i welcome to you in my country also wanted to know about yourself, where are you living now which country is your born places. and you are mostly spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, but I think you love to help people who needs help it could be better than you are a human. may God bless you all the time.

I don't do correspondence in Wikipedia you can Send me a message from your Facebook.  Nijamahmed (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Eh thanks, I guess. Small is good, though, and humans can be quite large. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Lunch in Australia
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- Lunch is this week's article for improvement. I was just trying to improve the section on Lunch, which is entirely about Australia. It seemed a mess when I started, but I'm not sure I made much of an improvement. The concepts of "brunch" and "lunch" seemed to be confused. (Since the article is about lunch, I think, if brunch is mentioned at all, it should be made clear what the difference is, if any, between brunch and lunch.) I also wonder if the distinction is the same throughout Australia. I also see a lot of "citation needed" tags in that section; I suppose some sources ought to be found. I don't know if you feel like finding some, but, if not, just fixing up the sentences would help. Thanks in advance. – Corinne (talk) 14:38, 15 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Corinne, I doubt that there is factual basis to anything much that is written there. My impression is that "afternoon tea" is not in the late afternoon, but in mid afternoon, that "tea" was in the past the usual name for the evening meal (breakfast, dinner, and tea in that sequence, with "dinner" being equivalent to the "lunch" of some other cultures). The terminology surely varies from one family to another. About "brunch" being fruit, I've never heard of that. Brunch, in my experience, is a feature of restaurants that are trying to be memorable by the unexpectedness of their menus, and would be served only on Sundays and perhaps Saturdays. It is likely to feature Eggs Benedict, and a variety of other items with hollandaise sauce applied for memorability (to asparagus particularly, and various savoury breads and meats). Nowadays olives are popular because they are a dry-climate crop, so I'd expect that somewhere there would be a restaurant that serves olives with hollandaise sauce as a brunch item (I jest, slightly). Extravagant items not normally encountered are likely to feature on a brunch menu, notably Balmain bugs (with hollandaise sauce, of course). People at home who have failed to get out of bed in time for breakfast, state that they are choosing to have "brunch". I don't know where to begin to find citations. Sorry.
 * P.S.: Long ago I worked in an office with a 9-5 workday and a "tea trolley" that came around mid-way in the morning and in the afternoon. Thus "morning tea" was 10:15 to 10:30 and "afternoon tea" was 3:15 to 3:30. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:18, 16 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I had never heard of Balmain bugs before, or any edible crustacean named a bug. I just read the article. I wonder how they got the name. I doubt they were named for the Balmain (fashion house). Perhaps for William Balmain or Balmain, New South Wales. – Corinne (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't know why they are called that. I've always assumed that it was because of Balmain, New South Wales, south of the Moreton bay bugs, or something of that sort. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Heh. local aussie words. Will take a look. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:32, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

James Brooke
I've been reading the article on James Brooke, and in the section James Brooke, there is a plant name that is a red link. I wonder if anyone feels like writing an article for that plant? – Corinne (talk) 02:23, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * A small start has been made. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:31, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks. – Corinne (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello Mr sminthopsis84
Hi, Mr. sminthopsis84 what's up. hope you're doing well, and I hoped it is not a fact Because may God bless you all the time. is that you spent your time on Wikipedia. I have a question for New article, Saifia Darbar Sharif this is a Central Mosque if you able to help me i might be able create this article, i have sourced for this?. thanks for your Response in Wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by PrinceNijam (talk • contribs) 17:09, 22 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No, Sorry. I would advise you to write in a wikipedia for a language that you are more familiar with, and then perhaps in time other people will choose to translate. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

okay fine
i wanted learn more Contribution from you. what Did I say you Mr Sminthopsis84 how to i create a Disambiguation page please tell me... — Preceding unsigned comment added by PrinceNijam (talk • contribs) 18:23, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Hylotelephium revert
"This plant is valued in cultivation as drought-tolerant groundcover". Well. -- Kku 17:10, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, you'd have to plant the individuals close together, which is not what people usually do with this plant because it's more of a largish bright clump in the garden that slowly forms a larger clump. The groundcover would come up to knee-height by the end of the season from nothing at the start, so it would suppress weeds for only about half the season at best. I've requested a citation at Hylotelephium spectabile. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:28, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It is a great joy to communicate with someone who is attentive, well-versed, and considerate at the same time. Thank you! -- Kku 09:21, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Gosh, thanks. Blush.png Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:32, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Tautonym
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- I was just reading the article on Tautonym, and I noticed a tag at the beginning of the article that has been there for a while. It's asking for more citations. I just thought you might be interested. – Corinne (talk) 02:18, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Added a bit there, but I think the bulk of what needs to be done requires a zoological nomenclaturist (a rare bird, as one might say). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:43, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Saprotrophic nutrition
I was just reading the article on Saprotrophic nutrition. In the last sentence, there is a phrase, "the facultative saprophyte". I didn't see "facultative" anywhere else in the article, and it's not clear to me what it means here. Can you explain and/or link this term or re-word the sentence? Also, I wonder about the use of the definite article "the", as if the reader should know what it refers to, but it hasn't been mentioned before. – Corinne (talk) 03:05, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * That's difficult. The phrase facultative saprophyte is a red link on Armillaria, so I've redirected it. The Facultative page is a disambiguation, so shouldn't be linked to. I agree that "a" would be much better than "the". We could try to work in the wiktionary definition with some extra text, but it has a lot of confounding material along with the biological definition. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:56, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Ectomycorrhiza
I was just looking at the article Ectomycorrhiza, and looking at the images. In the section Ectomycorrhiza, there is a photo of a mushroom with the following caption:


 * Suillus luteus, an ectomycorrhizal fungus with known ecotypes associated heavy metal concentrations.

I feel that something is missing in this caption. It somehow does not make sense. Can you fix it? – Corinne (talk) 03:30, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See what you think now (I'm resisting the urge to look at the history to see if someone removed some clarifying small words). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:03, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Amborella
I was just looking at the Amborella article and noticed a number of "citation needed" tags. I thought you might be interested. – Corinne (talk) 00:28, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Daucus carota
Is  edit to Daucus carota correct? Do all botany articles have to have metric measurements first? – Corinne (talk) 19:23, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think that's a personal agenda. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:14, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See WP:UNITS, which does appear to support the editor's actions. All I'll say is that plants do often seem to grow to heights which are multiples or simple fractions of 30 cm for some strange evolutionary reason. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:43, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It is strange indeed; one hopes it has nothing to do with the preponderance of feet in plant names: Podophyllum, Podocarpus, Podostemum, .... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:58, 27 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I have noticed that respected nursery owner Beth Chatto has always maintained that some plants can be relied upon to reach very specific heights indeed - e.g. 61cm, 91cm, 122cm - maybe she's stricter about how she grows them than I am.... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 21:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I wonder what their return policy is. If the plant grows taller than the specified height, or fails to reach that height, can customers return the plant?


 * Dear Ms. Chatto:


 * I am returning herewith a Catananche-caerules plant that I recently purchased from you. The advertisement specified that it grew to 61cm., and mine grew to 65cm, partially blocking my study window. Kindly refund the purchase price or send me a new one.


 * Sincerely yours,


 * A Loyal Customer


 * – Corinne (talk) 02:00, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Eukaryota template
Hi, could you take a look into the discussion at Template talk:Eukaryota, please?Zorahia (talk) 15:51, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry that I don't really have an opinion about your suggestion except to wonder whether it is worth your effort to try to fix something that is so very broken and is so vulnerable to edits from people who know too little to be able to maintain something that is as sophisticated and informed as you are aiming for. Cry.png 17:25, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Montane or mountain?
Can you comment at Talk:Mountain ecology? I think it was already moved, probably before consensus had been reached, but it is being left as it is for the duration of the discussion. If "montane" is really the correct word, and I believe it is a word, I would prefer that it not be changed to "mountain", but I don't know about the rest of the phrase. – Corinne (talk) 04:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. Precision is a good criterion for word choice. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments there. I see there is now a new comment proposing three alternatives. – Corinne (talk) 14:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Merging altitudinal zonation articles
I make a first draft of a merge at User:Hike395/sandbox. I think the merged article is stronger than the separate ones. Please take a look. if you could comment on the draft at Talk:Mountain ecology, that would be great. —hike395 (talk) 14:55, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Needs a lot of work, and has no lead. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:24, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Mojtaba Khamenei
I am sorry for not spelling the name correctly. I was referring to you addition of a POV tag. Can you elaborate which part of the text is POV? FreeatlastChitchat (talk) 12:38, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Abbreviating binomens
Hello Sminthopsis84,

Help please! Some time ago, someone (whom I thought knew what they were talking about - but I can't remember who it was) complained about my repeatedly writing full species names (like Melaleuca citrolens). After looking at some of Cas Liber's pages (eg. Banksia integrifolia) I noticed that he often abbreviates a lot, including at the start of sentences. I often use his work as a model, so I've been working through all 600 or so of the plant pages to which I've contributed, (melaleucas and eremophilas mostly) abbreviating at least some of the binomial names. I noticed that you've changed one back to the full name with the note "Avoiding starting a sentence with "M."". (I happened to also notice that you did not make the same change to Banksia integrifolia when you edited it.) It's not a big deal to me (I promise!) but I would like to know whether to stop making the change and whether there is some RULE that I don't know about. I read at Binomial nomenclature that "the binomial name should generally be written in full" and I would prefer to do that all the time. Your opinion? All the best to you. Gderrin (talk) 14:30, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * would you have an opinion about this? I thought of it as purely a stylistic matter, the change that I made with this edit. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for asking me, but I don't really know. I just looked at two plant articles, Persoonia terminalis and Epacris impressa. In the former, there is some inconsistency in the use of the full term or the abbreviation, both within paragraphs and at the beginning of paragraphs. I notice that, usually, Persoonia terminalis is written out in full, but the sub-species (is that the right term) are often abbreviated (P.t. etc.). In the latter, it seems the full name is used more often. Have you seen a specific formatting in published botany articles? If there are in fact no guidelines at all, perhaps it makes sense to write the species name out in full at the beginning of a new section, and then after that abbreviate it. Perhaps we should ask the other botanists what they think.  – Corinne (talk) 15:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I really dislike having sections and paragraphs opening with an abbreviation, and I usually replace abbreviations with the full genus name at the beginning of paragraphs in articles I'm editing for other reasons (I don't make edits solely to write out the genus). I'm less concerned about opening sentences in the middle of a paragraph with an abbreviation, but would still prefer to have the genus written out in this situation. I also not a fan of piping a link from the abbreviation to the binomial. It's minimally beneficial to readers and the extra code for the piping makes thing more complicated for editors. In some cases piped links from the abbreviation might be appropriate (e.g., when a prose sentence mentions 3 or more species in the same genus), but piping links in a list of species in a genus articles doesn't make any sense to me. However, looking at a handful of style guides/instructions to authors for botany journals, I don't see any that address this issue. Plantdrew (talk) 16:13, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you both for thoughtful responses. I've been used to specifically avoiding the abbreviation at the start of a sentence (oh no, a sentence beginning with an abbreviation!), advice passed along by word of mouth, probably based on guides like this APA style guide. Perhaps this is a matter that causes sufficient disagreement that biologists here would be interested in prescribing a best practice. I'll ask at WT:PLANTS. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Apologies
I misread the Raspberry page... Nobody's perfect, and sleep deprivation doesn't help the matter any. Thank you for catching the issue, and I am deeply sorry you needed waste time on the problem.
 * Thanks. I'll reply on your talk page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:50, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

The privacy anonymity offers is a temptation far too alluring to deprive myself of it. I had an account once but was deterred with such vehemence as to push me away from any regular contributions or an account whatsoever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.207.5 (talk) 19:08, 7 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's a familiar phenomenon; sorry to hear that it happened to you too. Feel free to talk here; there are some nice people who want to build an encyclopedia, and I might be able to introduce you to some of them. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Horticulture-stub
Hi Sminthopsis84 - I see you undid my edit here. You may be under a slight misapprehension about horticulture-stub, which is used only for the science and methods of horticulture and for horticultural organisations and experts - not for individual plant types. So while articles such as Cloche (agriculture), Delaware Center for Horticulture, and Linear aeration are horticulture stubs, specific plants are stubbed with their appropriate family or genus-specific stub templates. Grutness...wha?  01:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Is there any documentation for that, or is this your personal policy? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:23, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd like to understand this, too. I find it a bit odd when a highly artificial multiple hybrid produced by the horticultural trade gets a stub category (or indeed main category) based purely on a botanical taxon used for wild plants. If there isn't an appropriate stub category for "cultivated plants" there should be. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:27, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It's the reason the stub types was created by WP:WPSS - and it's very likely that was done after consultation with various botany-related WikiProjects. If you take a look at you'll see how out of place those stubs were. Note too that the category  largely reflects . As for separate stub types for cultivated plants (maybe a cultivar-stub and/or hybrid-plant-stub, it's certainly worth suggesting at WikiProject Stub sorting's proposal page. Grutness...wha?  01:50, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Created by WP:WPSS? template:Horticulture-stub was created in 2005 in response to a request from a user who self-identifies as interested in plants and horticulture, not in stub sorting.
 * I don't think that your argument in any way justifies WP:WPSS removing pages from categories that could help identify the pages that a subject-related project wants to bring to its attention. If a category hasn't been populated, that is no reason to delete the entries that have been added, though I am aware that various projects have been scrambling to convert categories to list articles precisely because categories cannot be monitored for deletion of entries.
 * You say in your edit summary "horticulture stub is not for individual plants", but as far as I can see there is no documentation to support that claim. "It's very likely that was done after consultation with various botany-related WikiProjects" if true, would surely have been documented somewhere. You are talking to two regular contributors to WT:PLANTS here, who have both expressed puzzlement.
 * As one of the plant editors who are working on sorting out the complex hybrid cultivated plants, I am discouraged by this activity of yours from interacting in any way with WP:H&G (and that is undoubtedly unfair to that project, since you are coming from WP:WPSS). Please don't stomp on our projects. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:36, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not trying to "stomp on your projects" - it is important for WP:WSS to coordinate between projects on matters relating to stubs. I am sorry you feel this way about You are right about the origins of horticulture-stub - I see now that is was listed post-creation with WP:WSS as a useful stub type, based on its use (after eleven years, it's difficult to remember all the stub types which have been found and either kept or deleted), but it seems clear from [|its listing at WP:WSS/Discoveries] that it was originally only used for articles related to horticulture in general and not to individual plants, and was therefore deemed to be useful for that purpose, in the same way that agriculture-stub is not used for individual crops, astronomy-stub is not used for individual stars, and geology-stub is not used for individual minerals (to name just three out of a myriad similar cases). I see that neither of you have been around Wikipedia long enough to know that much early documentation was lost in the mid-2000s, which might well explain the lack of documentation on the rationale behind this stub type (it caused us some fuss at the time, believe me!) It might simply be, however, that WP:H&G wasn't notified at the time because it didn't exist then. As I said, if you wish for stub types specifically for cultivated plants, then I'm certain that WP:WSS would be only too happy to oblige, though there are simpler solutions, as I mention below..


 * Though no doubt you feel justified in your comments from the point of view of your specific WikiProject, consider the situation from the point of view of stub sorters - and from those who edit articles on the science of horticulture itself. WP:WSS, as I said, needs to coordinate with different WikiProjects, and the reason is that it is an umprella project which covers the whole of Wikipedia. Stub categories are organised to parallel main categories for good reasons. It helps editors to navigate between stub categories easily, making it easier for general editors to find articles. As such, the primary work of matches the primary work of . While the wishes of other WikiProjects are of major consideration, the general editor is also of importance. Given that WikiProjects often overlap in scope, trying to keep all individual projects happy with specific stub types while also making it possible for casual editors to find stubs can be a major problem. It is at least partly for that reason that WikiProjects have their own tools with which to find articles - it is a primary purpose of WikiProject Horticulture and Gardening. Talkpage WikiProject templates are far more useful to specific WikiProjects than the general stub categories, and most WikiProjects use them to organise the articles - stub or otherwise - which directly affect them. You can assign any articles you like to specific taskforces within your project, allowing you to (to use silly examples) create a taskforce to work on stubs about plants with yellow flowers or (more seriously) stubs about orchid hybrids.


 * All I'm saying is that you have sufficient tools to be able to create its own lists of stubs by subject to suit your project. WP:WSS is creating tools to be used in general across the whole of Wikipedia. You may consider our activity as "stomping on your project", though it has an easy way around that. Your actions, on the other hand, are "stomping on our project", which covers the entirety of Wikipedia across all projects. And there is no simple fix for us of the same sort. Please don't give up your valuable work, but do try to see the broader picture of Wikipedia as a whole. Grutness...wha?  01:17, 15 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Fine. As mentioned above, a mechanism for organizing the difficult horticultural plants into a group so that they can be worked on together is needed, but the bureaucracy here means that attempts by a user or a project to create a tool are likely to be destroyed. Phantom documentation that no longer exists justifies such destruction. I'm not interested in participating in such a cryptic society, but if I should happen to become sufficiently motivated to improve content, I'll remember to keep all organizational lists off-wiki. Thank you for trying to explain, but I'm not interested in continuing the discussion. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:35, 15 May 2016 (UTC)


 * No-one's destroying tools - as I explained, WP H&G has some specifically designed tools for its project which would be far more useful to it than stub templates - as used by many other Wikiprojects. I'm sorry you have decided to stop editing, but your recent misuse of horticulture-stub has hardly been in the interests of Wikipedia. Grutness...wha?  10:52, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Buddlejaceae
Thank you for advising me of your article on Buddlejaceae, which I found most interesting; much appreciated. Regards, Ptelea (talk) 07:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Bangladesh
I am afraid an unnecessary edit war is being stirred up in that page again. I implore you to take a look. It's extremely disingenuous to accuse one of things like "POV-mindset" when that person inserted important historical facts into the article, and those facts are used to accuse the same person of undermining them. One Pakistani user is hell bent on degrading the article's quality.--Vaza12 (talk) 00:36, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is a problem. We must never assume, however, that trivializing content comes from deliberate malice, when a poor education would be a sufficient explanation. Unfortunately, there are not enough editors with enough endurance and determination to combat this (being silly requires much less effort than careful editing does). I'm sorry to say, that I don't think RfC is likely to be very helpful either, since those seem to inevitably become flame wars. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It's probably both. There should be stronger oversight.--Vaza12 (talk) 01:42, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

CSBot

 * Don't worry about the match, CSBot appears to be a bit too sensitive for in-wiki matches atm. &mdash; Coren (talk) 14:15, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yes, the bot was a bit hyperactive there. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:17, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

A huge thanks
Mr Sminthopsis84 Good morning. hope you're doing well as always. because may god bless you all the time. Rahmat Khali Khal is a river in the south eastern Bangladesh with 3 Districts are joined in this river, and I I've got your great value for this article. and I'm so excited about how to do you know bengali language?. thank you so much for your contribution of this article. wikiguy (talk) (10:00 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * So you are back, Nijam. Thank you for the more pleasant tone from this edit summary. Why has your alter ego been uploading so many seemingly identical images called "Moju Chowdhury Hat launch terminal"? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:21, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

yes I'm back. Mr. hope you are safe with your Brilliant balance. Moju Chowdhury Hat Launch Terminal only 1 picture I've uploaded but. I don't know how many types it was uploaded. please be aware that and you can delete those extra pictures, thanks stay with us. :) wikiguy (talk) 11:31, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Populus
You are right — I was confusing mould and mold. Thanks. --217.155.32.221 (talk) 21:07, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Yikes! Hope you didn't eat anything so afflicted. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:32, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Crop diversity
Hi, I've had a modest 'go' (as we Brits say) at this article, which seemed to me to be covering only one angle on the subject, and that not terribly well; I've also illustrated it (couldn't help doing that!) and it at least looks and is cited a little better. What do you think most needs to be done to it? Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:34, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * ('Strines say that too.) Your efforts have made quite an improvement. At this point I'd says that the section called "In-crop diversity" is inadequate. It doesn't cover diversity within a single field, which can provide better performance over the variety of conditions within that field. Clonal monoculture is only mentioned under disease threats. It would be nice if the page could eventually mention efforts to genetically engineer apomixis in crop plants (counter to in-crop diversity). Polyculture is listed only under See also, and that links to Companion planting. It would be nice if the way that diversity can increase pollinators and natural enemies of crop pests were mentioned. The section called "Economic impact" is rather wide of the mark (Colombia would be a case in point; high-value crops rarely benefit the poor, and may be recreational drugs rather than food). It's nice that you have energy to try to improve that page, rather than running away from it, as many have undoubtedly done. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:11, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Mm, yes, quite a challenge. Thanks for the reply, which more than confirms my feeling about the article. I hesitate to ask you to point me to sources - I'll certainly find a few, though maybe not the best ones! Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:41, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sure that you'll find interesting material, and with a basic structure there, the "best sources" can come later. A search in scholar.google.com for "in-crop diversity" (without quotes) seems quite productive. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:19, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I've addressed several of the issues you've raised, too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:22, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I couldn't help noticing the state of History of agriculture as a result. Suffice it to say that the article has shrunk from 125,000 to 75,000 bytes! It's perhaps a little tighter than it was. I'd be amused and assisted as always by your comments. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:53, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The edit history that you've created for that page is amusing by its length. Fallow (disambiguation) is amusing, sort-of; I'll leave it for your delectation. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:49, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Mm, yes! Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:03, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Aaargh! I just discovered that Agriculture provided a History of agriculture section by ... including the whole article! Never saw it done before... for reasons obv. enough. Looking into this topic area, I feel like the climber on a crumbly shale cliff who said "it's like climbing a library". I think it was originally the Old Man of Hoy. i.e. whatever I look at and hope to rely on instantly crumbles into rubble. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:17, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've been finding horticulture a very disappointing part of the wiki too; false statements abound, some of them quite imaginatively wrong. In general, I've hoped that achieving a certain threshold of quality would mean that casual editors are no longer discouraged from making improvements, but horticulture and agriculture pages generally are far below that imagined threshold, I fear. That's a good discovery, a chance to remove a big wad of "material". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:32, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I have found that once articles reach a good standard (properly reviewed GA, say), they do attract a lot less casual editing of the "original" variety. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh. GA is a long way off for many of these. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:29, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. Oddly enough, History of agriculture is not far off now, I think. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:50, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks to your efforts! (Now I'm side-tracked by whether there is massive confusion between Trichosanthes dioica, Cyclanthera pedata, and Coccinia grandis. Ugh.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:53, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

What do you think of [|this SPA comment] on Arab_Agricultural_Revolution? Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:21, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm working on User:Chiswick Chap/Plants in culture... and guess what, I found plenty of text in the expected places, but practically no references! Must be a pattern to all this, surely. (I suppose there are SOME articles which are properly referenced somewhere?) Anyway, still at an earlyish stage, but any suggestions would be welcomed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Let me know if you need suggestions for sources for particular topics. One comment is that the section on plants in literature and film is all about fictitious plants, with no mention of real ones like medlar. There seems to be another category not covered by "In mythology and religion" for, e.g., Three Sisters (agriculture), Rose (symbolism), and Language of flowers. Perhaps there could be mention of uses as Floral emblems and in heraldry (Charge (heraldry), Wars of the Roses, The Scarlet Pimpernel). I don't think wikipedia covers the rebirth idea in the Christian church of lilies springing up from drops of blood. A web search suggests that wheat should be mentioned at Christian symbolism, but it is not. The lotus and the bodhi tree are mentioned at Buddhist symbolism. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:15, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Watermelon
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- I always thought watermelon was a fruit. Apparently, in Oklahoma it is considered a vegetable. See Oklahoma. – Corinne (talk) 03:03, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Gosh. It's almost time to make pickles. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:49, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. Mmm. Watermelon pickles. I was looking for a picture of watermelon pickles, and I was surprised that there was no picture of watermelon pickles at Pickling. – Corinne (talk) 20:59, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
 * They probably get eaten too fast. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:04, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Oklahoma's designation is what alerted me several years ago to yet another fruit/vegetable definition. There's the semi-botanical definition; botanical fruits have seeds, and while botany doesn't really care about vegetables, "botanical vegetables" are plant parts that don't have seeds. And there's the culinary definition; culinary fruits are sweet seedy things that are usually eaten raw, or if cooked, eaten as desserts (non-sweet seedy things like tomatoes are considered culinary vegetables). And then there's the Oklahoma/agronomic definition; agronomic fruits are sweet, seedy, and are usually produced by perennial plants that are woody and propagated clonally (not from seeds). Seed propagated sweet herbaceous annuals like watermelon aren't quite Oklamoa/agronomic fruits. Bonus points if you can figure out where the use of herbaceous perennial rhubarb petioles in desserts falls. Plantdrew (talk) 06:21, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * actually it's even more complicated: you have to say something like "botanical fruits are plant parts whose function in wild forms is to produce seeds", otherwise dessert bananas aren't botanical fruits. But then are plantains (i.e. bananas intended to be cooked) vegetables? Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 08:13, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * And if I eat some melon with jambon cru it's a vegetable, but if I have it with a drop of port, it's a fruit! Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:46, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It makes a nice salad with balsamic vinegar and that popular fruit fresh mint. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:05, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I should have known I wouldn't get a simple answer on a botanist's page. ;) Peter, are you saying that the little seeds in the middle of dessert bananas will not germinate and produce banana trees? Sminthopsis84, do you agree that fresh mint is a fruit? That really astonishes me. I never thought green leaves could be a fruit. If that is true, what about Stevia rebaudiana? Also, if rhubarb is in any way considered a fruit, what about Cardoon? – Corinne (talk) 13:21, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Partial answers from me Corinne: mint being considered a fruit by some humans would surely fit into that category of situations so frequently discussed in the popular press where "scientists are baffled". Could any scientist explain that? A psychologist perhaps? Would a psychologist bother to study such a phenomenon? I can personally attest that the little seeds inside the bananas we are used to in non-banana-growing countries are nothing like the real seeds of a banana. A seedy banana is quite a challenge to eat, the seeds are like little rocks and they fill your mouth. As a child I remember my parents being very disappointed that they had bought such fruit and they refused to eat them, but I persevered and spat a lot of the seeds over the side of a ferry into a very large river. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:46, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * a definitive(?) answer from me – rhubarb is a vegetable used as a fruit. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:34, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The Chinese (and Medieval Europeans, actually) would say it was a herbal medicine, and why were we eating it as a fruit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Here's a mint julep for you all. – Corinne (talk) 01:52, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello Man
hey Mr.Sminthopsis what's up. hope you're doing well as always being a great editor of Wikipedia I'm Nijam I hope you understand. that means I need a help. please look into the box below Wikipedia Commons Commons wikimedia see why there are too many duplicate files be been uploaded. I don't know please help us and fixed those files immediately as possible as soon? thanks your friend Nijam wikiguy (talk) 09:33, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've nominated the extra files for deletion. It usually takes about a week before the deletions happen in Commons. Perhaps your mobile carrier for some reason did not receive a "completed" signal, so it uploaded the pictures again (several times). I hope you weren't charged to the extra uploads ... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

thanks for the nominated dear sminthopsis I wanna know about yourself. where are you living now, and which country. I'm living in Bangladesh, and I invite you to comes in my country, i hope you've know about Moju Chowdhury Hat Town it's need another language in wikidate if you are know others languages or which language is your natives please write a article in your own language. thanks for your response in the English Wikipedia. wikiguy (talk) 00:09 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
This article has its own category, and that is where most of the categorisation should be. But I don't think it meets the definition of International non-governmental organization.Rathfelder (talk) 17:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:06, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Sorbus domestica
Could you please look at the opening of Sorbus domestica, where the English name link to "wild service tree" and the scientific name seem to disagree. Sorbus is beyond me! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:06, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, well I wasn't sure what the problem was exactly, but seem to have solved it by zapping pieces while trying to bring a smidgeon of less-antiquated taxonomy to Sorbus torminalis. See what you think of it now. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Sminthopsis, when you convert a common name redirect into a dab/set index, please check for variant capitalizations and retarget them. "Service Tree" was still pointing to S. domestica. I've come across maybe a half dozen cases where you've created a set index, but left a modified form of the common behind. And thanks for your efforts creating the SIAs in the first place. Plantdrew (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, thanks. (I hadn't noticed that alternative capitalizations need explicit coding). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:06, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely fixed now. Thanks!
 * The annoying feature of alternative capitalizations is that if an explicit variant redirect doesn't exist, the search works as you would expect, i.e. capitalization doesn't matter, and the search is basically like Google. But if the variant does exist and points differently, then the search doesn't, and you have to fix it. It all goes back to the bad decision to allow articles to have titles differing only in capitalization. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Commonscat links
Hi! I am aware that Commons category links are now on Wikidata. On ENwiki it's customary to also put them after the external links section of an article (which is why I was surprised the commonscat link wasn't there). Do you know if the guidelines around this have changed? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:55, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Now that you mention it, I don't see any guidelines or discussion about Commons (and Wikispecies) specifically; all the discussion is about interlanguage links. Feel free to revert my edit. My reasoning was from Wikidata, that "In general, it is best to remove interwiki links in Wikipedia articles once they are associated with Wikidata. (You can tell that the page is "associated" with Wikidata by the presence of the "Edit links" text below the language list.)"
 * The "Edit links" text below the language list shows up on pages that have no interlanguage Wikidata, but have it for Commons or Wikispecies, and the "Edit links" text provides a route to add the Wikidata Commons link. However, as the page name indicates, that recommendation is about interlanguage links. I've asked at Village pump, and hope that the guidelines will be updated if needed.
 * More generally, on the plant pages that I mostly work on, a lot of links to Commons are missing here, and many pages have no image even though a suitable one is sitting on Commons, so I have been looking for such cases. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Update: discussion at the Village Pump has convinced me that those extra templates should stay. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:25, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Iranian plateau
I was just looking at the article Iranian plateau, and in the Economy section there is a list of plant products. I had never heard of lucerne, so I clicked on the link, and it led to an article on Lucerne, Switzerland. Then I looked at the disambiguation page for Lucerne, and saw that there are two plants that it could be, one alfalfa and the other a tree. I figure it's alfalfa, but I thought I'd leave it up to the botanists to disambiguate this link. Thanks. – Corinne (talk) 00:32, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think you are right, given the other crops listed with it. I've changed the link. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:07, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That article on Manna is interesting. I'm a little surprised that no one seems sure what manna was. So many ideas have been put forth. – Corinne (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. I'm surprised there's no mention of Nostoc. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:25, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's interesting stuff. The fact that it appears after a rain may have made ancient humans think it came from the sky. I'm puzzled by the somewhat contradictory statements that it is a common foodstuff in Asia but that there is evidence of toxicity and that regular consumption can lead to dementia. – Corinne (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's strange. Blue-green algae are strange. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:43, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The article mentioned Alzheimer's. I wonder if Alzheimer's researchers have looked into cyanobacteria/blue-green algae as a cause. – Corinne (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I think they have, or at least that BMAA chemical. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:52, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Manipur
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- I was just glancing at the article on Manipur, and I decided to make a minor change to a caption. While doing that, I changed the wording of a sentence in the Manipur section. Now I'm wondering (a)whether "ranging from...to" was better (I didn't see particularly why grasses to bamboo to trees is a range, except for height, but I supposes that could be enough); (b) whether "Vegetation consists of plants" makes any sense. Isn't all vegetation made up of plants? Is there a word that can be left out here? Or is that correct wording? – Corinne (talk) 01:46, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree, "plants" can go. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:34, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I've revised the sentences. Is "and" necessary between "reeds" and "bamboos"? – Corinne (talk) 20:11, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * You could use a comma, but they are somewhat similar both in appearance and in use, to I think grouping them with "and" is better. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:30, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * O.K. I'll leave it as it is, then. Thanks. – Corinne (talk) 21:45, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Oslo university
some of the rankings in the intro of Oslo university should be removed from the intro since it is not a ranking chapter and the rankings is stated elsewhere. also it was a mistake that i changed the it from 2015 to 2016. but the THE ranking from 2015 is the newest world ranking the 200 is only an EU ranking. Anyway some rankings should be removed from the intro page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beboj3140 (talk • contribs) 22:17, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, but making mistakes makes it looks as if your intent is simply to diss the university. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:30, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * i see but it was actually a mistake. actually the times higher education ranking for 2015 is written as 2015/2016 on the website so i just started writing that, but got away from since it would be to complicated to write in the comment section. Im not trying to diss anything i just find it very wrong that somebody write intros that is so biased. could i delete the last bit so it doesn't sound like a ranking chapter but instead a intro — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beboj3140 (talk • contribs) 22:43, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Cleaning it up would require a lot of work and polishing of the entire article in ways that I can't even begin to think up; it is quite poor. I've added a template. Since you seem to be new, I've put a welcome message on your talk page with some pointers, which I hope will be interesting. You have got into a situation where you are being accused of edit warring, and there's even an ANI, which can rapidly escalate into being blocked, so I think you should put that article to one side and not even look at it. There are plenty of bad articles around here that just sit untouched because people who disagree about them can't seem to work together. I hope you can find a more enjoyable part of the wiki where only smaller edits are needed, until you learn the ropes, so to speak. Best wishes, I hope your experience here improves quickly. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:51, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for getting Beboj to discuss this. I have some thoughts as well. However, this discussion should occur on the article's talk page, where other editors may see and contribute. Don't you agree? Would you consider it moving it there? Thanks. X4n6 (talk) 00:47, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I don't agree. I think there is some biting of newbies going on here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:00, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * While there is certainly some frustration with this newbie's behavior, it is article related. Also, posting here certainly does nothing to "protect" anyone. So I don't see what you're hoping to accomplish. It only keeps others from contributing to the discussion on this article. And if you check the article's talk page, you'll see, for some reason, the rankings of this university have been a contentious topic since at least 2008. Even though they're pretty standard on virtually every university article on this project. X4n6 (talk) 01:29, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If I had a particular interest in improving that article and had potentially useful suggestions, then I would either edit it or contribute to the talk page or both. Instead, after seeing the other edits made by the same newbie, I have tried to help them to learn how to contribute more productively, starting by ignoring that article. That is what I am "hoping to accomplish". Rather than attacking me here, I think it could be helpful if you also ignored that article and consigned its fixing to posterity. Quite often, the best thing to do here is simply to step away from a contentious article, in the hope that someone will later have a really brilliant idea about how to fix it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:44, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that you feel attacked. I was simply asking questions on what your objectives were. I though, like me, you were primarily focused on the article. Now I understand your primary interest is in the tutelage of the newbie. That's laudable and I wish you luck with it. I see you've also had issues with this individual on other articles. But while you're doing that, I'll focus on this article, since that is my only interest. And as you've expressed more interest in that tutelage than the article, I'm removing your tag; as it mischaracterizes the whole article, over a few, admittedly clunky but relatively minor edits. Rather than recusing myself because of a newbie, fixing problems is more in line with our functions as editors and that's what I intend to help accomplish. If you're inclined, I'll welcome your contributions there as well. But if not, carry on. X4n6 (talk) 19:43, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Crassulaceae
Hello, Sminthopsis84 -- I was just reading the discussion on Peter coxhead's talk page about Hylotelephium telephium. Of course I understood only a little of it, but since I liked the look of the plant in the image in the article, I looked at a few of the linked articles. (Since I always thought sedum was a small plant with succulent leaves, I thought it was interesting that this one looked different.) I came upon this article: Crassulaceae, and I saw a tag at Crassulaceae that has been there since 2013. Just thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't seen it. – Corinne (talk) 20:57, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. It was a bit of a tangle, but it has a citation now. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:09, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Capitalization at Styrax
Hi Sminthopsis84, I'd like to politely disagree with you about one of your recent edits. You capitalized the words "friar's balsam" and "vulnerable" in the article Styrax and I think they should be lower case. Your edit summary said they were "technical terms", but we don't generally capitalize technical terms. "Friar's balsam" seems to be a traditional name for a medicine produced by many companies and "vulnerable" is a category; neither are proper names. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   02:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Although I dislike it, I have to agree that the consensus policy of aggressive de-capitalization applies here. The solution seems to be to put the IUCN category in quotes, writing something like classed as "vulnerable" by the IUCN or adding the abbreviation (which is always capitalized), e.g. rated as vulnerable (VU). Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 06:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a shame but it clearly applies. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay. I've done that and will leave it to posterity to figure out whether Friar was a person or a category. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:28, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   15:01, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Teleology in biology
I've been led (hmm) to write a teleology article ... and to try to straighten out the mess at Eusociality, having more or less tidied up Group selection, and yes, they are all connected, unfortunately. There's a discussion of how to deal with teleology in, er, all biology articles (hmm), at WikiProject Biology which you and folks who stalk here might like to look at. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you Chiswick Chap for working on such a difficult subject. I can't claim to have any real grasp of sociobiology, so can only tweak a little. It is nice to see the civility of the discussion taking place. I'd comment that much of teleology seems to occur where there is unsupported speculation that an adaptation exists, and that some of it comes about through poor writing, such as "Inaperaturate pollen grains often demonstrate pollen wall thinning in order to facilitate pollen tube germination at any position.", and I hope that much of it can be removed for those reasons before we get to the question of whether such language is acceptable. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:39, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Epidermal window / leaf window
Before we all go reediting everything, let's resolve this issue on terminology. I've responded to you comment on Talk:Leaf_window. Let's have a discussion there. -- Sjschen (talk) 17:24, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Fenestrate in Leaf morphology
I don't understand what is the purpose of your delete of the term fenestrate on the page, since you didn't go into you rational in your edit comments. Could you clarify why a bulk delete was preferable to actual correction and editing? -- Sjschen (talk) 17:41, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Clearly, we have a communication problem, and there is very little that I can do about that. Presumably, you are referring to my edit on Glossary of leaf morphology with the edit summary "since edit warring is happening, I'm removing this because it isn't a leaf shape anyway". I don't know how I can explain that more simply.
 * Another problem is that Leaf window has a clear meaning, but Epidermal window means several things, any kind of a window involving epidermal tissue, and not necessarily in a leaf or a natural formation. You have reverted my changes to various plants because you want, e.g., Conophytum to have an epidermal window rather than a leaf window. That is unhelpful to the reader.
 * I'm giving up at this point because I don't want to spend my time fighting with you.
 * FWIW some citations that use other meanings of Epidermal window are:
 * created surgically on a human patient:
 * in a petal:
 * made by an insect:
 * in the eye of a fish: "Light is reflected from a sheet of guanine crystals, and strikes the photoreceptors of the retinal diverticulum through a clear epidermal window." here
 * over the photophores of a bioluminescent fish:

Signing off now. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:39, 17 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I see your points and thank you for your other edit on the perforate leaf page and these citations. Still, simply deleting the term on the glossary page when it is in common use and defined (albeit poorly) in the respected manuals is not helpful. To address your concern that "it isn't a leaf shape anyway", note that the terms on the glossary are not just shapes but also a lot of leaf morphologies and organization. As for the article on translucent leaf skin structures, calling it leaf window is not ideal given that fenestrated leaf, with the same meaning, is still in common use. This ambiguity is partly how we got to this point anyways. The right way to do resolve this is to clarify the distinctions, which is what I have attempted to do previous in the glossary page, and will try to do with others next.
 * Boldness in editing is great, but communication and discussion when working together is better. -- Sjschen (talk) 03:42, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The heading of the section from which I removed the entry for fenestration is "List of leaf (or leaflet) shapes". It isn't a shape. But look, I just don't have the time and energy required to fix all the bad material in wikipedia, and it requires extra energy to argue with you about every point. I have added a smidgeon of accuracy to the leaf window page to simply demonstrate that most of these structures have only incidental epidermis and the rest is parenchyma, so calling them all "epidermal windows" is just plain wrong. The page is still a mess and needs a lot of work and citations. I've had enough, and will not discuss this further, and am removing all the affected pages from my watch list because I simply need to save some energy for real life (and other parts of wikipedia where people aren't arguing with me). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)