Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive68

Template suggestion
Well, I know that many editors (at some extent, me too) don't like templates in excess, as we can see in the discussion above. But I would like to suggest a template for angiosperm families (maybe it could be divided in more templates, or included at least in the pages APG IV and Flowering plant):

Zorahia (talk) 19:31, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What would be the purpose of this huge, hard-to-navigate template? How would it help readers? Who is it for? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:41, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
 * To be honest it would just make more sense linking to the APG IV article.  There does not seem to be any viable function to the suggested template.-- Kev  min  § 21:58, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it would give a better global view of the organization of the families, because the APG IV article is much more extense, hard to visualize as a whole.Zorahia (talk) 01:58, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe it could be used to replace the "short version" in the APG IV article, which makes very inefficient use of the page width, but I don't think it belongs on all of the pages listed. I question whether people really use it to navigate, and it pollutes "What links here" for very little benefit. Choess (talk) 16:28, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely with . Peter coxhead (talk) 22:59, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, I agree also. So, could it be included in the APG IV article? Zorahia (talk) 10:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it would be a great replacement for the current contents of the "Short version" section. I'd go ahead and replace that with the navbox (I tried subst'ing it, but I guess this template is now Lua-driven, so it'll have to be left as a navbox). Choess (talk) 01:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Missing topics list
My list of missing topics about botany is updated - Skysmith (talk) 12:51, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

LÖVE
, currently a redirect to Mari0, has been nominated at RfD. As there are biographies of botanists Áskell Löve and Doris Löve tagged by this project, your comments are invited in the discussion at Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 January 12. Thryduulf (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Science promotion
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:39, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Massive navigation templates on species articles
Do we really want a huge navigation template on lots of pages, like the one for the family Cupressaceae on the species page Actinostrobus arenarius? Is is likely that any reader who is looking at a species page would wish to know about other genera and species in a family? I'd like to propose that these go at most on genus and family pages. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:03, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. Plant surfer  14:09, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree too, I already removed the one that was placed onto Metasequoia foxii since the template was for extant species, and has very little relation to that article. I think that type of nav box should be avoided in general overall to be honest.-- Kev  min  § 14:32, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't think these navigation templates belong on pages about taxa up to and including orders. The plant navigation template is only really appropriate when 'near' the plant article, i.e. near the top of the taxonomic hierarchy. Definitely not species, genera or families. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * One compromise is to make the navbox collapsed by default (because it is so large). I just added state: I can change the default. —hike395 (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed just make it collapsible-Cs california (talk) 01:38, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I really dislike taxonomy footer navboxes. In most cases they are useless. Taxonomy is a vertical hierarchy, and taxoboxes already provide a way to navigate to related articles. Footer navboxes are more useful when dealing with a horizontal collection of related articles (e.g. recipients of a particular award by year). Plantdrew (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Another problem is that any taxonomy in them is often not kept up-to-date and isn't consistent with the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:25, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I am the creator of the template and on the counter point larger templates exist for whales Template:Cetacea, Marsupials Template:Diprotodontia and Carnivores Template:Carnivora which are 2 to 3x as large or location templates which are just as big Template:Nord communes. If they are all conifers it is related because it is useful for several things taxonomical identification, research, collection completion, and interspecific hybridizing. Per wikipedia guidelines "Complicated articles may be best modeled on the layout of an existing article of appropriate structure." This template is smaller than all the mammalian ones which were created in 2008 and have through wikipedia usage for 8 years. Taxonomy on these conifers are pretty up to date you are not going to add anything from outside the family inside --Cs california (talk) 01:34, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You have labeled the template wrong, however, because you list extinct species along with the extant ones and the Cupressaceae page coverall almost all of the points you try to make with the template. The easiest thing to do would be for you to demonstrate a need for such a template, and that the templates you list are actively being used by readers.-- Kev  min  § 02:28, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You can say the same for the whale page and the template, where the content is there on the family page. This is demonstrated on the animal templates above per Silence and consensus. I did not know what to do with the extinct ones but feel free to remove them if you find them in the way. I just included them because it makes it easier for people to find similar fossils. But I understand if that is the wrong place for them since they are not on any other templates.--Cs california (talk) 05:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I also have reservations about navboxes. Along with concerns raised above, navboxes in general can distort search results. That is, a lot of extra search results show up from a simple search for e.g. Actinostrobus arenarius. Not so much for this navbox, as species names are abbreviated, but still extraneous results matching text in the navbox. "What links here" is worse: a result set including every page with the navbox. I don't think collapsing changes these outcomes. Thanks Declangi (talk) 02:41, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As mentioned before the above animal boxes have been there longer and there are no problems. Secondly you may not have use for it bot other people may. Third there are lots of extra tags and stuff that are not for every reader like Authority control, Template:taxonbar, Template:wikisource, Template:wikiversity, Template:wikispecies...etc.--Cs california (talk) 06:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In most cases, the navboxes morph over time into comprehensive lists, rather than signposts to key points. Witness what happened to the Botany navbox, which now includes dozens of narrowly focused articles. Wouldn't it make more sense to take the informaiton currently in the Cupressaceae navbox, and put that information into a list or into an article about the taxonomy of the Cupressaceae? Why does the entire list of taxa have to be appended to multiple pages instead of a simple link to the location where the information is located? --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:24, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not the one that comes up with template formats. You can say the same about all the small template boxes too. This template serves the same purpose as the animal ones above that are twice as large above. Is there a reason why you are ok with those one but not this one? If you are irritated please nominate the pool of templates above for Dispute resolution noticeboard or 3O. Furthermore this groups WikiProject Plants/Template has no clear rules on template boxes.--Cs california (talk) 06:22, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's basically an "otherstuffexists" argument. They don't get a whole lot of traction. In a sense, you are responsible for the format of the templates you create. No one says you have to use a certain format just because it's what's in use. Find a better format. Guettarda (talk) 06:45, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No that is not true, per wikipedia guidelines "Complicated articles may be best modeled on the layout of an existing article of appropriate structure.". Multiple pages with the large templates have been nominated as featured articles, which are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia including King vulture, Cougar, Jaguar, Blue whale, and Albatross. --Cs california (talk) 07:05, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * How many of you have tried to navigate a collapsed template? If you click article to article, you have the frustrating experience of having to expand the template once again on each new page. Collapsed templates only work if you can scan the list of links and identify your target easily.
 * What it comes down to then is "who's your target audience"? There's a reason we use scientific names for plants, and I agree with it. But honestly, I can't imagine a whole lot of people can peruse a list of Juniperus species and have a clear picture of what one or the other might be. If you're clicking around trying to find that one species, you're in for a frustrating experience. On the other hand, if there's an un-collapsed list, it's easier to flip back and forth. When you add to that the fact that there are a fair number of red links (so the reader can never complete their clicking back and forth to find that one elusive species whose name they just can't quite remember), I'm skeptical of the value of this list to readers. Guettarda (talk) 06:42, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Conifer collectors and breeders would be the first to use this. Guettarda as I said before put it up on Dispute resolution noticeboard or 3O and bundle it with the 2x larger template such as the ones mentioned above. But most of those have been around for 8 years without removal. The red links just show what is incomplete and needs work to editors. If you think this is redundant why is Template:Nepenthes allowed, which also has it's own List of species too. If editors were irritated these would be nominated for AfD a long time ago.--Cs california (talk) 06:52, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Most genus templates have been nominated for deletion and then deleted; Nepenthes happens to be one that hasn't yet.
 * Your only argument in favour of these navigation template seems to be "there are others". The key arguments against that need to be addressed are:
 * Templates that list taxa when such lists already exist in articles are redundant.
 * Redundant information is always problematic because it easily becomes inconsistent.
 * Keeping redundant information consistent makes extra work for editors, and the English Wikipedia is already suffering from a decline in active editors. No plant editor has said that they are happy to spend time checking that taxonomies are the same in articles and in templates.
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 07:18, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Exactly I am fine with you erasing them as long as the information can be merged Cupressaceae page and the other larger ones get deleted. Also can you link the archived AfD pages?--Cs california (talk) 07:24, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Dispute resolution wouldn't be the place - TFD would be. If someone wanted to take it that far, which I don't. I'm trying to wrap my mind around the utility of this. All navboxes come with a cost - they clutter up an article. Sometimes the benefits are obvious - the benefits of a taxobox or infobox easily outweigh the clutter. Big navboxes don't usually have the visual appeal of a taxobox or navbox, but they can be information dense in a way that conveys a lot of information to the reader at a glance.
 * I'm not sure I buy the idea that breeders would use a template like this though; if search for Actinostrobus arenarius is the navbox going to tell you that the next article you want to read about it Juniperus chinensis?
 * Trying to navigate these, by the way, led me to another concern - a lot of the links are redirects. Since this is a new template, this can't be an artefact created by page moves and redirects after the template was created. In that case, there's an underlying conceptual view of species and genus boundaries in play here. That needs to be made very clear to readers. This, in the end, is why I don't think that a comparison with cetaceans is apt; cetacean taxonomy is more stable, I think. If you restrict yourself to a genus or a smaller family it's possible to have one specialist who has put together something like a coherent work on that taxon. The bigger the group, the less likely it is that any one person has tried to piece it all together. Trying to mesh together the work of different researchers into a coherent whole poses problems - either we follow a source (and cite it) and actual names used on Wikipedia be damned, or we try to create our own coherent structure, and run the risk of falling afoul of NOR. Guettarda (talk) 07:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with the nav problem and there is no easy solution. But disagree with the genus boundaries. The one that should have been done is Conifers, which is fairly stable. But I thought that was too large so I went a step down. The template boxes should not be too large so I would disagree with limiting it to genus. If there is one with 1000+ species a list would be better than a template box.
 * You would use it for breeding and creating intergeneric hybrids by looking for the closest relatives with the characteristics you want. The further apart ones are less likely to work without using techniques like doubling chromosomes or embryo recovery. It is good to have an overview for that purpose or for completing a collection.

--Cs california (talk) 07:43, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm going to be blunt, there is no evidence that "collectors" would ever use a wiki nav box to complete their collections in the first place. PLus you have made said box useless for that purpose by including species like Metasequoia foxii. You can pose all the hypotheticals you would like, but you are the only one advocating for this navbox.  Dont drag this out like the pin maps from last year.-- Kev  min  § 07:49, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Like I mentioned before to the Admin above put it up for Dispute resolution noticeboard or 3O so we get definitive rule. And please stop personal attacks and stay on the issue per No personal attacks--Cs california (talk) 00:44, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not appropriate software for trying to identify plants, and it is not a good source for finding "nearest relatives" because it provides only an encyclopedic view and consequently the entirety of genetic research would be undesirable clutter here. For plant identification, the ideal software is a polyclave, but those require an enormous amount of work to build if they are to be comprehensive, and few are available. If you want to undertake breeding experiments, you will need to read a lot (actually, some plants can hybridize with species that are not their nearest relatives but have breeding barriers with the closer species, so you might be better off just trying every possibility). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:34, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all. I will attempt to remove various taxonomy templates, particularly where it is already apparent in the articles that nuanced discussion is needed. Wikispecies has already been sidelined from being a useful tool because of the built-in view that exactly one, strictly hierarchical taxonomy can be the truth, when as we know, evolution is not a strictly hierarchical process. It would be very sad if the unscientific insistence on hierarchical structures were to prevail here because navigation templates overwhelm the text. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:51, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

delete?
Seems that there is no support for the template other then from the creator, and to follow the trend of removing and culling unneeded templates, can someone with a good knowledge of the process start a template for deletion nomination on this template?-- Kev min  § 01:06, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Why don't you nominate a pool of them including whales Template:Cetacea, Marsupials Template:Diprotodontia,Template:Nepenthes and Carnivores Template:Carnivora and see what happens? As mentioned per discussion above withPeter coxhead I am ok with removing it as long as the information is included in the Cupressaceae Please stop misconstruing my position to your own view--Cs california (talk) 00:39, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

What's up with the statistics table?
On our project main page, in the stats section, if you click on any of the links in the table, after a long time, you get "bad gateway". What's going on? HalfGig  talk  23:30, 28 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Server problem, I presume, but I'm not hitting it, unless I tried the wrong sample. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:42, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * It's been down at least since January 19th. The row and column headers still take you to individual categories for the various Class and Importance ratings, but the clicking in cells that should search for a particular intersection of Class and Importance eventually goes to an error page. Plantdrew (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I wonder if the proper people even know about it.   HalfGig   talk  00:53, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Taxonomy templates updated
Project members who create taxonomy templates, please see Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Formatting of botanical sections in autotaxoboxes
As we have discussed before in this project, according to the ICN, the names of all ranks below genus should include the genus name (or abbreviation) since epithets don't need to be unique and are ambiguous when used alone. (Article 21.1: "The name of a subdivision of a genus is a combination of a generic name and a subdivisional epithet. A connecting term (subgenus, sectio, series, etc.) is used to denote the rank.")

So, for example, we should always write "Levenhookia sect. Coleostylis" or "L. sect. Coleostylis", at least in formal taxonomic contexts.

Up to now, automated taxoboxes haven't formatted the names of botanical sections correctly. If the connecting term was included, the whole name was automatically italicized, producing text like "Levenhookia sect. Coleostylis", so editors often just used the section epithet by itself.

Recent changes to the coding of the autotaxobox system have given me an opportunity to correct this. If the taxonomy template for a botanical section is set up as in Template:Taxonomy/Levenhookia sect. Coleostylis, then articles using this taxonomy template, like Levenhookia sect. Coleostylis or Levenhookia chippendalei, will now display the section with the correct format. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

(A side question is why species and infraspecies get a separate "binomial" or "trinomial" box in the taxobox, but subgenera, sections, series, etc. don't. It seems a bit illogical to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC))

Carl Linnaeus
I'm seriously considering working on this very important Linnaeus article to get it to FA. Any comments to add to this post on Jimfbleak's talk page? HalfGig  talk  13:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * His siblings are listed twice, with only one paragraph in between. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:01, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I should be able to start on this in a few days.   HalfGig   talk  12:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship
Many participants here create a lot of content, may have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:


 * Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:11, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Support for future commons monthly challenge
Hi. In commons:Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes a very interesting theme was proposed but with a strong requirement of species/genera identification. I think we can manage to organize it only if we can rely on a "task force" of expert users to help the uploaders. We need people who revise the label description and title of every upload and inform/correct when they are wrong.

Is anyone interested here? If so, just say you are supporting and I will contact you when the challenge starts. It takes some months usually to finalize the schedule.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:04, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Default number of parent taxa displayed in an automated species taxobox
Please see Template talk:Speciesbox for a question about the default number of parent taxa to be displayed in an automated taxobox for a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:22, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Article in the Taxon journal
An article in the Taxon journal is requested.
 * Title: Nomenclature of Tokyo cherry (Cerasus × yedoensis 'Somei-yoshino', Rosaceae) and allied interspecific hybrids based on recent advances in population genetics
 * Authors: Katsuki, Toshio; Iketani, Hiroyuki
 * Source: Taxon, Volume 65, Number 6, December 2016, pp. 1415-141
 * Publisher: International Association for Plant Taxonomy
 * http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/iapt/tax/2016/00000065/00000006/art00013

Anyone who has access to the article is welcome to respond to WP:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:20, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Article needs attention
Plant genetics is listed as an important page for this project, but it is of very poor quality. If anyone has time to work on it, ... Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Administrator help requested (genetics, which of course includes plant genetics)
Could someone with administrative powers please undo a page move from a few months ago, which has a number of edits piled on top of it? Non-allelic gene interaction should redirect to the older page Epistasis, but is currently carrying the history of that latter page. There is some discussion on my talk page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Move request at Talk:Chamerion latifolium
There's a requested move at Talk:Chamerion latifolium that could use some input. Plantdrew (talk) 20:17, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I think there's now a consensus that the generic name Chamaenerion is correct under the ICN and I've created a page for the genus, which I'm still working on. Those with some expertise on the ICN are invited to review the Taxonomy section. As I know from experience, this stuff is very difficult to write about in a way that is both understandable to the general reader and accurate. The subordinate taxa need to be sorted. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:12, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jse.12229/epdf

Unlike most papers published by Wiley this one seems to be Open Access.

Lavateraguy (talk) 19:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I overhauled our fern articles down to the ordinal level with comparisons of circumscription under Smith et al. (2006), Christenhusz et al. (2011), Christenhusz & Chase (2014) and PPG I (2016) in December. If I can get some help, this might be a good basis to set up automatic taxoboxes for the ferns. Christenhusz & Chase veered decidedly towards lumping, and IME was not well-received by pteridologists; I think PPG I will be relatively uncontroversial, except perhaps for elevating the Osmunda subgenera to genera, which creates an intergeneric hybrid. (I'll write Metzgar sometime to ask about that.) Choess (talk) 21:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to help with automatic taxoboxes for ferns. What are you planning on working on and where would you want help? Plantdrew (talk) 02:24, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Me too. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd be willing to do the lycophytes, but not right away (other commitments). Would we be using all the classification recommendations? There would be a significant shift in higher-rank classification, as PPG put all the lycophytes into a single class (not division), and do the same with ferns. The open question then is: In which division do these classes belong? I also note that PPG recognize Lateristachys and Palhinhaea, so there are some changes at the lower ranks as well. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:57, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, PPG is using Ruggiero's higher classification. I don't know how far we should take that. Ruggiero's Plantae is our Archaeplastida. Embryophytes are a superphylum with 4 phyla (3 bryophytes and tracheophytes). Angiosperms are a monotypic superclass containing class Magnoliopsida. I don't like how far down the ranks Ruggiero puts some former divisions, but Wikipedia shouldn't be making up its own classification system. At least with automatic taxoboxes it's easy to make sweeping changes to higher classifications. Plantdrew (talk) 17:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * And Ruggiero makes use of Reveal and Chase for much of its classification within the Tracheophyta. The Reveal and Chase classification suffers from a number of serious issues, including outright misrepresentation of the taxonomic literature in order to get the names Reveal wanted. I have no problem with recognizing Tracheophyta as a class, so long as we have some means for classifying the seed plants that aligns with this choice, and some guidance for placing the many fossil taxa that were (as usual) completely ignored when setting up the proposed classification. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:45, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * As notes, dealing with extinct taxa is a real issue. Those who classify extinct taxa use clade-based systems mainly, so don't provide ranks for many important groups, or if they do use ranks, move traditionally ranked groups far down the Linnaean hierarchy. We've seen the consequences of this for taxoboxes with dinosaurs and birds: dinosaur taxoboxes supported by WP:DINOS are not remotely compatible with Aves being a class in taxoboxes supported by WP:BIRDS, so there are at least two uneasily coexisting systems, with constantly occurring clashes and inconsistencies. I hope we can avoid this problem here, but it is difficult when reliable sources for extinct and extant plants are in such conflict. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:50, 22 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm agnostic on what higher classification we use. Since Christenhusz et al. (2011), recent systems seem to have settled on 4 subclasses for the monilophytes/pteridophytes s.s. and 1 subclass for the lycophytes. (The Smith system was very similar but used a second subclass for Selaginellales and an apparently junior name for the whisk ferns + Ophioglossales.) As it stands, our taxoboxes (and articles!) are a bit of a confused mess; I'm perfectly happy to work on automatic taxoboxes until we can develop a consensus. The taxoboxes have had "Pteridophyta/Pteridopsida (disupted)" in them for years, so I don't think we need to correct them in haste.
 * re. lycophytes, the trend in the long term does seem to be towards splitting and recognizing Holub's generic concepts (plus the Dendrolycopodium and Spinulum of Haines.) Øllgaard took this up a few years ago and Li-Bing Zhang just authored a new combination in Dendrolycopodium, so I presume future work in China will probably adopt narrower genera as well. (Flora of China didn't even segregate Diphasiastrum, which I thought was a bit regressive.) On the other hand, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up: I don't believe there are any combinations in Spinulum for the species outside North America, if they are different species, and Burnard et al., contra PPG I, have found that Pseudolycopodiella is not monophyletic for circumscriptions including Lycopodiella serpentina. So I don't think we need to rush to redo our lycophytes just yet. Choess (talk) 19:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

On a related note, is there an admin who can halt the User:Valliere71 edits? This user is making Pteridophyta = Embryophyta, which is at odds with both the current classification we have and the proposed change. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:00, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I am sorry. I did not mean to say that "Pteridophyta = Embryophyta". However the name Pteridophyta has been abandoned and does not designate a taxon anymore. I thought that by placing ferns under Embryophyta (at an unspecified rank), I would at least place them within a taxon that does exist and which is widely recognized. Would it be possible to remove the term "Pteridophyta" from the fern classification and the automatic taxobox. I don't how how to do it myself or maybe I do not have the credential to do this.Valliere71 (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Pteridophyta has not been "abandoned". It is a possible divisional name derived from the genus name Pteris, and is therefore available for use. If you read the discussion above, you will see that we are planning to overhaul our entire classification system for vascular plants at the highest levels, and to revamp the taxoboxes of all lycophytes and monilophytes. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Cultivars and varieties
What is the opinion on the creation of the myriad elm cultivar and variety stubs such as this Ulmus davidiana var. japonica 'JFS-Bieberich' = Emerald Sunshine. The article does not seem to have much at all that would lend to being more then a stub at any point, and I think the accession and nursery sections are out of line with general wiki policy .-- Kev min  § 13:46, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It would seem a shame to remove them after someone's done all the work, regardless of the technicalities of WikiPedia policy. (I believe one of the rules is to ignore the rules when that's the right thing to do.) Lavateraguy (talk) 14:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * EMERALD SUNSHINE is of particular interest, if mostly in North America, as it is one of just 19 cultivars selected for the great American National Elm Trial. There remains a huge groundswell of interest in elms, and their restoration to the landscape, on both sides of the Atlantic. Two of the most widely sold DED-resistant cultivars in Europe originated in the USA (at Wisconsin-Madison). Ergo, American trees are of potentially of as much interest in Europe as in the USA. As for the inclusion of accessions and nurseries, while the latter could be construed as advertizing, it would seem the corollary for anyone interested enough to search the tree on Wikipedia to want to know where it might be seen and whence it might be obtained.


 * There remain many spurious claims for the disease-resistance of certain cultivars, made by unscrupulous nurserymen anxious to cash in on the sentiment alluded to above. Wikipedia, one hopes, with its strict rules governing such hyperbole under 'Original Research' could prevent another fiasco such as that of the Princeton Elm in the UK, lauded in the media, only to begin dying wholesale of DED scarcely 5 years later, as HRH Prince of Wales found to his cost.Ptelea (talk) 15:28, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thats good information to have, but its all material that is easy to cover at the species level article, and the sections on accessions and nurseries are ones that Wiki does not cover as a matter of course, so the article really is just a stub.-- Kev min  § 19:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Shortly after this discussion started, an IP editor (presumably Paul King) voiced a complaint at Talk:Ulmus 'Paul King'. This "cultivar" is described as being provisionally named. While I'm not quite sure what kind of notability test should be applied to cultivars, I do think creating articles for provisionally named "cultivars" is not usually a good idea (WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES is predicated on taxa being formally named). I don't think it's accurate to describe something as a cultivar until it has been formally named; it is tricky though when there isn't an agreed upon word that covers cultivar-like entities that haven't gone through the cultivar naming process (we have hundreds of articles on wine grape varietals, most of which seem to lack cultivar names). Plantdrew (talk) 20:04, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * There are also a lot of articles on Buddleja cultivars that wrote – see Category:Buddleja hybrids and cultivars. Most of these are also stubs and couldn't really be expanded to form longer articles. On the other hand, putting all the information in, say, the Buddleja article would unbalance it and make it too long. As far as I know, we've never discussed how to deal with genera that have many cultivars. Is it reasonable to have separate articles on many rose cultivars (see Category:Rose cultivars) but not on cultivars of other genera and species? I grow or have grown about 30 Pelargonium cultivars, and have several books on the subject, so I could easily write 20 stub or start articles on cultivars, perhaps even C class for some. Would this be reasonable? There are many other "hobby" groups for which enthusiasts could doubtless write cultivar articles (orchids, Fuchia, Begonia immediately spring to mind). It seems a tricky question to me; if an obscure species is intrinsically notable (as an example, since I wrote it, consider Lophospermum chiapense), why not a cultivar grown by thousands of gardeners? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:14, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Apples seem a clear case where articles on individual older cultivars are often warranted, but newer are often less justifiable. Some simply drop out of use for various reasons, and we can't know in advance that that will happen. Perhaps a time threshold could be used here, such as cultivars more than 50 years old and still popular. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I think that lifetime or expected lifetime is a good criterion to consider. It also occurred to me that WP:NOTMANUAL may be relevant, in that lists of cultivars are the kind of thing you'd expect in a gardening book as a recommendation.
 * What I would like to see is the project reaching some kind of view and then documenting it. However, we need much more input! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:03, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've just skimmed WP:NOT, and the elm (and I presume buddleia) cultivar pages per se aren't obviously in violation of any of the guidelines there. (But the accessions and nurseries sections could be challenged under WP:NOTDIR.)
 * WikiPedia's depth of coverage varies - these elm pages go a step beyond the Banksia project, which goes further than the typical plant genus coverage. I can see people arguing that some to all of these articles are beyond the notability boundary, but I'm sufficient of an inclusionist to say why not include them. I'm also not bothered by the small size of the articles, but if there's a majority that is there's the option of merging them in species cultivar articles such as Ulmus minor cultivars (which would also solve the "Paul King" issue - in light of the comment on that articles talk page it seems like a candidate for deletion). This is not a general solution - some taxa have so many cultivars that a species cultivars article would be unwieldy, but the number of cultivars for elm species is (I think) manageable. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:00, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I would say that WP:NOTDIR and WP:NOTMANUAL overlap in a way that distinctly makes the nursery and accession sections out of wiki-scope. That reduces the majority of the elm cultivar/hybrid articles to single/double line stubs.  I would say that a good project guideline may be listify into single pages the  Buddleja/elm style sub-stubs and then if there are significant secondary sources (another problem with the Buddleja/elm articles) individual articles can be written on a per situation basis.-- Kev  min  § 15:55, 1 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I fear that if some of the shorter elm articles are lumped into a list or a list with brief summary, then as new information comes to light we'd end up with a rather bloated page. I'd favour keeping the separate articles many of which are being added to regularly. Some however, are not - but this in most cases is likely due to lack of time on the part of editors and not because the articles are incapable of expansion. Tom_elmtalk 09:43, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Old Tjikko GAR
Old Tjikko, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Shearonink (talk) 22:17, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism
An IP editor 14.102.112.130 has I think been engaged in some rather subtle vandalism, but I really need someone else to look at the edits in case they, or some of them, are genuine. I have marked them on the IP's talk page as escalating levels of vandalism, but I have not mentioned there the two edits to Amaranth, which I have also rolled back, but which are rather less clear. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:42, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes it is a subtle vandalism. Amaranthus spinosus is an accepted taxon in Flora of North America and was already inlcuded on the page. The IP added it again with wrong vernacular names. He added also Amaranthus paniculatus, which is not accepted according to Tropicos, again with wrong vernacular names. So your rollback was correct. --Thiotrix (talk) 20:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Paeonia daurica (suspect edit?)
Could someone who knows more than myself about this check | this edit at Paeonia daurica to see if it's necessary? There was no explanation in the edit summary. Please revert it if it has no merit. Thanks. Hamamelis (talk) 00:47, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This site seems to agree, but I can't tell whether it's reliable. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The revert is supported both by that site and by the original citation to the Hong and Zhou paper that is on the P. daurica page. Perhaps the edit was made in good faith because someone was confused by the indentation, thinking that the descriptions came after the subspecies names. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 02:37, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks Lavateraguy and Sminthopsis84 for looking into this! I suppose I could have just reverted on the grounds that Kevmin has already done (i.e., asked the IP editor for refs), but wanted to have the relevant sources checked by people who can interpret such information, within context, properly. I've encountered similar IP edits in the past, who gave no explanation, and it turned out they were simply correcting an old inaccuracy that had been overlooked. I also can no longer fully access, for technical reasons, many sites that I was once able to, to do as much reasonable checking on my own. Someday I expect to have a real computer again so I can edit more than at present. Thanks again to everyone who helped! 22:54, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Daikon split discussion
Please come participate in the split discussion regarding the Daikon article. Thank you. --Epulum (talk) 06:44, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposed thallus merge
Comments welcomed at Talk:Thallus. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Tree database
Botanic Gardens Conservation International has published a free database of all the tree species in the world, 60,065 species. I have made a list of all the genera that are redlinks. Abductive (reasoning) 05:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox usage
So, how do folks feel about automatic taxoboxes? The note at the top of Template talk:Automatic taxobox suggests that usage should be discussed at the WikiProject level. As far as I can tell, we've never really had a project wide discussion about using them in the 6+ years they've been around. Switching ferns to automatic taxoboxes was mentioned recently, with no sign of objections, although the discussion veered into how to what system to follow for higher classification (which is kind of irrelevant as automatic taxoboxes make it far easier to change higher classifications if we get them wrong at first).

I'm concerned about our ability to keep taxoboxes up to date. Editor numbers are down from their peak (but may have stabilized), while article count continues to grow. There hasn't been any systematic effort to update species and genus articles to follow APGIV. I'm not sure that I'm interested in updating to APGIV without being certain that it's OK to switch to automatic taxoboxes while doing so. Case in point, APGIV assigned Boraginaceae to Boraginales (the family was unplaced to order in APGIII). Most Boraginaceae species haven't been updated to show the order. However, APWeb has since split Boraginaceae into 8 families. While I'm not suggesting we follow APWeb right now, it's a glimpse at what might happen in a potential APGV. I don't want to edit manual taxoboxes for 92 Phacelia species to show the order when there's the possibility that they will all need to be edited again in a few years to update the family. I think it'd be better to go with automatic taxoboxes and be able to update the family for all the species with two edits in the event that we split up Boraginaceae.

I'm inspired to bring this up now, because there's been a massive uptick in use of automatic taxoboxes in animal articles in recent months. Speciesbox had 23,632 transclusions on December 12 2016, and has 31,430 today. There is some momentum towards automatic taxoboxes.

So, is switching plants (angiosperms in particular) from manual to automatic taxoboxes permissible? Plantdrew (talk) 21:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I can see that automatic taxoboxes have advantages for the reasons you mention, but they are more difficult to use by less experienced editors, and I have not attempted to master them. So, what kind of editors are creating new plant articles at present? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:17, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * actually I don't agree that automated taxoboxes are more difficult to use; there's much less to enter, and, like manual taxoboxes, in most cases you just copy and paste from a related article and make a few changes. What can be more difficult is creating the taxonomy template if it doesn't exist. However, if you leave the article with a "bad" taxobox for this reason, those of us who regularly check categories like Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup will soon fix the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:38, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, if you want me to use automatic taxoboxes, I need some guidance on how to begin. For example, I am currently working on Hevea and its species. I see no automatic taxoboxes in the immediate vicinity. What do I do to create the first one? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:50, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not suggesting that automatic taxoboxes be required, though I think it would be nice if more people learned to use them, and if those of us who know who to use them were allowed to switch from manual taxoboxes. Right now there are about 4-5 people regularly creating plant articles (including you). One is a relatively new to editing plant articles, and appeared to have started out coding manual taxoboxes entirely by hand (they were using non-APG groups such as Magnoliopsida); figuring out that manual taxoboxes are best created by copy-pasting from a related article isn't necessarily immediately intuitive. The two most active plant article creators at present are working on systematically creating many articles on species within a genus. That editing pattern is ideal for using automatic taxoboxes; you only need to create one template and you're set until you move on to the next genus.


 * I've created Taxonomy/Hevea, so Heavea could potentially be switched to automatic taxoboxes now. Generally speaking, to create the templates, go to a genus page, enter edit mode and change the the template name from "taxobox" to "automatic taxobox", and replace "genus = Fooo" with "taxon = Foo". Change "genus_authority" to "authority" Hit preview. A message will pop up with a link in "Click here to enter taxonomic details". Open the link in a new tab and, enter the rank (genus) and parent taxon. Save the taxonomy template. You may have to create a few more templates to tie it into the tree, which just a matter of clicking on a link again and entering a higher rank and higher parent. There are already templates for all orders and many families, so you shouldn't have to create too many. Once the taxonomy templates are done, go back to the genus page you left in preview, delete the higher taxonomy from the taxobox and save. For species, once you've created a genus template, change "taxobox" to "speciesbox", change "genus = Foo" to "genus = Foo" and "species = bar" to "species = bar". Change "binomial_authority" to "authority". Delete the binomial and the ranks above genus and save. Plantdrew (talk) 21:53, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I also remember the automatic taxoboxes as being unintuitive and complicated to use years ago, but I've been installing them recently for ferns, and Peter coxhead's Lua-based rewrite seems to have solved those problems. Look at Plantdrew's instructions and some of the templates I've recently created; they're pretty intuitive, once the genus template is set up, copy-paste-modify for species works just fine, and there's less markup in the wikitext to confront new editors, which I think is a plus. I definitely think they're "ready for production" at this point. Choess (talk) 14:30, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I have copied the Hevea article into my sandbox5 so as to experiment with it, but when I am part way through the process I get a message "This page is currently protected so that only template editors and administrators can edit it." and cannot complete the process. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:54, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You need to remove the bold/italic markup. Just put "taxon = Hevea" (no quotes). Automatic taxobox does italics and bolding automatically. One other thing I forget to mention; if you want subfamily to display, you'll need to add a parameter "display_parents = 2". Only the immediate parent is displayed by default when there are multiple minor ranks. Plantdrew (talk) 18:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems to be working now. Thank you for your help. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:20, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I did a few to familiarise myself with the process, Sapium and Hippomane, plus species. You might like to check them out. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * , looks like you've got it figured out for species. I added display parents=3 to Sapium and Hippomane, in order to display all the ranks between genus and family that were previously displayed in the manual taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 04:16, 3 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, firstly we did agree (somewhere back in the archives) that we would use automated taxoboxes for those families that APG merged somewhat controversially, such as Asparagaceae, so there is a precedent at least in some areas of angiosperm classification.
 * Personally, I'm in favour of using automated taxoboxes, which is no surprise if you know how much time I've spend working on them :-). Certainly it's easy to make the change to show Boraginales as the parent of Boraginaceae in the taxoboxes of articles on that family's genera and species if the taxoboxes are automated. However, if Boraginaceae is split into separate families, it's not quite so simple, because the text of at least the genus articles gives the family, so the article also needs updating.
 * There is a solution to this, which is to use a template to pick up the family of a genus in the text. For example displays "";  displays "". (Nicer aliases could easily be provided.) So you could write wikitext like   which produces "Scilla is a genus ... in the  ". Then if Hyacinthaceae is restored (and most specialists in the area do use this family rather than APG's Asparagaceae), both the taxobox and the text could be updated just by changing Template:Taxonomy/Scilla. I'm not advocating going this far, just noting what is possible.
 * I share 's concern about the number of active editors, and I agree that more use of automated taxoboxes will help in keeping articles up to date. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I know we're using automatic taxoboxes for much of the Asparagales, but I haven't been able to find where that discussion occurred. Good point on families in article text; I wasn't thinking about that. I don't know about using templates to specify (and automatically update) family. Still, using an automatic taxobox would mean one less change that would need to be made (and I know when multiple changes need to be made it's more likely that one of them will accidentally be overlooked). The Boraginaceae situation isn't the best example. Slightly better perhaps; APWeb has 6 subfamilies of Fabaceae now (and Mimosoideae is no longer recognized). This scheme has been partially implemented on Wikipedia; I don't really know whether we should go along with it yet, but I don't have the heart to revert. While many legume species/genera mention subfamily in running text, many others only mention it in the taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2017 (UTC)


 * well, I think I've mis-remembered what happened. Look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive56. I said I was going to use an automated taxobox in any articles I converted; no-one objected; I then did the bulk of the initial work involved; no-one reverted the taxoboxes; so we have them pretty much throughout Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae and Xanthorrhoeaceae. So I was wrong to say "we agreed". More accurate is "I and some others did it and no-one has ever objected".


 * If you want to see the mess that can be created using manual taxoboxes without strong WikiProject monitoring, just follow up some of the articles on gastropods. For an example, go to [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aplysiomorpha&oldid=768486607 this version of Aplysiomorpha], press edit and look how the taxobox is set up. Ugh. Then look at the talk page where you'll see the statement that "Project Gastropods uses the taxonomy in the online database WoRMS". So go to WoRMS and put in "Aplysiomorpha". The result is "unaccepted". Radically inconsistent taxonomies are used all over gastropod articles. I hope there are enough of us active here so that plant articles don't end up like that. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:20, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I need to really learn how to use automatic taxoboxes. I don't even know how to add a species image to one or if it's even possible. SL93 (talk) 19:55, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * In all respects except the taxonomic hierarchy, they work just like a normal taxobox. I just converted Orobanche uniflora to use one; you're welcome to revert, but take a look at the diff and you can see how straightforward the change is. Choess (talk) 21:24, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * there's a lot of documentation starting at WP:Automated taxobox system. In particular, WP:Automated taxobox system/convert explains, with examples, how to convert a manual taxobox to an automated one. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:21, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

How to place an image file in auto taxobox? Ex. Landolphia owariensis-Photobis.jpg for Landolphia owariensis. Hanberke (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually that article, which I had only just started, has a normal taxobox. When an article has an automatic taxobox, this is shown by a pencil symbol next to the words "Scientific classification". But in answer to your question, it seems to be possible to add images and image caption parameters in an automatic taxobox in the normal way, see Hevea. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:19, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Many thanks. It worked as usual. Hanberke (talk) 09:26, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Not a question from me, just strong support. I think this system is a really good one. Easy once you get the hang of it and my only wish is that I had been using it much sooner! Thanks especially to Plantdrew and Peter coxhead for bringing this to fruition. Declangi (talk) 08:42, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I am having difficulty creating an automatic taxobox for Blachia (plant) because of the "(plant)" I guess. How should I proceed? Also this one Colobocarpos, which is monotypic? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:43, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Cwmhiraeth, for Blachia I believe the taxonomy template needs to link to Blachia (plant). I just updated the template thus so I think your automatic taxobox should now work. (Just familiarising with all this myself, so others feel free to correct me). Declangi (talk) 13:31, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It was not so much that I wanted it done, as that I wanted to know how to do it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:21, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * see the doc page at Template:Speciesbox. Sections 1.3 and 1.4 should answer your two questions. If not, then we need to improve the documentation. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:42, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that looks to be just what I needed. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:00, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Another merger discussion
There is a proposal to merge Congo rubber with Landolphia owariensis. You can see the discussion on this page where comments are welcome. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Anomaly
Yesterday I created an article for Fontainea picrosperma and included mention of a drug EBC-46 extracted from its fruits. Today by chance, while working on automatic taxoboxes, I found the article Hylandia which makes the same claim for the same drug. Most of the sources, newspaper articles on the "miracle drug", mention the "blushwood tree" but do not give its scientific name. Clearly there is some confusion here, so any ideas on how best to resolve it will be welcome. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:49, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The PLoS ONE ref at EBC-46 says Fontainea picrosperma, so I think you can assume this is correct, and remove the claim for Hylandia. I fixed the link in the EBC-46 article. Yet another illustration, if one were needed, of why the WP:PLANTS stance on using scientific names is correct. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:39, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Will do what you suggest. Thanks. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:42, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * What a mess. This is worse than the confusion over thermogenic skunk cabbage. Cancer claims were first added to Hylandia in October 2014 and were removed twice, but have been sitting there since August 2015. Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants appears to be a reliable site, but has attached cancer claims to Hylandia . Then there's blushwood.com, with cancer claims and a map of Hylandia locations. The (GBIF sourced) map shows distribution both north of Cairns and SE of Atherton (Atherton Tablelands, the claimed range for Fontainea picrosperma are mostly SW of Atherton). Hylandia claims that it occurs in the "Cook region", presumably Shire of Cook, which is quite a ways north of the localities shown at blushwood.com. I don't know how much Wikipedia is to blame for the confusion, but it's certainly not helping matters. Plantdrew (talk) 16:37, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The claim was made in a 2012 book which predated the cancer cure claim edit to the Wikipedia article Hylandia which was made in October 2014. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:43, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, Wikipedia didn't start the confusion. Apparently tigilanol tiglate (or a related compound) is in Hylandia; see this patent filed in 2006; this pertains to use as an antibiotic, not a cancer treatment. The article on the chemical previously mentioned both Hylandia and Fontainea. The PLOS paper by Boyle kicked off a flurry of media coverage in October 2014; at least I know that any popular media source from that time frame is wrong if it mentions Hylandia. There also was some media coverage in 2010 (e.g. this); I haven't found any reliable source with a scientific name from 2010. QBiotics FAQ states that Fontainea is their source of EBC-46.


 * My next concern was whether "blushwood" was really a common name for both plants before all the cancer hype started. This book was published in 1994 and list blushwood for both. Plantdrew (talk) 19:12, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Vitekorchis excavata/ Oncidium excavatum
While here it is listed as Oncidium excavatum most online sources I find list O. excavatum as synonym of Vitekorchis excavata (example, 2017). Which taxonomy is currently rather accepted? Thanks! --Danny S. (talk) 18:03, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, well it is the type species (see TROPICOS) of Vitekorchis, so if the genus is recognized at all, V. excavata must be in it. And per the Oncidium article, there's some good reasons to split. Probably should go with The Plant List and move to ''V. excavata. Plantdrew (talk) 19:25, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Tried to fix it for V. excavata. Someone should take a look for mistakes I may did. See article/ history Oncidium & Vitekorchis excavata and Category Vitekorchis. --Danny S. (talk) 15:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Polianthes into Agave
The WCSP accepts the merge of Polianthes into Agave – see here, as does APWeb here. On the other hand, Google Scholar shows plenty of recent sources using Polianthes, especially Polianthes tuberosa, so I'm not clear who we should follow. What do others think?

A subquestion is why the WCSP has "Agave polianthes Thiede & Eggli, Kakteen And. Sukk. 52: 166 (2001), nom. superfl." as the accepted name. If it's the accepted name, why is it "nom. superfl."? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure where you were looking, and can't find anything definitive in the literature. What I can see is that when merging Polianthes into Agave, the combination A. tuberosa is unavailable because of an earlier publication by Miller of that combination. As a result, the epithet originally published by Linnaeus is not possible in the new genus, and another epithet must be chosen. However, the original Linnaean epithet would resurface with priority should the species later be transferred out of Agave. I think this is what WCSP is trying to communicate, but "nom. superfl." is not an official bit of the Code, and so is not used uniformly nor held to any standard application, so it's hard to say. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:14, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Looking into it a bit more, the sequence appears to be:
 * Linnaeus published Polianthes tuberosa in 1753.
 * Miller published Agave tuberosa for a different species in 1768, thereby ensuring that Agave tuberosa is unavailable for Polianthes tuberosa if transferred to Agave.
 * Thiede & Eggli transferred Polianthes tuberosa to Agave in 1991 under the name "Agave tuberosa", which was an error – Agave tuberosa (L.) Thiede & Eggli is an illegitimate name.
 * Realizing their error, Thiede & Eggli published Agave polianthes in 2001 as a replacement name ("replaced synonym" in the IPNI) for Polianthes tuberosa.
 * Although the Latin term "nom. superfl." doesn't appear in the ICN (and in particular not in its glossary), Art. 52.1 does offer what is effectively a definition: "A name ... is illegitimate and is to be rejected if it was nomenclaturally superfluous when published, i.e. if the taxon to which it was applied, as circumscribed by its author, definitely included the type ... of a name that ought to have been adopted, or of which the epithet ought to have been adopted, under the rules". So if this is what WCSP means by "nom. superfl.", then there should be another name that should be used, which means that Agave polianthes Thiede & Eggli is an illegitimate name for Polianthes tuberosa.
 * However, as notes, it's not clear what WCSP means by "nom. superfl." Peter coxhead (talk) 14:11, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The synonym list at Polianthes tuberosa gives Tuberosa amica as a synonym. The epithet amica doesn't seem to be used in Agave, so provided that this is a genuine synonym, and the name was validly published, and possibly other constraints, that epithet was available for use, making Agave polianthes superfluous. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:05, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Strange indeed; it looks as if "nom. superfl." in WCSP is a mistake for "nom. nov." Sminthopsis84 (talk) 09:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Wall lettuce
Is there any reason why this should be at Lactuca muralis rather than Mycelis muralis. Fide Tropicos FNA has the latter, as do the standard British floras. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:14, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems like it should probably be at Mycelis muralis. TICA (which feeds into The Plant List) has a problem, listing both Lactuca muralis (L.) Gaertn. and Lactuca muralis (L.) Fresen. as accepted. Synonyms (including Mycelis muralis) are attached to the Gaertn. name in TICA and TPL, which is listed as unresolved at TPL. TPL has the Fresen. name as accepted. Plantdrew (talk) 15:50, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The IPNI entry for Lactuca muralis (L.) Gaertn. is interesting and probably explains why some sources use Lactuca muralis (L.) Fresen., which is a later genus transfer.
 * Mycelis vs. Lactuca does seem to be a matter of taxonomic opinion; Stace (2010) uses Mycelis but notes that others use Lactuca. I'd go with Mycelis muralis based on the preponderance of reliable sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * TICA has AFPD, Euro+Med and the Cichorieae checklist with Lactuca and FNA with Mycelis. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:36, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to know what primary sources were used for the alternative placements. I can't at present find any recent (say 2005 onwards) molecular phylogenetic studies including Mycelis muralis. The arguments for inclusion in Latuca seem to be largely based on pre-2000 work. There's a 2003 study here that places the species in Lactuca but it's only based on a cluster analysis of relative DNA content. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:56, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I begin to suspect that no-one's done a study of Lactuca and related genera with broad enough sampling. (Taxonomic boundaries are not easy in a young speciose clade like Cichorieae.) Mycelis seems to be outside core Lactuca and close to one Cicerbita clade, but the broader Lactuca looks paraphyletic. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:19, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion at Talk:Wrigley Field ivy
The merger is proposed at Talk:Wrigley Field ivy. I invite you to comment there. --George Ho (talk) 16:20, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

The discussion is closed as "merged" to Wrigley Field. The merger is still in progress, so help is welcome. --George Ho (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Move request at Talk:Mandarin orange (fruit)
There is a move request at Talk:Mandarin orange (fruit). Plantdrew (talk) 21:40, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Loranthus
Loranthus says, without a source, "most modern systematists treat it as a monotypic genus with the sole species Loranthus europaeus Jacq. " If this is so, then the taxobox should include Loranthus europaeus, and the article should be in a "monotypic genus" category. The Plant List shows that WCSP (in review) has only one accepted species, but also shows other "accepted" species from Tropicos – however it's well known that there are problems in TPL's handling of Tropicos. Anyone know more about this? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:44, 29 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Most of the web pages saying that Loranthus is monotypic are copies of WikiPedia. I found two papers from the 1970s describing it in passing as monotypic.
 * At one point 99+% of the species in Loranthaceae were placed in Loranthus, so there's a lot of names floating around to confuse the issue. However Vidal-Russell & Nickrent (2008) has two species (L. europaeus and L. odoratus), as does Shavvon et al (2012) (L. europaeus and L. grewkingkii). The latter points me to Nickrent et al (2010) which says 10 species.
 * My tentative conclusion is that Loranthus is not currently considered monotypic. (Nickrent et al seems likely to be a reasonable summary of current opinion - is it a primary or a secondary source - as a synthesis of other work I'd call it secondary, but that might not be WikiPedia's definition.
 * Loranthus is an Old World genus, and Tropicos is not reliable on Old World species. The single species in TPL might be the result of a lack of a recent survey covering the group. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:48, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Reading between the lines at Nickrent et al, if Hyphear is segregated, then Loranthus might be monotypic. (I looked at TPL to see if that shed any light, but since even L. europaeus appears to have been placed in Hyphear at one time looking at which species have been placed in Hyphear isn't informative. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:04, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks for the response. Looking around the web, I too can't find any modern source that supports the statement about monotypy made in the article, and given that Nickrent et al. (2010) seems to be the latest review, I think the claim should be removed from the article, which I'll do. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:23, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I've now added a Taxonomy section to the article: the name Loranthus has a complex history of conservation, it turns out. I've listed the 10 species in TPL: the number matches the Flora of China and 8 of the names match the other two sources given. It would be good if someone could check what I've written about the nomenclature issue. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:55, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Should there (not) be a date accessed on Nickrent et al? Lavateraguy (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Orchid photo dump
I have uploaded 400+ high-quality orchid photos to the Commons from Flickr user snotch in Japan. I didn't create a special category for the upload, so can they be viewed in my File list currently.

Thanks to the bot, there are no categories included but the original file names are very detailed. I am slowly adding to existing categories and will be creating new pages as I learn the taxonomy templates. There are quite a few cases where the titled species name differs from the Wiki. Any help from experienced users here would be greatly appreciated. Needless to say, many thanks to the author for licensing these great images! Qzd (talk) 18:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Coreopsis tinctoria photo with 4 stages of inflorescence
See photo at right. This photo of Coreopsis tinctoria, cultivar Uptick Cream and Red, shows what I believe is 4 stages of inflorescence. I'm not sure of the growth sequence here nor what the reddsh-brown fuzzy stuff is. I was hoping someone can explain more about this to me. I'd really appreciate it. Here're the 4 stages, not necessarily in order of growth:
 * 1 - several examples of young green buds that have not yet begun to open
 * 2 - two reddish-brown buds of some sort
 * 3 - two buds in different stages of opening the yellow petals
 * 4 - one fully open flower
 * There are dozens of green buds on this plant. I can take many more photos if need be. Thank you.  Pumpkin Sky   talk  21:14, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You have (in order of development) 1) capitulum buds in which then florets are still enclosed by the phyllaries (bracts); 2) an opening bud with some ligulate florets protruding; 3) a mature radiate flower showing by tubular/disc (in the middle) and ligulate/ray (at the edge) florets; 4) immature infructescences with developing achenes (fruits) surrounded by now spreading phyllaries; the corollas of the ligulate flowers have gone, but there may be withered parts of florets present. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:56, 14 May 2017 (UTC)


 * And in order of development, PumpkinSky's descriptive stages go 1,3,4,2. Plantdrew (talk) 01:48, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Lavateraguy and Plantdrew, THANK YOU BOTH!! So in laymen's terms what I called the "reddish brown" things are the seeds developing after the flower dies?  Pumpkin Sky   talk  02:22, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In layman's terms, yes, the reddish brown things are the seeds. In botanical terms, they are achenes, a type of fruit that is a hard dry shell surrounding the actual seed. Achenes are characteristic of the family that includes Coreopsis and sunflowers; think about sunflower "seeds" in/out of their shells. In shell sunflower seeds are botanical fruits. Shelled sunflower seeds are the actual botanical seeds. Plantdrew (talk) 02:38, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explaining all this. I truly appreciate it. It's probably not rare to capture such a photo of all 4 stages, but for me it was pretty neat. I'll try to capture photos of the achenes continuing to form. Pumpkin Sky  talk  03:02, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Coreopsis tinctoria cultivar Uptick Cream and Red 13-achenes.jpg

Talk:Perilla
Hello! Please come to this discussion and share your thoughts. Thanks. --211.205.71.153 (talk) 09:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:That Poppy which affects Poppy, an article supported by WikiProject Plants. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Jack N. Stock (talk) 01:43, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Please help with a draft at AFC
The original author of Draft:Fluence response stopped editing back in 2012, recently User:Legacypac "resurected" the draft as it seems probably useful, however it needs attention from someone who understands the topic. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Plant stomata?
Hello! I've uploaded this image of a leave of Origanum vulgare with a water drop and what it seem to be epistomatic stoma. Asking to the Basque Public University science blog they have said that it could be that, but I want a second opinion before inserting the image on articles. -Theklan (talk) 11:38, 30 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Neat image. I think the structures are oil glands. In this micrograph of an Origanum marjorana leaf, there's a large gland in the center of the image, and about 20 stomata are also visible. Plantdrew (talk) 21:13, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow! Thanks! -Theklan (talk) 21:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Anyone knowledgeable on Hosta cultivars
Over here: we're having a discussion on exactly which Hosta cultivar is up for Featured Picture. If there's anyone here at WP:Plant that could help out, it would be appreciated. Pumpkin Sky  talk  10:54, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Botanist template proposed for deletion
Please comment at Templates for discussion/Log/2017 June 9. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:59, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Just saw this notice and am glad the proposal was shot down.   HalfGig   talk  15:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Kolkwitzia vs. Linnaea
Somebody has moved (prematurely in my opinion) the Kolkwitzia amabilis article to Linnaea amabilis. This is based on a single reference by somebody who is not a specialist in this group and appears to be a minority view. There is no consensus that Linnaea should be expanded to include Kolkwitzia, Abelia, and a couple of other closely related genera. I would also note that the Linnaea article makes no mention of these changes, and the articles for Abelia and its various species remain under that genus. The recent (2016) treatment of Caprifoliaceae for the "Families and Genera of Vascular Plants" continues to recognize all these genera as distinct. Because Kolkwitzia amabilis is a well-established name for a well-known species, I would recommend returning the article to that name until a clear consensus on the generic classification of this group emerges, with a mention of the proposed changes in the articles for the various genera. 160.111.254.17 (talk) 13:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Moving to Linnaea amabilis does seem premature. I haven't yet to find any sources (other than then Christenhusz paper that proposed it) that accept this treatment. Plantdrew (talk) 19:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree the move was premature. It was made by, presumably to tidy up the situation left by an IP editor, who had changed the content to use the name Linnaea amabilis, but hadn't changed the article title. I think it should be moved back, for now at least. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Go right ahead, I just adjusted things for consistency. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:53, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I moved the page back, and tried to tidy everything up. A source is needed for the description; the online Flora of China should be good but seems to be offline right now. Please check, as there were a fair number of redirects, etc. to be fixed. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:33, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Monotypic genus
I am editing the article on Asteraceae (maintenance, italizing names, updating use of Compositae). (Long story about getting to Asteraceae from "Icicle plant"). So far I have ran into three examples of a monotypic genus. Is there a "standard" for handling these? Personally, I would create an article for the species, then create a redirect for the genus. But this is not done consistently. This example happens to be a monotypic clade: Hecastocleidoideae; Only species: Hecastocleis shockleyi, I added the wikilinks. Only an article on the genus Hecastocleis exists, no redirect pages. Obviously if articles are ever created for Hecastocleidoideae or Hecastocleis shockleyi, they will not be linked to by the Asteraceae article. Personally, I have no problems with red links but I think there are bots that find and report them. This implies they should be fixed. Advise.User-duck (talk) 01:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)


 * , see WP:MONOTYPICFLORA. When monotypy is involved, articles titles are supposed to be the lowest monotypic rank (but no lower than genus [except when the genus name is ambiguous with another title on Wikipedia]). Redirects are to be created for the other ranks. This scheme is more complicated than it might need to be (I personally would have gone for lowest rank down to species), and isn't completely consistently followed. However,  it's much closer to being consistently followed than having articles covering monotypic genera at the binomial title. Hecastocleidoideae and Hecastocleis shockleyi redirects do exist, and they should be linked to from the Asteraceae pages; redirects are not broken (WP:NOTBROKEN), and when there is a reason to display the text "Hecastocleidoideae", there is no reason not to link directly to that redirect rather than piping a link to the target of the redirect. Plantdrew (talk) 06:00, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * To be really precise, "the lowest monotypic principal rank". WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA leaves out the word "principal" but the examples imply it, so I think the guidelines are actually the same for plants and animals.
 * I agree with that it's overcomplicated, and it would have been better to leave off the requirement to use the genus rather than the species when the genus doesn't need disambiguating, but we are where we are. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:24, 30 June 2017 (UTC)


 * , thank you, I would never have found WP:MONOTYPICFLORA. I will look at it later. I assumed there was a standard process but I could not find it documented. I had assumed that "Hecastocleidoideae" and "Hecastocleis shockleyi" were not wikilinked because the redirect pages did not exist, I know, my mistake. Since double redirects are not supported, that explains creating a genus article instead of a species. Now, if I want to create an article for a species in a genus (with multiple species) that has no articles for either genus or species, which article should be created first, species or genus?
 * I created the Vlokia ater article first. Lucky for me a second species has been described and published. I then created the Vlokia article. It has a red link to the second species, Vlokia montana. The German wikipedia does not have an article for the second species. I plan to write the Vlokia montana article for the English Wikipedia. I am still working on editing skills. And my German fluency is minimal.
 * Sorry about italicizing the subfamilies. Either the (non-Wikipedia) article I read was wrong or I misunderstood.
 * Thanks, . I probably will not be editing FAUNA articles (still learning botany).User-duck (talk) 09:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * it doesn't really matter which order you create articles, but there's some sense in working downwards, even if the top level articles are initially stubs mainly containing a list of the next level down.
 * Some sources do italicize ranks above genus, some don't. So you may well have read advice to do so elsewhere. Our convention is (except for viruses) to italicize genus and below only.
 * At Vlokia you originally wrote should be pronounced "Flow-key-a" . There are different schools of thought on the pronunciation of Latin names derived from personal names. One view is that they should be pronounced like the name in its own language, which is clearly the view of the source you gave. This is supported by the 'bible' (Stearn's Botanical Latin, p. 51: "the ideal method with most names commemorating persons is to pronounce them as nearly as possible like the original name but with a Latin ending"). However this is not universally agreed; other sources prefer to pronounce the name as it would be in 'normal' botanical Latin. So I think it's wrong to write "should" here in Wikipedia's voice, and I've changed it. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe I should quote Steven Hammer's article: "Growers who talk to their plants and address them formally will want to know that the genus should be pronounced Flow-key-a." I am not sure quoting is appropriate for an encyclopedic article. But I found the statement lightened up the article. :) I added my statement because it is extremely rare to get the pronunciation of a new word from the source. And I would think the source can say how a word is pronounced.User-duck (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * my point is certainly not that the pronunciation information should be removed; it's useful. My point is that we don't write "should" which suggests that Wikipedia is endorsing the pronunciation. Just neutrally report that one source says it can be pronounced this way. See WP:WikiVoice – how a scientific name should be pronounced is an opinion, not a fact. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:50, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

British 'Pea Beans'
They seem to be called red calypso beans in the US- mottled dark red and white coloration, oblate shaped, and i wish to add some pictures .Also they were formerly and incorrectly called phaseolus egypticus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.178.105 (talk) 01:07, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You may need to be clearer, both about what you are referring to, and what you want to do. (Are you referring to Borlotti beans?) Lavateraguy (talk) 13:20, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Cycad / Cycadales
We have an anon editor claiming that cycads share no common ancestor with other plants, so they are not related to other groups of plants. The anon is reverting edits of both Velela and myself, who have tried to explain the mistake.

We may need some level of temporary protection on the two pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:55, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

IP editing at Plant epithet
An IP is editing this article and changing references, but is not taking part in talk page discussion. Independent editors are invited to assist. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:02, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Alafia landolphioides acceptance confusion
At WCSP here, A. landolphioides is an accepted name with one synonym being A. scandens. However, under the "Not Accepted by" tab WCSP/Govaerts are listed twice (in 1995 and 2003) and refer to A. scandens. I'm wondering how to interpret this. Does it mean WCSP formerly did not accept the name but now does? Note: I created the Alafia scandens article a while back, but on revisiting it am now unsure if it should actually be A. landolphioides. (My other source for that article, Medicinal Plants, indicates A. landolphioides as accepted) Thanks Declangi (talk) 03:39, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
 * yes, the tabs mean that formerly (up to 2003 anyway) WCSP did not accept this name as being the correct one, but now it does. We can guess that this is in response to Akoègninou et al. (2006) as per the "Accepted by" tab, but WCSP doesn't give reasons for changes it makes. A Google Scholar search suggests that Alafia scandens is still in use, e.g. here in 2008. I haven't found a taxonomic discussion of the genus, so there doesn't seem to be strong evidence either way. Personally, if in doubt, I would go with WCSP. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:51, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks another reference is at African Plant Database with this record indicating their acceptance of A. scandens. Despite this, as you say, I would also go with WCSP. I previously created a redirect from A. landolphioides to A. scandens, thereby blocking a page move on my part. But if you or someone else wished to make this move, I'd be fine with that and could clean up other parts of the article like synonyms and using WCSP as the taxonomic reference. Declangi (talk) 03:44, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * move done. I cleaned up a bit, but more is needed, including changing the refs. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:12, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks again the move looks great. I did some more cleanup on the article and updated the genus species list at Alafia (plant). Declangi (talk) 07:58, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

GRIN site downtime
Just curious if people have seen the GRIN site down on any frequent basis? I'm asking because InternetArchiveBot has sometimes tagged GRIN references as dead and rescued their URLs to archived, but I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. (For example, I have noticed WCSP sometimes down during the GMT "wee hours", presumably intentionally for site/DB maintenance) There was a time when some older format GRIN URLs would fail, but it looks like GRIN have since implemented a redirect scheme that catches such URLs. Thanks Declangi (talk) 21:33, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Capsule (botany)
I am requesting a move of this page because there is more than one meaning of "capsule" used in botany. Discussion at Talk:Capsule (botany). --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:17, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * This page now has moved to Capsule (fruit), as proposed. Links may need to be updated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve
Can someone with familiarity in the Deletion process nom Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve for deletion. Everything I can find on it points to it possibly not even existing, and even if it does, it does not meet the notability criteria, with the majority of the article sourced to the CRDRP website (even the IMDB entry is just copy/pasted from the website).-- Kev min  § 22:45, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * See Deletion_policy for the howto.
 * While I wasn't able to find an unambiguously independent source I doubt that it is a hoax. It does seem to be non-notable. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:14, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Page name
Is Ulmus americana 'Lewis & Clark' = Prairie Expedition a desirable article title? I'm not very familiar with the conventions for plants, but it seems a little strange. (I'm not watching this page, so please ping me if you need a response from me.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I moved it back to the original name, before it was moved by in 2012. It surely contradicts MOS:TM/STYLE at least. I'm not sure what the common name is, but that should be resolved on WP:RM. No such user (talk) 09:49, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Fallopia japonica -- Japanese Knotweed and the genus name
I know some people are reluctant to see this familiar name change, but TPL is our reliable source, and the taxonomy has been changed for a while now. The article needs moving to Reynoutria japonica, and the related articles also need their taxonomy adjusted according to TPL's taxonomy. Does anyone feel this idea is unacceptable, and if so why? Invertzoo (talk) 01:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

If there are no objections here or on the article talk page, after about 4 or 5 days I will move the title of the article and the related articles to correspond with that TPL is using. Invertzoo (talk) 19:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * FWIW, British usage is still Fallopia.
 * If you move japonica you ought to move sachalinensis and multiflora as well. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we need time to review the literature. TPL is based on pre-2013 sources, so could be outdated. USDA seems to use yet another name. T.M. Schuster et al. have a series of papers on the phylogeny of Polygonaceae. From my reading so far, it seems to be a disputed area, with agreement that Fallopia s.l. isn't monophyletic, but less agreement on how to break it up. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:22, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently TPL has been recently updated -- it is no longer based on pre-2013 sources. Invertzoo (talk) 11:00, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * really? I can't see any evidence of this. Can you point me to the update? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:10, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I do believe that my expert -- Daniel Atha of the New York Botanical Gardens -- said that was so. Let me try to check with him on this. Invertzoo (talk) 15:06, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Some of the underlying databases (e.g. WCSP) continue to be updated, but my understanding is that version 1.1 is the final version of The Plant List and it will not be updated further. Future development of the global checklist of plant species will be at the World Flora Online. World Flora Online doesn't have any record for Fallopia japonica/Reynoutria japonica/Polygonum cuspidatum, but claims to have a similar number of accepted species (350k) as The Plant List, and larger number of total names (1.34 million vs. 1.06 million). I find it rather concerning that WFO doesn't include (and improve upon) the entirety of the TPL dataset at this point. With the International Botanical Congress going on in Shenzen this week, there's no better time to show case the World Flora Online. Plantdrew (talk) 16:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * thanks! I don't see how the WFO has 350k species when at least half of those I just searched for aren't there. Let's hope it improves rapidly. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Discussion about template "Template:Taxonbar"
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Taxonbar, which is about a template that is within the scope of this WikiProject. There is a proposal to use a Lua module as the basis for the template, which will result in some changes to the template's appearance. Thank you. Ahecht (TALK PAGE ) 21:05, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Plant ID request
Can someone tell me what these two plants are? I think the one on the outside may be some kind of Coleus, but not sure. This was taken in the Butterfly House at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, Norfolk, VA.
 * Thank you very much.  Pumpkin Sky   talk  00:01, 29 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't feel this is an appropriate place to ask for plant identifications. I believe the plant is Plectranthus scutellarioides, but please post your inquirers elsewhere in the future. Here are some places I suggest for identifications:
 * Plant Identification Group on facebook - very fast identifications.
 * iNaturalist automated species identifier (usually very helpful.)
 * Your local Master Gardner Program/University Extention service.
 * Your local Gardening Club/Native Plant society.
 * --MCEllis (talk) 02:41, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Photo of Euphorbia tirucalli's flower
Hi, I took a photo of the flower at home.

The photo with the red background have been taken with a Reflex but I couldn't take the sky as background (minimum zoom too big). The other photo have been taken with a bridge. Lower quality but the background is so much better.

Unfortunately, in city, there is everywhere a bad background. What do you think about theses 2 photos ? Are they good enough to be include in Euphorbia tirucalli ? Should they be crop or photoshopped ?

Thanks.





Bansan (talk) 04:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Crop the first picture to concentrate on the inflorescence and it will be fine. The second's background is just too distracting, even if cropped. It's always better to find a sheet of plain coloured paper to use as a background for "studio" shots. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:10, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Classification of Fabaceae
There's a new classification of Fabaceae here. It's already been added to Fabaceae. An important change is "The traditionally recognised subfamily Mimosoideae is a distinct clade nested within the recircumscribed Caesalpinioideae and is referred to informally as the mimosoid clade pending a forthcoming formal tribal and/or clade-based classification of the new Caesalpinioideae." Some automated taxoboxes have been updated to this system, but we should be consistent. Views? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * All of the taxa currently assigned to Mimosoideae on Wikipedia should indicate that they now belong to subfamily Caesalpinioideae. I've just about finished doing that (I just have Acacia left!), but I haven't been using automatic taxoboxes. I've been changing Mimosoideae from a subfamily to an unranked tribe and piping the link thus:  with a reference to the publication reorganizing the subfamilies of Fabaceae. My thinking was threefold. First, this would make it easy for editors unfamiliar with the recent change to verify the classification and (hopefully) prevent them from changing it back to say subfamily Mimosoideae. Second, it would continue to recognize the mimosoid clade as a unique, identifiable, monophyletic group—just without assigning it to a Linnaean rank. Third, it would save us from the trouble of moving Mimosoideae to Mimosoid clade and then moving it again whenever the formal tribal classification comes out (Fig. 1 of this paper informally suggests Mimosoida). The LPWG first floated the idea of revising the subfamilial classification in 2013 here and especially here, but they didn't reach a consensus and publish until four years later here. The tribal classification of Leguminosae seems to be even thornier, so it could be quite a while before this promised revision actually sees the light of day. If that is the case (i.e. that Mimosoid clade would be stable for several years) then it might make sense to go ahead and move Mimosoideae to Mimosoid clade. Ninjatacoshell (talk) 19:13, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * thanks for all the work you've done on this. (I'd have used automated taxoboxes, but that's always my preference.) As you note, nomenclature isn't settled, and your proposal seems sensible to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Phytotaxa paper sought
If there's anyone who can access locked papers in the journal Phytotaxa, I'd be grateful for a copy of this paper. I'm trying to write about Drimia, where, as with the Scilloideae/Hyacinthaceae generally, there are sharp divisions between a "lumper school" and a "splitter school". As the lumpers seem to write in journals to which I have access (usually open access ones) and have the support of WCSP, whereas the splitters largely publish in journals to which I don't have access, it's hard not to be biassed in favour of the former, which I'd like to redress. Drop me an e-mail, please, if you can help. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:11, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * You can request a copy from the authors via ResearchGate. Lavateraguy (talk)


 * Ok, I'll try that. It's a pity that Phytotaxa seems to be in the process of becoming one of the major places new plant names are published, but most of its articles aren't open access. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:52, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * ✅ I've got a copy now, but the general point about Phytotaxa remains. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:46, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

ContentMine dictionaries
I'm Wikimedian in Residence at ContentMine in Cambridge, UK; which is very interested in plants. I have been compiling SPARQL-based dictionaries (lists of search terms) for flowering plants: User:Charles Matthews/Liliales is an illustrated example, for the WikiFactMine project.

d:Wikidata:WikiFactMine/Dictionary list shows a listing of plant dictionaries, which gives a reasonable coverage though is certainly not complete. I'd be glad to talk to any interested parties, and to explain the search system we use. These dictionaries can be used in conjunction with others, such as the weevil dictionary illustrated at User:Charles Matthews/Listeria, covering Curculionidae genera. The basic idea there is to pull out of the literature papers mentioning both a plant from some group, and (say) an insect from another group. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:35, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

What name to give to an ecological section?
Hello everyone. I am editing arbutus unedo, and I would like to add a section about how it interacts with the environment and how it can (and is) used in landscape-ecological design. For example, it is a very good plant for the bees, the fruits are loved by birds, it is a goo maritime wind barrier being salt tolerant, it regrows very well after fires and the wood is very hard, making it a decent fire barrier, and so on. Right now I wrote about some of this aspects, but not from a design-relationship angle, and I'd like to dive deeper into it, as it is of high importance. But how should I name the section or the sections?

I thought about putting it under uses, and make like "design uses", or make an ecological relationships under the description... but I am not sure, and I'm fairly new to editing so I don't want to mess up.

Thanks for your advices, this would be of great help for me in the future too!

Beleriandcrises (talk) 10:07, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Don't worry about messing up: the editors associated with this WikiProject are good at making articles consistent. I've seen "Uses" in multiple articles (such as Douglas fir or oat), so I would suggest using that. —hike395 (talk) 11:11, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi @Hike395, Douglas fir has an ecology section describing what I wanted to write about, even though it overlaps quite a bit with cultivation in the arbutus case. I'll add an ecology section and a small 'design' under uses. Thank you for your kind help and support, I'll try not to waste editors time!

Medicinal plants
There is an ongoing discussion on the article's talk page about the place of the article Medicinal plants and its inclusion of materials on phytochemicals and defence against herbivorous insects. Editors are invited to contribute. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:53, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Some new categories
Hello everyone, again (yes, I have a lot of free time these days!). I am wondering if there are any guidelines for creating categories. I feel like in plants we could do with some new categories, such as (but not limiting to):


 * fire-resistant plants
 * salt-resistant plants
 * shade-tolerant plants
 * melliferous flowers

I look for an advice of yours if it sounds good before proceeding to add the category to a lot of pages.


 * These are "horticultural" rather than "botanical" categories, it seems to me. Categories should only be added to articles if there are reliable sources in the articles supporting that categorization (although this requirement seems to be often disregarded). I think that most of the articles with a WP:PLANTS template on the talk page won't meet this requirement.
 * The other problem is that these are not clear-cut categories: plants are more-or-less fire resistant or shade tolerant, so I doubt that these categories will meet WP:DEFINING. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:03, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi @Peter coxhead, thanks for your answer! Sorry if it's something more related to another project, I'll try asking on other projects page maybe. Of course the information should be verifiable, as everything. About the definition, WP:DEFINING consider "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define". Right now I'm working on Arbutus unedo and I wrote quite a few sources saying how it is good sources of nectar for bees, and can withstand being burned to the ground, and for all the categories. Would that do or it's a matter of how generally you define it, so a "shade-tolerant" category is not acceptable in general? Right now it is in the drought-resistant_plants and bird-food_plants, they seem quite on the line. Beleriandcrises (talk) 17:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * We have categories that touch on some of these concepts. Category:Halophytes for salt-tolerance, and Category:Mallees (habit) for fire-tolerant Eucalyptus species. Category:Bird food plants and Category:Butterfly food plants don't specify what part is eaten. While these two categories mostly contain either fruits eaten by birds or leaves eaten by caterpillars, there's no reason they couldn't include plants with nectar eaten by birds and/or adult butterflies. I'm not aware of any categories for bee food sources, but there is Melliferous flower, List of honey plants and List of Northern American nectar sources for honey bees. Plantdrew (talk) 18:53, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The botanical categories are halophyte (salt-tolerant/dependent), pyrophyte (fire-tolerant/dependent), xerophyte (drought-tolerant/dependent), mesophyte, psychrophyte (cold-tolerant/dependent), hygrophyte, hydrophyte (submersion-tolerant/dependent), metallophyte (heavy metal tolerant/dependent), selenophyte (selenium tolerant/dependent), nickelophyte, cobaltophyte, cuprophyte, chasmophyte, lithophyte/petrophyte, heliophyte, subheliophyte, sciophyte/umbrophyte, etc. (Fluorophyte, for fluorine accumulators, seems to have only one, some to become two, citations in the Google corpus.) You'll also find words with -fer (bearing), -cole (inhabiting), and -phile ("loving"/thriving in), with similar senses. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:51, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Sure, but left out a very important part of WP:DEFINING. It says A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having and then goes on to give examples in which sources give the subject's name immediately followed by the defining characteristic(s). So if reliable sources say "Eucalyptus, a fire-tolerant tree from Australia" then "fire-tolerant", "tree" and "Australian" are all defining characteristics. Merely possessing characteristics doesn't make them WP:DEFINING. I question whether many of the characteristics above are ever regarded as defining in the WP sense. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:35, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Input sought
Please see Talk:Plant for a discussion of how "plant" should be circumscribed in the lead of Plant. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:26, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Project page
There seem to be some problems with templates on the project page. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * You'll have to be more specific. I don't notice any obvious problems. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:26, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Some of the example text templates weren't producing the example text; but they are now, so whatever the problem was, it's gone away. (I think I did try F5 to clear any browser glitches at the time.) Lavateraguy (talk) 21:26, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Expert assistance required
I've done a bit of formatting at Pit (botany), but it's outside my area of expertise and needs a serious rewrite to make it even vaguely comprehensible to the lay reader (i.e. me). If someone with a passing understanding of plant cellular structures has nothing better to do, they may want to take a crack at it. Yunshui 雲 水 11:00, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I did my best to reword the article as well as add some references, but I left the template boxes in case a real expert wants to rewrite the article. Later today I'll try to translate the German article on pits to add some more content. Pagliaccious (talk) 13:45, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Help with rogue reversions
Can I have assistance with the article Cavicularia? User:Biografer has repeatedly deleted content, removed template spacing, "fixed" links that weren't broken, inserted a link to a Korean article that happens to have one (misidentified) image labelled Cavicularia, and added a book about Phycology for further reading. It is clear that the editor has no knowledge of the subject matter, little knowledge of Wikipedia policy, and is stubbornly inserting his own content while reverting additions I have made.

I tried to bring the matter to discussion, which he deleted from his talk page. Can other WP:PLANTS editors please step in to help out? I have already wasted much time on this issue. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:52, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Taxon authorities in Taxoboxes
Do we have (somewhere) any guidance on the format of botanical authorities given inside taxoboxes? I couldn't find a link from the WP:PLANTS page. If we don't have such a guide, we probably should. In particular, I want to know whether we've established using the standard author abbreviation over the full form of the name, and whether we include dates, "emend.", "non", and other notational information often given in taxonomic texts. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:37, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
 * We've certainly discussed this, and agreed on using the IPNI abbreviations and no date. The examples given at Template:Taxobox/doc reflect this practice, but there's no text explaining it that I can find. "Extra" information, like "non" seems to depend on the context – my view is that it's useful in the taxobox only if discussed in a taxonomy section in the article, but that's just my opinion. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:40, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It would be helpful if there were text explaining the botanical conventions and how they differ from zoological ones. I know of at least one editor who has been adding many zoologically-formatted authority citations to botanical articles. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:54, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases
Please help improve the famous Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. --Jilja (talk) 03:53, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Flowering Plant Diversity
It was recently pointed out that the list of most speciose families at Flowering plant omitted Bromeliaceae. While sorting that out, I noticed that Amaryllidaceae s.l. and Asparagaceae s.l. would be on the list if those circumscriptions are accepted. If WP:OR and WP:SYN don't apply it might be worth a volunteer going through APWeb and APG4 to rebuild this list. (I think that there's also scope for adding something about APG4 to the article.) Lavateraguy (talk) 15:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject
Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Plants

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.&mdash; Rod talk 18:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I've dealt with the Emilia and the Luffa.
 * There are two alternatives that seem plausible for the Campanula, but both are redlinks, and it is possible that the reference should be to some other geographical feature rather than one of the two villages. The article also needs a copyedit, but I'd need a WP:RS to work it what it's trying to say.
 * I suspect that Ulmus 'Pendula' should be Ulmus minor 'Pendula'.
 * I expect that Taymyr refers to the peninsula, but I don't know how to check that out. Lavateraguy (talk) 23:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. This is exactly the sort of issue we need specialist help to resolve.&mdash; Rod talk 07:56, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * On further investigation Drežnica, Bosnia is a district (valley) with two dispersed settlements, Gornja (Upper) and Donja (Lower) Drežnica. This is likely to be the intended reference in the Campanula hercegovina article, but there are two problems: proving this, and deciding how to disambiguate it. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:50, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Color scheme for taxobox template
There is a proposal to simplify the taxobox color scheme at Template talk:Taxobox. The color scheme for plants is not affected. Please weigh in if you have an opinion. Kaldari (talk) 06:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge discussion
There is a proposal to merge Antarctic Beech at Comboyne into Lophozonia moorei. See Talk. --Animalparty! (talk) 18:55, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Curious case re "Plants described in" category
If my understanding of how we use the "Plants described in ..." categories is correct, then Acis trichophylla presents a curiosity. The legitimate names (see the Taxonomy section of the article) are: It seems odd that the application of the somewhat convoluted rules of ICN changes the "described year" from 1800 to 1830 – assuming I'm correct in my understanding. Comments are invited. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:34, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Leucojum trichophyllum Schousb. (1800) – so "Plants described in 1800" if the taxon is placed in Leucojum
 * Acis trichophylla G.Don (1830) – so "Plants described in 1830" if the taxon is placed in Acis, as it currently is.
 * Possibly Acis trichophylla G.Don should be written as Acis trichophylla ( Brot. ) G.Don, making the year 1804 rather than 1830 - IPNI gives Leucojum trichophyllum Brot. as a replaced synonym.
 * Looking at IPNI I'm not sure that there is a legitimate instance of the combination Acis trichophylla; according to IPNI Sweet didn't make the combination, and Don based it on a illegitimate name (later homonym). We also need to know whether Leucojum trichophyllum Brot. refers to the same species as Leucojum trichophyllum Schousb. ; it's been treated as a species under the name Acis broteroi Jourd. & Fourr. and as a variety of Acis trichophylla, though it looks as if there is no successful attempt at giving it a varietal name in Acis. Reference to the original literature is probably necessary to resolve matters.
 * I looked at Flora Iberica, which sinks Acis in Leucojum. In the synonymy of Leucojum trichophyllum it gives Acis trichophylla ( Schousb. ) G.Don . If that is correct, your problem goes away. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:56, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I tracked down a copy of Loudon's Hortus Brittanicus. It's open to interpretation. Don makes the combination, citing Sweet. He also refers to Brotero, but his intent isn't clear. Perhaps that makes the name Acis trichophylla ( Schousb. (1800) ) Sweet ex G.Don Lavateraguy (talk) 14:02, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that the taxonomy in the WCSP (which is what I based the section in Acis trichophylla on) is at least questionable. I can't find a source that discusses it. Since we're not allowed OR, I could only try to follow the most comprehensive (and usually very reliable) secondary source. Don (see the reference in the article) refers to Acis trichophyllus Swt. and Leucojum trichophyllum Brot..
 * Acis trichophylla (Schousb.) Sweet is invalid according to the IPNI here on the grounds that the combination was not actually made. Sweet merely says here that L. trichophyllum belongs to Acis, but doesn't use the combination, which means that as per Art. 33.1, the combination was not explicitly accepted. Actually, we don't know whose L. trichophyllum Sweet was referring to, since he doesn't say. He could have been referring to Brotero's name, although Don obviously thinks not, since he lists this separately as a synonym.
 * Don does explicitly use the combination, but both of his references are to names that aren't acceptable. One interpretation is that this means that Don didn't publish Acis trichophylla either. The IPNI here claims that he published a "replaced synonym". So another interpretation is that Don legitimized Acis trichophylla (Schousb.) Sweet by explicitly mentioning the combination, which would give us either Acis trichophylla (Schousb.) Sweet ex G.Don or just Acis trichophylla (Schousb.) G.Don . On this view, Don's combination is not a de novo name, but is based on Sweet (and also assuming Sweet's name is not based on Brotero).
 * I think I'll contact IPNI and WCSP. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Now e-mailed them. ( copy sent to you.) Peter coxhead (talk) 08:10, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * By the way, if the Don name isn't valid, then Acis trichophylla (Schousb.) Herb. (1837) will, I think, be the first published combination in Acis. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:13, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I also emailed IPNI, with a similar analysis. I noted that it was questionable that Don could validate Sweet's names on the grounds that Sweet didn't cite authority or publication, but didn't realise the ambiguity about which name Sweet was referring to. I also noted that some other names in Acis are affected - Acis grandiflora, and possibly the varietal names in Acis trichophylla. I failed to notice the later alternative combination. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:57, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * As a result of my e-mail to WCSP, the authority has been changed to "Sweet ex Don", but still treating this name as homotypic with Brotero's name, whereas I suspect that Don thought it to be heterotypic with this name. However, it can't be proved either way, I guess, since neither Sweet nor Don give a citation. It will be interesting to see what view IPNI takes. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:11, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I downloaded a copy of Brotero's Flora Lusitanica a long time back, and I found a copy of Schousboe's work on Google Books. Schousboe gives a location in Morocco (near Tangiers), while Brotero gives two locations in Portugual. That suggests that Brotero introduced the name independently, i.e. it is heterotypic, but on skimming a few pages he doesn't seem to give extra-Portuguese distributions, so it's not clear cut. On the other hand he doesn't give a citation, which is evidence that he thought he was describing a new taxon. The people who used the epithet broteroi presumably thought the taxa were heterotypic. I agree that the natural reading of Don is that they were heterotypic, and Don gives herbarium numbers with Brotero's name on them, which one would presume to be syntypes of Brotero's taxon. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:18, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Confusion about authority for Ardisia oligantha
Hi, I noticed right now Ardisia oligantha has the authority (Gilg & Schellenb.) Taton, referring to p. 109, a new combination resulting in the transfer of Afrardisia oligantha to Ardisia. However, it seems like this is preoccupied by this species named by Baker. Some databases like Tropicos give Baker as the authority, while others like IUCN give (Gilg & Schellenb.) Taton as the authority. Previous editors have deferred to IUNC it seems.

It also seems like Baker's Ardisia oligantha might now be Oncostemum oliganthum (Baker) Mez and the species described by Gilg & Schellenb. now has a replacement name Ardisia marcellanum R. Govaerts.

I'm less familiar with plant taxonomy so I figure I'd flag the page for others. I'm not sure the best way to fix this... should the page be a redirect to Oncostemum oliganthum? to Ardisia marcellanum? a disambiguation page? What changes need to be made to the wikidata page? Thanks!

Umimmak (talk) 02:37, 11 December 2017 (UTC)


 * As best I can figure out, the current Polbot-created page should be moved to Ardisia marcellanum and Ardisia oligantha coverted to a set index page like Asplenium trichomanoides. Choess (talk) 03:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)


 * That makes sense; I went ahead and made the move and created the other two pages. Do these look all right? Ardisia oligantha, Ardisia marcellanum, Oncostemum oliganthum. Umimmak (talk) 05:04, 11 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I expanded the set index a bit–technically, they can't all be referred to as "illegitimate" since Baker's name is OK, just transferred to a new genus. The rest looks reasonable for the time being. I have no idea how to deal with Wikidata, where they seem to have their own notions about taxonomic concepts. Choess (talk) 16:39, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I just followed the example you gave me which called them all invalid, but I suppose that's only true in the zoological sense. What's the Ardisia oligantha Mez described in 1902? 1902 was when Mez transferred Baker's Ardisia oligantha to Oncostemum but I don't think he named any species with that name. Umimmak (talk) 16:48, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Here, where Mez describes A. oligantha as a new species. Transfer is further down in that work, here. Choess (talk) 16:54, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I guess he didn't know he was going to transfer when he named that species haha. Also I think Ardisia oligantha Elmer = Ardisia oligocarpa Merr. might have been synonymized with Ardisia serrata (Cav.) Pers. I'm not sure what to trust, though. Umimmak (talk) 17:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Grogan's Fault needs attention
Grogan's Fault is currently not acceptably sourced and I think I may need to be merged or deleted.-- Kev min  § 03:41, 20 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Seconded. I've tagged it single source. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:24, 20 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I found this, which is at least written by someone other than Vaden: Umimmak (talk) 09:40, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, come on. This Gymnosperm Database "article" is from Mario Vaden's website, the single source in the Wikipedia article, essentially a blog bragging about a tree Mario and Chris have declared, on the blog cited in the article, as the largest or tallest or whatever their claim, is-est, in the world. This article needs deleted, not spread by Wikipedia throughout Google searches, so that the Wikipedia article can later be used to verify the blog post from which it was taken. --2602:306:CD1E:44B0:7D32:7D06:B9E8:AE64 (talk) 23:18, 24 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Your tone is absolutely uncalled for. I didn't add it to the article; I didn't claim this demonstrated notability; I didn't claim the article should or shouldn't be deleted. I tried to find something else which discussed the topic and brought it to a talk page for others to discuss. Edit summaries like You're kidding me!!!! are rude and unhelpful. You could have easily been much nicer about saying that source does not demonstrate notability. Umimmak (talk) 03:28, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Your discussion of my tone contributed what? Nothing. But that's one more than your saying a blog quoting a blog is a source. OMG, it's about the bad non-encyclopedic article, not you. Return to deletion, sources unknown. --2600:387:6:805:0:0:0:69 (talk) 02:45, 26 December 2017 (UTC)


 * it's about the bad non-encyclopedic article, not you It's hard to take that seriously when your edit summaries in the article continue to obliquely refer to me. Please stop mischaracterizing me and my positions in your edit summaries. I'm not defending the article, or arguing it should stay up, or claiming the references demonstrate notability. Umimmak (talk) 23:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See below. And your post above that I was responding to. Tit for tat, and all that. :) --2602:306:CD1E:44B0:F842:9971:6DAD:1A87 (talk) 00:27, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I PRODDED the article. Too much time wasted on self-promotion. --2602:306:CD1E:44B0:7D32:7D06:B9E8:AE64 (talk) 17:42, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Help Requested: List of Hypericum species
Hello, I've been a lurking WikiProject Plants member, and I spend most of my time working on content related to the genus Hypericum. I'm by no means an experienced editor, but I think I have a good thing going with the List of Hypericum species. I'm in the middle of completely overhauling the list for the second time, and I think I can get it to Featured List standards. However, I still have a lot of work to do on the article, and I could really use some help to make it go a little quicker. One of the biggest things is the number of redlinks in the article, simply because of the sheer number of species in the genus. There is a lot of content readily available on the web, and all that needs to be done is put it into a short entry article for each of the species. In addition, there's just a lot of tedious data entry and fact checking to be done on the list, and the volume of it has me overwhelmed. I could use whatever help anyone here can give me, and would be just as grateful for any advice or tips anyone could supply to make the list better.

Thank you for your time, Fritzmann2002 18:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * It's quite a project and you have it in an excellent structure. For a Featured List, each table row will need a citation, however. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:42, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It might be worth your while adding authorities to the synonyms. I was initially confused finding H. inodorum (Willd. nom. illeg.) as a synonym of H. xylosteifolium, when I'm familiar with H. x inodorum Mill. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:06, 30 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, lists of species normally give the authority for every name. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I can do that. Thanks for the advice Fritzmann2002 15:04, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This dissertation looks useful, except that WikiPedia isn't institutionally keen on primary sources. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:38, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Name for a Passiflora commons category
Hi, I am revising the files uploaded for Wiki Science Competition 2017 and I have noticed these four files. They all depict this "passiflora Annika" flower, maybe they need a very specific category. Which title should in your opinion this category have? No idea if this "Annika" tag is commercial or scientific, or even if it is not relevant enough to have its own category.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:28, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello Alexmar983, the category should be "Passiflora cultivars", as Passiflora 'Annika' is a commercial hybrid. I will categorize the files --Thiotrix (talk) 06:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * ok Thiotrix I do the same with this other cultivar. Thank you.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have also changed the category name to "Passiflora Cultivars" to "Passiflora cultivars" (all other categories by genera didn't use the capitol C). I see there are some files whose categorization ca be improved, if anyone is in the mood.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Festuca altaica
There are a couple of articles that mention this plant but it doesn't have an article of its own. Is anyone willing to create an article for it? Volcanoguy 14:02, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There seems to be some divergence of opinion with respect to species boundaries among Festuca scabrella, Festuca campestris, Festuca altaica and Festuca hallii. Flora of China sinks F. scabrella in F. altaica, as do a variety of other sites. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:41, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Meaning? Volcanoguy 05:11, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, drawing on Grassbase, also concurs that Festuca scabrella is a synonym of Festuca altaica. So,, the meaning is that according to a range of reliable sources, we already have an article on this taxon at Festuca scabrella; it just needs to be moved to Festuca altaica and the synonymy noted. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I also note that the article gives the authority as "L." which isn't correct according to IPNI.
 * Unless anyone has any better sources, the article should be moved. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If the article is moved, an update to include the Eurasian range would be desirable. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:00, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Peter coxhead (talk) 11:57, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying. I came across Festuca altaica when I was looking for information to create an article for Festuca Pass which is named after this grass species. But I noticed Festuca altaica was a red link and after finding the name in the Festuca scabrella article I figured it was some sort of subspecies because prior to Peter coxhead's contributions the article stated "In addition Alberta has other species including: plains fescue (Festuca hallii); foothills fescue (Festuca campestris) and northern fescue (Festuca altaica)." Volcanoguy 12:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * A superficial look at the sources suggests this may be a classic case where species named separately by botanists working in Russia (or afterwards the Soviet Union) and those working in North America later turn out to be synonymous. Having said that, I understand that grass taxonomy is in the throes of reorganization, so we might need to split them later! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to change guidelines on the naming of articles about monotypic taxa
There is a proposal to change the guidelines on the naming of articles about monotypic taxa at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. Please join in the discussion there. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:12, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

WGSRPD distribution categories
I've been working on the flora distribution categories that follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD). In particular:
 * I've added a template, WGSRPD code, to all the categories that strictly follow the WGSRPD, to show the actual code used, and to link to the advice this project gives at WP:PLANTS/Using the WGSRPD. The template also places the categories in tracking categories (see ).
 * I've created an article to list all the WGSRPD codes. Putting this in mainspace may help editors interpret the codes (which are used in the Kew databases, for example). See List of codes used in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. The names used for some of the codes in sources can be misleading, so I've included both the WGSRPD name and the name used here.
 * I've created as many distribution categories down to Level 3 as I could easily find plants that belong in them. (The major omissions are parts of Russia.) The principle behind naming flora distribution categories seem to be to use the name of the relevant geographical article(s) or a major redirect if its name is closer to the WGSRPD name. (There's some inconsistent capitalization still.)

One problem that remains is misleading category names. The most blatant examples are and. These are not what most editors would understand by "North America" and "South America". The WGSRPD has two botanical continents which it calls "Northern America" and "Southern America". Northern America excludes Central America and the Caribbean, both of which are placed in Southern America. (See also World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions and following.) I believe the misleading names cause miscategorization. They also make it impossible to match up the flora and fauna categories properly, since the latter are based on traditional continents. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The WGSRPD regions are the Nearctic and Neotropics modified to follow national boundaries, so I was wondering about Flora of the Nearctic and Flora of the Neotropics, but on second thoughts that's inaccurate enough to make them unacceptable on that ground alone. Lavateraguy (talk) 23:30, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal – request for comments
is moved to "Category:Flora of northern America" and is moved to "Category:Flora of southern America". "Category:Flora of North America" and "Category:Flora of South America" become container categories for the next level WGSRPD categories based on the traditional definitions. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's a piece of work. Why don't we add an explanatory gloss to the category name corresponding to WGSRPD "8 Southern America" so that it appears "Southern America [inc. Central America, Caribbean]"? Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:16, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd thought of moves like that, but see Category names (and note "Non-conformance to these naming conventions shall be treated as a criterion for 'speedy category renaming' as defined on WP:CFD", which has happened before to some flora categories). Basically it forbids "explanatory" additions to names, which in this particular case is particularly unfortunate. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:26, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm not a lawyer, Wiki-variety or otherwise, but that section, "Categories by country", is talking about politics and states and companies, and I guess the point is to prevent heated wars about whether Ruripolitania is or is not a republic, etc. etc. We are nowhere near that set of rules here: the WGSRPD names are not by country but by geographic region. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:36, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree, but it illustrates the general principles applied. I'm pretty confident that adding bits for information would be quashed, based on past experience, so I'd rather settle for something simpler. is interested in MOS, titling and ToL matters, so might be able to add to this. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:14, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe. I think that only that one change would be needed, as the other names all seem to be unproblematic. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually there are some smaller areas that are slightly problematic, but let's deal with the two big ones first! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:18, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I do a lot of WP:CFD and Peter's right; "explanatory" category names are not tolerated and get deleted/renamed. It really is better to have a partially overlapping category for a special purpose, including formal, organizational, scientific designations of things, versus how the common people usually think of them. Thus we have Category:Endangered species, for any definition of "endangered", and we also have Category:IUCN Red List endangered species‎ for IUCN's formal labeling, which may or may not coincide with how other authorities have labeled a particular species.  What would likely happen here is that once categories for al WGSRPD "places" are created and put into a tree, more specific ones (Category:Flora of Maryland or whatever) would be categorized both into a WGSRPD cat. for botanists and a more conventional geographical category for, say, secondary school students doing papers or casual gardeners wondering what wild plants can be found near them. This will work around the problem that tightly defined WGSRPD usage like "Northern America" and "North-Central USA" may not match average reader expectations (i.e. "Northern America" isn't a phrase anyone else uses, and Maryland (part of the WGSRPD's "Southeastern USA") may be classified as part of the northeastern US or the southeastern US (or more of often the central eastern US) depending on context (historical, political, cultural, geological, environmental, etc., etc.), just as how Turkey can be variously classified as part of southeastern Europe, West[ern] Asia, Eurasia, Asia minor, the southeast Mediterranean, the Near East, the Middle East, the Balkans, Eastern European, etc., depending on definitions.  We have similar situations with how things in the Caribbean are defined.  I think what I would suggest here is not moving/renaming the extant categories but creating new categories for the WGSRPD labels.  No matter how you slice it, a bunch of categorization is going to have to happen, and doing it this way would arouse less resistance from the CfD crowd that moving a common-name category to a specialized-term name then re-creating the common-name version. It also means the work can just proceed right away without waiting on any CfD result.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * ah, useful advice. The key point is that since the existing categories have explanations that say they are for the WGSRPD sense, the articles should, in the first instance, be re-categorized to the WGSRPD categories, however they get set up. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:00, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Why would we not capitalize the 'n' in your proposed "Category:Flora of northern America" and the 's' in "Category:Flora of southern America"? This would be a direct inconsistency from Northern America and World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. ~  Mellis  ( talk ) 19:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I would personally much prefer to capitalize the "N", but I don't think this is how the English Wikipedia capitalizes, since "Northern America" is a specialist term, and the consensus (in a rough summary) has been to capitalize only terms used in most generalist publications. can you please comment on this? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:54, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The analysis I can muster on short notice: We're not capitalizing things like "Myocardial Infarction", "Philosophy of Language", "Method Acting", "American Elm", "Endangered", "Inter-Rater Reliability" etc. I've seen various geographical terms in particular downcased when they're not consistently capitalized in sources, most especially when they're neologistic, and promulgated and primarily used by a particular entity. The site-wide (though not entirely consistent) pattern seems to be to capitalize geographical features like mountains, ranges thereof, bodies of water, etc.; political/governmental jurisdictions; and traditional placenames that don't correspond to one of the latter any more or at all. Geographical designations created for special purposes (i.e., neologisms) are a grey area, and are less likely to retain the caps if they're descriptive, but more likely to if they're evocative or metaphorical (i.e., clearly proper names, not just categorizations or labels). E.g., I note that things like Northeast megalopolis (a 1961 neologism that still mostly appears in specialist lit, is lower-case while Eastern Seaboard, essentially synonymous when used as a human-geography term, is usually capitalized. Most of the articles (and the names in the articles) in Category:Alternative place names and subcats like Category:Geographical neologisms and Category:Megapolitan areas of the United States are capitalized. Few of them have been discussed at WP:RM (or WP:CfR, for those that also have their own categories), and most of them are geographical features like peninsulas, consist entirely of proper-name elements (as in BosWash), or are non-descriptive metaphoric terms like Jesusland, Golden Banana, etc.  Some of the more plainly descriptive ones are lower-cased, and some that are not probably would be at RM. US Office of Management and Budget neologisms like "Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA Metropolitan Statistical Area" were mostly or entirely moved to simpler names like Portland metropolitan area and lower-cased (a handful consistently capitalized in sources are here too, e.g. San Francisco Bay Area‎); the evocative synonym "Greater Portland" for "Portland metropolitan area" is upper-cased.  Rough British equivalents of these US OMB terms (e.g. Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley) are capitalized, but they're also used as actual governance divisions for various purposes, while the OMB ones are just for statistics and don't correspond to jurisdictions of any kind.  So, basically, it's a crap shoot. This is one of the style issues on which the community isn't entirely settled and may never be. How the argument would probably go: One argument for caps is that WGSRPD is a formal standard and the designations in it are standardized symbols in effect, like Unicode blocks and planes, IETF protocols, SI unit symbols, etc., and should be given on WP as given by the standards body. An argument against that would be that the actual designations are things like "7 Northern America" not just "Northern America"; another would be that it's not "officialness" that determines how we capitalize, but consistent use of capitals in a preponderance of general-audience sources (and there basically aren't any in this case).  A countervailing WP:CONSISTENCY argument can be made, however: that it's awkward and potentially confusing to use "Central Europe", "Eastern Europe", "Northern Europe", "North America", etc., in one context, then veer into "middle Europe" and "northern America" (maybe even "northern Europe"!) in a WGSRPD context. If we didn't do "northern Europe" in the WGSRPD context, that would be inconsistent with "northern America", but doing them all that way would make everyday "Northern Europe" and WGSRPD "northern Europe" inconsistent, possibly in the same article.    As a side matter, people would bridle at "Northwestern U.S.A."  Another potential issue is that WGSRPD doesn't seem to be much used; e.g. if you do Google Scholar and Google Book searches on WGSRPD northwestern, on World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions northern, and so on, there's virtually nothing.  So, people may not want us to categorize by this system at all, especially since it does confusing things like put some of the Greek islands in Western Asia, and so on.  In short, I think I would go with the caps, spell out the full words in "U.S.A.", not use the numbers, and hope for the best. The less the WGSRPD categorization impinges on how most Wikipedians and readers use our "everyday-term" geographical categories, the less likelihood there is of objections. Appending "(WGSRPD)" may also be viable (see below).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I take most of the points here, but must disagree with some. The WGSRPD is very widely used in databases, as it is designed to be. Some use primarily the codes, so you can't find the names by searching. Others, like the IUCN Red Lists, mainly use the lowest level units, which works fine for them since taxa they are interested in are by definition usually of restricted distribution. But we aren't going to categorize a North American species by every Canadian province and US state.
 * It's only "confusing" to put, e.g., the Aegean Islands in Asia, if you think that organisms should be categorized by political boundaries rather than biogeographical ones. As far back as the first volumes of Flora Europaea, "Europe" has excluded the Aegean Islands. The flora is quite different, as I know from experience. Every discussion at ToL wikiprojects has agreed that distributions should not be based on political boundaries. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Suggestion Whatever names you choose, how about if you follow them with a dab-style (WGSRPD)? i.e., Category:Northern America (WGSRPD) . This is analogous to some of the WWF ecoregion articles, e.g., List of ecoregions (WWF), to distinguish them from other categorization schemes (e.g., Coast Range (EPA ecoregion). It also help WP:NPOV by not implying "one true categorization", but rather highlighting that this particular categorization scheme comes from a particular organization. —hike395 (talk) 05:03, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, I'd personally be happy to do this, but the consensus view in the English Wikipedia is to avoid parenthetical terms in titles unless they are absolutely necessary for disambiguation. If the WGSRPD used the term "North America" differently from the common use, then "North America (WGSRPD)" would be accepted for the WGSRPD sense at CfD. But there won't be two "[N/n]orthern America" uses. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:54, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Sheez. That will force us to say something like "WGSRPD region Northern America" or "WGSRPD region 7 Northern America". I guess that would work even if clunky. We seem to be very close to having a totally broken category/policy/CfD mechanism, however. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, if there were to be a flora category based on the article Northern America, then I guess there could be two flora categories including "Northern America", but I doubt we want three categories (these two + "North America"). (The WGSRPD includes Mexico and the Russian Aleutian Islands, but excludes Bermuda and Hawaii, compared to the article's definition.)
 * All I'm arguing for is that changing "Flora of North America" and "Flora of South America" to "Flora of southern America" and "Flora of northern America" will be (a) an improvement (b) within guidelines and policies. On reflection, the lowercase adjectives also help to show that these aren't the normal continents. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:14, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Good luck with that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I would advise "WGSRPD region Northern America" or "WGSRPD region 7 Northern America" or the like in article prose, infoboxes, etc., anyway. It will avoid non-expert confusion with the everyday meanings and thus prevent editwarring, like changing plants of the eastern Greek islands to be "Southeastern Europe" instead of "Western Asia".  If you do want to do category names like "Category:Northern America (WGSRPD)", the escape from the concision police is to the name all the WGSRPD categories that  have "collisions" with every-English usage (Northern Europe, Southwestern Europe, yadda yadda yadda), establishing a consistent system of category nomenclature, then do the odd-ball ones last (Middle Europe, Middle Asia, Subarctic America, and a few other neologisms), imposing the same "(WGSRPD)".  This would probably be adequate defense against CfRs to remove that parenthetical, under Categories for discussion.  The CfD crowd are more pro-category-name-consistency than they are con-extraneous-disambiguation, rather the opposite of the WP:RM crowd. Anyway, a "clean break" of WGSRPD categories from everyday geographical terms would probably be more practical than only doing it when terms don't overlap. The only way one would be truly redundant would be when every single plant in the WGSRPD category in question (Northern America, etc.) would also be in the non-WGSRPD corresponding category (North America, etc.) and vice versa, and I'm not sure that would be true for any such pair of categories. If it incidentally was, I'm not sure anyone would care; a category that is at least temporarily redundant can be retained if it's part of a finite set.
 * Actually, the category name very often does align with an article – look at the relevant columns at List of WGSRPD codes. If we can rename the cases where "X" isn't the usual sense to "Flora of X (WGSRPD)" then I'm certainly in favour, although it won't be a trivial task to make all the changes.
 * It does seem that a more sensible approach can be taken than I initially thought possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Vernacular names that are racially/ethnically offensive
I browsed the archives but found no topic that addressed this. However, I may have overlooked something; if this question has already been asked and answered, please let me know and direct me to the appropriate place in the archives.

My question: Should references to racially offensive common names of plants be removed? For example, please see the reference to “nigger toes” in the Nomenclature section of the Brazil nut article. I propose that the “nigger toes” reference is excludable under WP:GRATUITOUS guidelines, because omission of the term does not cause the article to be a less informative, relevant or accurate resource about the biological organism Brazil nut tree.

This dispute has arisen from time to time in the Talk page of the Brazil nut article since 2006 with no clear consensus. Jam cpa (talk) 01:50, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, Wikipedia is not censored (see WP:NOTCENSORED), but English names for plants need to be notable and well sourced. My quick search suggests to me that this name is neither. (There are some more problematic cases: "black boys" for Xanthorrhoea and species; "kaffir lily" for Hesperantha coccinea and other species.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Another problematic example is the article Echinocactus_polycephalus, which includes a reference to “niggerhead cactus” that also appears not to be well sourced. The WP:GRATUITOUS guidelines state that “NOT CENSORED does not give special favor to offensive content.” Further, “Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available.” In the cases mentioned here — nigger toes, blackboys, niggerhead cactus — suitable alternatives would seem to be either their genus-species scientific designations or vernacular names that have no racially/ethnically offensive content. Have I misunderstood or misapplied the WP:GRATUITOUS rules, regarding vernacular names of plants? I am open to the possibility that could be wrong, given that my experience as a Wikipedia contributor is admittedly limited. Jam cpa (talk) 11:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess it's a matter of opinion, but "suitable alternatives" doesn't apply here, it seems to me, because we aren't recommending English names, only reporting them. If an English name has a widespread, albeit historical use, then it would be censorship not to inform readers of its existence. But the usage has to be 'substantial' and sourced. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:15, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As always on Wikipedia, editors should be guided by the sources. If such names are suitably sourced and were (or are) widely used, it would indeed be censorship not to list them. We should not be airbrushing history (or culture, or whatever) because it might be offensive. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 11:21, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Expansion of Linnaea
Kew here has adopted the new nomenclature that sinks Kolkwitzia, Abelia, etc. into Linnaea, so I think we should too. A discussion has started at Talk:Kolkwitzia. Please comment there if interested. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * As no-one objected, I've started to sort out the articles to the new nomenclature. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Plants of the World Online
Plants of the World Online (POWO) is already a useful database for plants; it's more up-to-date than The Plant List, which is getting a bit out-of-date now. It promises to be even more useful in future as it expands – see the introduction.

You can use powo to add a link to Taxonbar when there is an entry in POWO. You use the same identifier as IPNI. See Nanorrhinum scoparium for an example. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:00, 3 February 2018 (UTC)


 * World Flora Online seems to have more taxa available than it did back in July; it has Reynoutria japonica and synonyms which were previously missing.


 * I think it's worth poking around WFO and POWO to get a sense of the idiosyncrasies and strengths and weaknesses of this new generation of plant databases.


 * I've found one kind of problem with POWO so far. TPL had a dodgy mess sourced to Tropicos with respect to Mahonia and Berberis. POWO treats Mahonia as a synonym of Berberis, but there are a bunch of Mahonia species that have never had a combination published in Berberis. POWO just skips over them. TPL and WFO have records for Mahonia cardiophylla. POWO has nothing. I expect there are other cases of species orphaned in a synonymized genus with no published combination in the new genus. Plantdrew (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are all kinds of inconsistencies in my experience between WFO, POWO, WCSP and IPNI, all supposedly at least partially inter-connected databases (and all with Kew involvement). As an example of issues, working with in one case, I've had five entries in IPNI corrected since 29 January, all of which were correct in at least one other database.
 * POWO is not well populated yet, and not as well known (I think, which is why I flagged it up here). It has good coverage of African plants compared to some other sources, so it's been very useful to me as I've been working on Canary Islands plants lately. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:42, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * This is typical of the issues I find. There are at least three Lotus glaucus names around: L. glaucus Aiton in IPNI and POWO; L. glaucus Sol. in TPL and WFO; and L. glaucus Sieber ex Rchb. in IPNI. I don't know at present whether these are synonyms, and if so, which has priority. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 12:12, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Tropicos has the Sieber ex Reichb. name flagged as illegitimate. Plantdrew (talk) 16:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think the choice is between Aiton (or Dryand ex Aiton) and Sol. – Tropicos has Lotus glaucus Dryand. ex Aiton with no comment other than that L. glaucus Sieber ex Rchb. is a synonym; TPL treats L. glaucus Dryand. ex Aiton as "unresolved". Peter coxhead (talk) 17:39, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * For African plants does POWO offer any advantage over AFPD? Lavateraguy (talk) 22:45, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Apart from the "one stop" issue when general databases like POWO are more complete, I prefer some aspects of its presentation and the distribution information in AFPD is restricted to a map with markers whereas POWO lists the WGSRPD descriptors (albeit oddly in some cases), which is more useful when preparing an article. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Move request relevant to this project
There is a move request at Talk:Poppy that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Deli nk (talk) 03:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Adding external link to Cyclamen pages
hi, a large number of the Cyclamen pages use my images following a request by a French member of the wikipedia community. I had noticed that a link had been added to my website under external links. Unfortunately as I've had to rebuild my site those links are no longer valid.

Today I updated those links and thought while I was at it I would add links to the other pages which may or may not have used my images which did not have a link to my site.

That took a while as I have not linked to the main site but the individual pages, so there is one link for Cyclamen africanum, one for Cyclamen alpinum etc. Also some of those links provide images to hybrids or plants mentioned but have no images.

I've now been told I probably should not have done this. I can't remember which pages had a link to my old site and really they were simply a correction of what had been added by someone else.

My site isn't commercial - I'm retired and it's my hobby.

Example page I have linked to

http://www.inspiringplants.org/cyclamen-africanum.html

I hope I haven't wasted several hours of my time.

regards, Mark — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark Griffiths59 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Although WP:ADV says "in line with Wikipedia policies, you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if Wikipedia guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked", I think these are useful links, provided the potential conflict of interest is made obvious, and no-one objects. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:54, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Sex
Please see the latest discussion at Talk:Sex, which proposes to restrict the scope of the article. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:50, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:List of natural Orchidaceae genera, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, –Ammarpad (talk) 10:38, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Sonchus laevis
In accord with my general dislike for species redirects to the genus, I started to create a stub at Sonchus laevis to replace the redirect to Sonchus. However, I'm now doubtful that this name can be correct. So I'm inclined to the view that there's no such name/author combination, and I should have the article deleted and remove the species from the Sonchus list.
 * The species list at Sonchus has a link to Sonchus laevis Sloane, as per TPL ex TICA, so this is what I used. But IPNI has no entry for this name/author combination – actually it has no names with the author "Sloane", although it has this author abbreviation. It seems to me that Hans Sloane can't have been the author of any Linnean names, because he died in 1753.
 * IPNI has two other Sonchus laevis names here, but one is invalid and the other (S. laevis Vill.) is a synonym of S. oleraceus according to TPL and other sources.

I'd be grateful for any comments or assistance. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:53, 27 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Seems to be an old synonym for S. oleraceus. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. It's my guess, too: I suspect that somewhere Sloane used a pre-Linnaean name for what is now Sonchus oleraceus which has been picked up wrongly by TICA and then TPL. It would just be nice to know exactly where the "Sloane" came from. I'm going to replace the stub by a redirect to S. oleraceus. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)


 * EDIT CONFLICT It was created as a redirect to S. oleraceus by Joseph Laferriere. I retargeted it to the genus and added some rcat templates. I don't remember exactly what I was doing; presumably I was following The Plant List treatment of the Sloane name. Joseph was a prolific creator of redirects for synonyms, but he didn't check for homonyms; some of his "synonym" redirects are junior homonyms where the senior homonym is accepted. In TPL, this looks like a senior homonym situation, although I accept the argument that Sloane couldn't have authored any Linnean names. In this case, retargetting back to S. oleraceus may be appropriate. Plantdrew (talk) 15:15, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Halodule wrightii
I have also noticed that the Halodule wrightii article does not really dive into the specifics of the plant besides its physical appearance. However, its internal physiology and affects on coastal environments is not touched on.Katiedames (talk) 03:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Anyone feel like messing with this?
A while back I finished up the palm genera and started doing the subfamilies. I more or less finished one article which is on my user page but I got my degree around that time and my life kind of changed in a way that didn’t allow me to continue contributing. A stub already exists for Calamoideae so it wouldn’t be much work to remove the info from my user page and add it to the article. I just don’t feel like I remember enough about editing to do it without devoting more time than I currently have. There are only a couple of authoritative works on palms so I can easily enough tell you which reference should go with any information requiring one. And the incomplete section in my article is the tribes but the stub lists the tribes so you can just use what’s in the stub and delete my tribe info. Maybe I’ll get back to fixing it later. And if nobody wants to screw with it no worries. Mmcknight4 (talk) 04:27, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Way above my pay grade, but you might sign your posts! Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:21, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The signature was there, but I'd accidentally separated it from the text when I moved the Halodule wrightii material and gave it a section heading. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:29, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Plants/Collaboration
Any interest in reviving this? Might be good to get some broader articles buffed to GA-hood in a more coherent manner. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:05, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Cupressus nootkatensis
I've identified what look like three problems with Cupressus nootkatensis. (1) The lead doesn't correspond to the title. (2) The genus in the infobox is Callitropsis, which is a DAB page containing two names which appear to have been superseded; in this case by Xanthocyparis. (3)  redirects to Cupressus nootkatensis.

Can any expert help clean up this set of problems? Thanks, Narky Blert (talk) 20:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Classification here has gone back and forth recently. There's a summary of the situation at The Gymnosperm Database, which retains the species as Cupressus nootkatensis. Plantdrew (talk) 21:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, C. nootkatensis now looks a lot cleaner. I did think that this was a case where WP:BOLDness would have been a bad idea.


 * Do the DAB page Callitropsis and the genus page Xanthocyparis need some consequential cleanup? I'll cheerfully try to identify obscure taxonomers, but synonyms are above my pay grade. Narky Blert (talk) 00:15, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd say that you'd need an additional paragraph at Xanthocyparis covering the transfer back to Cupressus (citing The Gymnosperm Database, or other literature), and that Xanthocyparis vietnamensis should be moved to Cupressus vietnamensis. I don't see any pressing need to change Callitropsis, but you could add "now considered a synonym of Cupressus". There might be other opinions? Lavateraguy (talk) 13:16, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Help with speciesbox error
Help, I don't know how to fix this speciesbox error in Naravelia zeylanica newly created stub. AshLin (talk) 11:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't see the error. You may have to be more specific. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:25, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It was a red linked Taxonomy template error. User:Shyamal fixed the Wikidata/ taxonomy template. Thanks to all who helped out and responded to my help message. :) 12:33, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It's not clear to me what is the accepted name of the species. If you follow the links in the taxonbar in the article, the usually up-to-date GBIF and POWO say it's Clematis zeylanica. The source in the article is very old now. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the correction. Per this reference on Clematis, this species is no longer included within that genus. AshLin (talk) 13:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * yes, that's what GRIN says, but other equally reliable sources disagree. A 2011 molecular phylogenetic study at says "Previously recognized genera including Archiclematis and Naravelia are nested within Clematis, supporting the merging of these genera within Clematis." So I think that the article should be at Clematis zeylanica. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:46, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Your DOI isn't working for some reason. (I was wanting to look to see if chopping off bits of Clematis was a reasonable alternative to sinking these genera.) Google finds the article here, but paywalled. A bit more searching finds a 2006 paper with Archaeoclematis and Narvelia deeply nested in Clematis, but with less resolution than I'd like. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The doi not working is annoying because I've checked again that it's the one given by the publisher. It does seem, though, that there's no real justification for having split Clematis. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I had a look at the resource and seems that the morphologically defined split of Naravelia is not valid as per the molecular phyllogenetics. So what happens next? AshLin (talk) 02:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, with two recent publications supporting putting Naravelia back into Clematis, and bearing in mind that molecules today trump morphology, I think the article should be moved to "Clematis zeylanica". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:47, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, will do that. In the meantime, I have a query. Before starting a new species stub, which database should I check to confirm its correct scientific name, to avoid this kind of situation? AshLin (talk) 07:37, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There's not really "a" database. WCSP, POWO and GBIF are usually up-to-date for the taxa they cover, at least in my experience. The Plant List is getting old now and is not going to be updated, I understand. GRIN Taxonomy is usually reliable for native North American plants, although you need to check the date on which the entry was updated. Tropicos is good for nomenclature issues, but doesn't focus on "accepting" names, so its accepted names are not always the latest or best supported (again in my experience). For Australian plants, APC is regularly updated. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:36, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks. That will surely guide me as I go forth. AshLin (talk) 11:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * In some ways the best source would be a recent monograph, thesis or phylogenetic study, but primary sources are deprecated at Wikipedia.
 * Morphology and molecules should correlate reasonably well most of the time (molecules only trump morphology because they have more characters - if you had a study that looked at the 5.8s RNA and 100 morphological characters morphology would trump molecules). There are a few situations that can cause problems. Firstly if groups of species differ by a prominent morphological character we can't tell from that alone whether one group is nested in another or if they are sister groups - looking at outgroups lets you use character polarity to eliminate (most of the time) one of the two alternatives with one nested in the other. Historically botanists tended to treat them as sister groups and separate genera, so since we've started looking at molecules there's been a stream of discovering genera nested in other genera. If you apply the principle of monophyly, there are two alternatives - sink the nested genus or split the enclosing genus. The former is simpler, but can result in unwieldy genera, and species in taxonomic limbo without a validly published name in a recognised genus - until Rhodognaphlon was resurrected recently that was the case for some Rhodognaphalon species. The latter has the problem that you have to analyse the whole of all relevant genera before you can decide how to split them, so we've got genera like Hibiscus, Senecio and Centaurea in taxonomic limbo. Secondly reversals can make a nested clade look as if they lie outside the enclosing clade if that is the only distinguishing character considered - this is what seems to have happened with Naravelia. (Parsimony is a rule of thumb - actual evolutionary history only approaches parsimony.) Thirdly adaptive radiations can result in nested taxa (e.g. the silversword alliance) which are more morphologically disparate than the parent taxon (tarweeds) resulting in long branch artefacts in morphological data. Long branch artefacts also appear in morphological data - the mtDNA evolutionary rate has gone into overdrive in a clade of Plantago (reduced DNA error correction = increased mutation rate), and parasitic plants show accelerated rates of molecular evolution as well (reduced selection). And for a final complication horizontal gene transfer (particularly a problem with parasitic plants) and introgression from hybridisation can also cause complications.
 * All this means is that it take a degree of work to resolve the issues, and the people who run the databases don't have the manpower. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm wasn't saying that molecules should trump morphology, merely noting that in practice current classifications prioritize molecular evidence over morphological evidence, as is easy to demonstrate. Do you have an example of a morphological phylogenetic study being used to overturn a molecule-based classification? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There are quite a few "total evidence" papers which use a combination of morphological and molecular evidence. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:54, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I understand that Wikespecies ran into problems, but perhaps crowd sourcing a database would be feasible. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:41, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Apparently some species lack published combinations in Clematis. Naravelia pilulifera is one. Plantdrew (talk) 17:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Another issue is that I moved the article and have now cleaned up Clematis subg. Naravelia based on the statement that added to the article, namely "studies have found that it better treated as a subgenus within the genus Clematis". Sinfully (or so I would have told my students) I didn't check the source, but now that I have, it doesn't say this. So maybe the article just needs to be redirected to Clematis and the taxonomic issues explained there. Views? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have now given it something better than my earlier cursory glance and yes, Naravelia should be out (unless its clade within Clematis is given a rank as suggested here) Shyamal (talk) 18:04, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've only skimmed that (2017) paper, but that looks like a final nail in the coffin of the genus Naravelia. Getting an agreed reclassification of Clematis into infrageneric taxa looks likely to take some time. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:52, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The implication of the two papers is that Naravelia should be sunk in Clematis, regardless whether they explicitly stated this. But it's so deeply nested in Clematis that subgenus doesn't seem an appropriate rank. Is there any justification in the papers or elsewhere for a subgenus Naravelia? Has the combination even be validly published? I don't object to keeping articles on sunken genera (e.g. Xanthocyparis, Lavatera), but the only halfway pressing reason for keeping Naravelia is the existence of species without combinations in Clematis (but this, and historical assignment to Naravelia, Archiclematis (misspelt above) and Clematiopsis could be includes in a List of Clematis species. On first examination moving it back to Naravelia (and making it a redirect) seems the appropriate action. (Crossed with Shyamal.) Lavateraguy (talk) 19:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It's difficult to know quite what to do. The 2017 article says "monophyly of Naravelia is strongly supported. According to previous morphological classification, we suggested that Archiclematis and Naravelia should be conservatively retained as sections in Clematis". I think they mean "suggest" not "suggested" (the English in the paper is sometimes not quite right). They also have the label "sect. Naravelia" on the cladogram in Fig. 3, but they don't separately and formally propose the name. I'm inclined to think that this is enough for us to have an article at "Clematis sect. Naravelia", with the current status explained. Views again? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If Clematis sect. Naravelia hasn't been validly published, to add an article with that title would be to commit WP:OR and/or WP:SYN. If there is no WP:RS for Naravelia as a validly published recognised section then the alternatives I see are to keep Naravelia as an article for a former genus, or to redirect it to Clematis. (Or redirect it to a section in the Clematis article discussing synonyms, taxonomy, or something on those lines.) Lavateraguy (talk) 12:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 * yes, you're clearly right and my suggestion was wrong. Redirect to the section you've created in Clematis. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:38, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Should you be arranging for the subgenus article to be deleted? (Is there as WP:RS for Naravelia as a subgenus?) Lavateraguy (talk) 09:14, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No need to delete, I just redirected it to Clematis. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:44, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

420 Collaboration
The 420 Collaboration to create and improve cannabis-related content runs through the month of April. WikiProject members are invited to participate. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 01:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Hardiness zone
Many plant articles mention that they are "hardy to" or "hardy in" some numbered zone or range of zones, without any additional context or link to explain what that means. I've fixed several of these by linking to Hardiness zone (I assume that's the best target), but there are probably hundreds of articles that require such clarification, so I'm asking for interested parties to please take over this task. - 72.182.55.186 (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Would there be a use for a bot in this case, if only to find candidate articles (articles tagged as WP:PLANTS, not linking to hardiness zone, but containing any of assorted variations on hardy)? Lavateraguy (talk) 20:39, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Salvia divinorum
Salvia divinorum, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AIRcorn</b> (talk) 02:58, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Viviparity
There is a suggestion on its talk page that the Viviparity article should be split in two, so as to separate the different ways in which the term is used in botany and in zoology. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:31, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Ending the system of portals
Hello, there's a proposal to delete all Wikipedia portals. Please see the discussion here. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:59, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

better categorization
Hi. I am finalizing the file management for the Wiki Science Competition 2017 and there is a bulk of images from Iran that require some help. I am reconstructing some sets of images and there are a lot of high-definition images of succulent plants, see here and here. Since some of these images are not bad, maybe you can take a look and improve the categorization. i hope there is something valuable there (not an expert). thanks.--Alexmar983 (talk) 22:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Help with Manjekia
Greetings, I've just started an article on a new genus of palm native to New Guinea: Manjekia.

Could someone help with adding a taxbox and the like? Ryoung 122 18:02, 25 April 2018 (UTC)


 * , taxobox added. Keep in mind that we don't have separate articles for a monotypic genus and its only species (see WP:MONOTYPICFLORA). The species should be discussed in the article at the genus title. Plantdrew (talk) 18:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I'll keep in mind that monotypic genera are generally merged with the monotypic species. Of course, one issue here is that the species was originally considered to be a member of adonidia. I'll be honest, it didn't look like an adonidia and that further analysis proved it wasn't the same genus was no surprise. We could also add article pictures...for example: https://www.google.com/search?q=manjekia+maturbongsii&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy09nVl9baAhWRzlMKHSiSBdcQ_AUIDSgE&biw=1600&bih=758#imgrc=kgGRfFFCpw30MM: Ryoung 122 19:44, 25 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I've fixed the monotypic issue: Manjekia now covers the genus and the sole species and Manjekia maturbongsii is a redirect.
 * There's more information that can be used to expand the article at the POWO entry.
 * we can only add images to the article if they are have the right copyright status as per commons:Commons:Licensing. If you alter your search to look for images with the right license, as here, there are none. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Sorry to hear that there are no free photos. Part of this has to do with the relative rarity (this palm was found only in 2012 and on the isolated island of Biak only). Since then some specimens have been transferred to places such as Kew Gardens but those photos are copyrighted. Ryoung 122 02:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Help identifying this cactus
Can anyone help me identify, or point me in the right direction of where I could find the appropriate help to identify This cactus found in ? Thank you, Sixflashphoto (talk) 02:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There are approaching 2000 species of cacti, so unless you're an expert the way to go is to narrow the possibilities down by distribution. I don't know whether this checklist is complete, but based on it I'd suggest Echinocereus engelmannii. (My first thought was Echinocactus polycephalus, but the Jepson Flora says that this has yellow flowers.) Lavateraguy (talk) 09:32, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Or you could use the USDA plants database search - select family Cactaceae and county Nevada:Clark. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Exacum affine/socotranum
When in the list "List of Critically Endangered Plants," clicking the link for species Exacum socotranum redirects to the page Exacum affine which is indicated on its page as Least Concern. There are multiple places where this error could be made. This means most likely one of these things happened: the link redirects to the wrong page, the plant's page is incorrect about it being a Least Concern species, or the species does not belong on the list in the first place. This is not my area of expertise remotely so I'll just notify this WikiProject and let you decide what to do. Conrad Thompson (talk) 00:56, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a taxonomic dispute. TPL considers Exacum socotranum as synonym of Exacum affine. POWO doesn't. The likely source for reduction of Exacum socotranum is Thulin (2001) (paywalled). Lavateraguy (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I seem to recall that could access the Nordic Journal of Botany. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I can access it. Thulin writes: "My conclusion is that the recognition  of E. socotranum now is untenable." Anybody want a copy sent to them? Plantdrew (talk) 15:25, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we can defer to your evaluation of Thulin's paper. The question we have to answer is how we handle discrepancies between the IUCN's list of taxa and other opinions. (The IUCN would be a reliable source for conservation status, but not one for taxonomic judgements.) Some sort of general note at List of critically endangered plants (and any similar lists)? A statement at Exacum affine that if Exacum socotranum is recognised as distinct it is critically endangered? Both? Neither? Something else? Lavateraguy (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * My inclination is to do both. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Checking the history the redirect replaced a polbot-generated stub. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not my field, but I agree with Peter Coxhead, I'd do both. Petter Bøckman (talk) 11:48, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject Plants botanist articles
I note that Category:WikiProject Plants botanist articles, populated by adding  to WikiProject Plants, doesn't appear on the template itself nor seem to be connected to any work group or task force. Compare to WikiProject Physics' Biographies task force, WikiProject Mathematics' Mathematicians (now inactive), and WikiProject Palaeontology's Paleontologist task force, all of which feature a bold (or at least visible) indication on their respective project templates. Are botanist articles quality and importance tracked separately from plant taxa articles? If not, should they be? Should I be adding the botanist field to WikiProject Plants or is it ultimately a waste of time? (Talk:G. Ledyard Stebbins currently lacks it!) I know WP:Plants is pretty well structured and organized, and just wanted clarity. If it's useful, perhaps we should improve the organization, have a devoted subpage, and perhaps interface/integrate more strongly with the Science and academia biography work group. --Animalparty! (talk) 00:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * botanist is mentioned in the WikiProject Plants banner documention, but the botanist category could be made more visible. I do make a habit of using the botanist parameter if I'm adding a plants banner to an article about a botanist. I'm not sure what the history is behind the parameter, but I do appreciate is providing some tracking for the what's probably the second or third largest group of WP Plants articles (articles on taxa are most numerous, articles on cultivars likely second, botanists likely third). Plantdrew (talk) 00:50, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Adoxaceae vs. Viburnaceae
The proposal to conserve Viburnaceae against Adoxaceae was approved by the Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants (NCVP) in 2013, but this was rejected by APG IV in the hope that it would not be endorsed. [See below for correction.] I note that APweb is somewhat ambivalent, e.g. the index for families prefers Viburnaceae, but the Dipsacales page uses Adoxaceae. I haven't (yet) discovered whether the NCVP's decision has been endorsed. Can anyone shed any light on this? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems it should be Viburnaceae; download the PDF linked here. Generally you can find the lastest information on the status of conservation proposals here. It's a little odd that the PDF article I linked is cited, but it's conclusions aren't stated. Plantdrew (talk) 00:27, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks. So it seems that the article Adoxaceae and those on the family's genera and species need to be updated. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:26, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Apparently so. I'm a little troubled that some places (e.g. IPNI, Tropicos, Smithsonian) haven't been updated to reflect this after more than year. I can check next week with a colleague who is on the nomenclatural committee for the low down. Plantdrew (talk) 22:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That would be good. There seems some resistance to the decision. What I wrote above isn't correct, I now see: rather the proposal to conserve Adoxaceae against Viburnaceae was rejected, so when Viburnum is placed in Adoxaceae, the name of the family becomes Viburnaceae. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:57, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Merging a page into Water Hyacinths
Water hyacinth in Lake Victoria is a stub page with decent info, but in my opinion, along with another unidentified user, it should just be merged into Water Hyacinth and possibly Lake Victoria. I don't consider myself experienced enough to make this decision without a good deal of consensus, and I'm not sure how to do it myself anyway. If anyone would like to do this and wants help, I'm available. EDIT: I also noticed a similar problem with White Eggplant and Solanum ovigerum. Same kind of issue. Prometheus720 (talk) 04:04, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Renaming Jabily (common name) to Operculicarya decaryi (binomial)
I'm not really sure how to do this. I'm a fairly new editor. Someone has set O. decaryi as a redirect to Jabily, which is...mind-boggling. It's the exact opposite of the policy. Anyway, I'm not sure how to do the move but it needs to be done. Prometheus720 (talk) 05:01, 10 May 2018 (UTC)


 * IIRC "move over redirect" requires administrative rights; IIRC there are project participants with such, so hopefully someone will come along and do it. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Fixed now (it only requires file mover rights). Peter coxhead (talk) 13:05, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Red links
Yesterday's Royal Wedding in the UK is an unlikely source of some botanical red links: Wedding dress of Meghan Markle should anyone feel inclined to populate them. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:59, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * There would be fewer red links if the scientific names were correct; I've fixed a few of them so far. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:09, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sada shapla is a Bengali name, not a botanical name. The national flower of Bangladesh is Nymphaea nouchali, but that's the blue lotus. Shapla redirects to there, and Google translates sada shapla as white shapla, so I'm guessing that the white variant was used. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

"Lilac" ident
Can anyone identify what is? The file description states it's "lilac foliage" and it had been in the gallery on the Syringa vulgaris page, but I removed it from there. There's also. Both files are in the Commons category "Syringa vulgaris in the United States", but the leaf edges (and colour, if I remember rightly) are wrong. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 03:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In the first one the margins are pretty consistent, but I still suspect that this is insect damage - if you look carefully you can see a few more or less entire leaves. (Perhaps lilac root weevil.) The foliage is opposite, which fits lilac, and the venation isn't obviously wrong either. Admittedly I expect yellow, not red, autumn foliage. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:34, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I wondered about insect damage, but my experience in the UK is that nothing damages Syringa vulgaris like that. The root weevil info you link to is new to me - perhaps only something prevalent in North America? But there is also the leaf colour - I also expect yellow (going on memory, which might be wrong). Perhaps I should contact the file uploader. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 12:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The root weevil is new to me as well - I did a search on lilac leaves to remind myself of the venation, and an image from that page appeared near the top of the results. Syringa pubescens 'Miss Kim' seems to turn red-purple in autumn. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:46, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:51, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Feral domesticated plants
We don't have an article at Feral plant, which seems like a major gap. We don't even have Ferality, and Feral redirects to Feral animal. I guess I can redirect Ferality there too. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

PS: Missing Wild plant as well, though we have Wild animal. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Since Feral animal in fact already included plants, I've had it renamed to Feral, and redirects point there. Both Wild animal and Wild plant now point to Wildlife. Feel free to adjust or add new articles as you see fit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Prunus serrula synonyms
I've just created an article on the paperbark cherry, aka the Tibetan cherry, Prunus serrula. Please take a look at it and correct as you see fit. Anyway, some sources say that Prunus tibetica is a synonym, but I wonder if that is a mix-up with Prunus thibetica, a synonym of Prunus salicina. Should a redirect be created? Abductive (reasoning) 04:04, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The epithet tibetica originated as Prunus puddum var. tibetica Batalin, and has been treated as a variety of Prunus cerasioides, Prunus serrula and Cerasus serrula. (TPL has moved the cherries to Cerasus, so it didn't show up when I looked up Prunus.) The subspecies epithet dates from 1895, so as a species epithet would be preempted by thibetica from 1886, and could not be validly published. I can't find any evidence that it was ever published, so perhaps Prunus tibetica is a horticultural name. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, the Royal Horticultural Society mentions it as a synonym. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:38, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Image gallery at Hibiscus
There is a discussion regarding image galleries at Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents that may be of interest to people here. Declangi (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The article could do with some work to clarify the difference between the species of the genus and cultivars largely derived from Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. There's some logic in having a gallery showing distinct colours and shapes of the flowers of cultivars at Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, although it's too large. There's no point in duplicating this at the genus article. (It's a classic example of confusion between the genus and the English name for a plant.) Peter coxhead (talk) 05:44, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Nekemias
I don't have admin privileges but the Ampelopsis arborea page needs to be moved to Nekemias arborea. An article on the genus Nekemias would also be helpful. The name has been accepted by the USDA (https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=NEAR5) and by Flora of North America (http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=250101318) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.111.254.17 (talk) 14:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation (Musa basjoo)
I have read some of the talk comments, and understand the pitfalls of trying to give a "correct" pronunciation of any scientific name, but I am looking at the article on the Japanese banana, which appears to have been given the name Musa basjoo by Siebold. This was long before anything called "Hepburn romanisation", so it was obviously intended as a Latin representation of the Japanese name of the plant, which is 芭蕉 (Hepburn: bashō). But do botanists understand this, or do people pronounce it as "bas-dew" (excuse non-IPA)? Do reference lists include hints on pronunciation or etymological origin? I guess that for many readers the connection to the Japanese name would not be obvious. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:25, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * My view is that you can by all means explain, with one or more sources of course, the pronunciation of the Japanese original. But there's no reason why anyone now has to pronounce basjoo in any particular way once it has been Latinized. As we've discussed before, scientific names of organisms are pronounced in various ways: as per the language of the speaker, the traditional pronunciation of Latin in the country of the speaker, or the hypothesized way that it would have been pronounced in classical Latin. There's an argument that since the ICNafp at Art. 60.5 treats i and j as interchangeable in appropriate contexts, whatever pronunciation is adopted ought to be the same as if it were spelt basioo. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:59, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

"basjoo" is NOT a Latinized name. It is a vernacular name directly adopted as an epithet without latinization (as vernacular names often are). In both botanical and gardening circles, I have generally heard it pronounced exactly as it looks, "bas joo". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.111.254.17 (talk) 14:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Please Help me find a botanical term and an existing page
There is a terminology for when due to secondary growth a tree engulfs surrounding foreign objects. But I forgot the term and can't recall it back. There was an Wikipedia page about the term; which contained an image of a tree engulfing a barbed wire fence; upto best of my recall. (The image was from side view, and not from oblique view). Today I searched a lot of page; also used various ways of Google search with keywords and pictures; but could not find the page. Please help me to find the term and the page. I have also searched Glossary of botanical terms and Glossary of plant morphology thoroughly but that did not help (maybe the term is there or may not). I found a related page on Inosculation but it is not the page. I also have carefully read the Secondary growth page but could not find that term or any hyperlink to that page.

There might be such a page, if not deleted; (and the page contained quite a lot of text, unlikely to be deleted); please help me to find the Wikipedia page.

Thanks in advance.

RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 18:49, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Inosculation is the right word; the process is sometimes called natural grafting, which might be what you were thinking of. Perhaps the image you saw has been deleted. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:40, 20 June 2018 (UTC)


 * You can see also article Überwallung at de.wikipedia, and Commons category:Ingrown things in trees for more images. --Thiotrix (talk) 21:21, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank for the help. The German version exactly matches the phenomenon and it links with the English page Inosculation. Maybe this is the correct page and maybe because the image is deleted that is why it is not appearing on page history/ permalink versions. Thanks a lot.

RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 04:51, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Task Force, WikiProject, or None?
Hello, WP:PLANTS. I am an editor who works almost exclusively, and rather exhaustively, in the genus Hypericum and its related topics and media here and over at the Commons. I have been chipping away at integrating the huge amount of information on this very interesting genus into the encyclopedia, but I have been slowly running out of steam. I have been working on the List of Hypericum species for somewhere around 2 years now at a slow pace, which has really taken my attention away from species articles and other topics within the genus. The point I'm trying to make is that I would like to start some sort of collaboration to maybe find a handful of editors who might also be interested in the topic and want to help out. I was recently inspired by the masterpiece that is WP:BANKSIA to create a WikiProject for the family that Hypericum is in-Hypericaceae- but after reading through WP:PROJGUIDE it sounded like the project might be more suited to be a Task Force within WP:PLANTS. I didn't see any protocol for Task Forces on this project page, so I wanted to come here to ask some of you who may know a little bit more if I should work to create a WikiProject, a Task Force, or if it isn't worth the hassle and I should keep working solo.

Thank you for you time and happy editing, Fritzmann2002 21:39, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

range map fix
Hi. I notice that File:Corybas distribution map.png is incomplete, missing the occurrence of taxa in Southwest Australia (there is a proposed split to a new genus for these orchids, but it's not accepted afaik). I removed it at Corybas for now, but thought a fix is better than removing its use elswhere.

The creator seems inactive, so is there someone else who can modify this image? cygnis insignis 07:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Is there a source that shows its distribution in Southwest Australia? If so, I can fix it. Plants of the World Online has a map here, but it always shades the whole of the WGSRPD areas in which a plant occurs. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Here's a map from FloraBase https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/21264 --Melburnian (talk) 10:50, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I've updated File:Corybas distribution map.png within the limits of its resolution. (I had some trouble getting the new version to show – often a problem with Commons – you may need to purge your cache.) So if you're happy, add it back to the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks Peter--Melburnian (talk) 07:05, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Cheers to you both for quickly providing a solution. I'll add it back. cygnis insignis 07:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Missing genus
Gallesia (Spreng.), under the Phytolaccaceae, and specific species like Gallesia integrifolia (vern.: ajo-ajo, pau-d'alho), Gallesia gorazema, Gallesia ovata, and Gallesia scorododendrum, are redlinks. Googling them shows they're common tropical garden plants. I don't know if they have some other name; if so, these should redirect to our articles on them. There are articles on Gallesia or G. integrifolia on at least five other Wikipedias, e.g. Gallesia integrifolia, Gallesia, Gallesia, Pau-d'alho, Gallesia, Gallesia integrifolia, Gallesia integrifolia, etc. A couple of sources, including ITIS, but it might be old and I don't want to create a duplicate article if this has been reclassified.

Dunno if missing genera are common and whether the project wants notes like this (the animals one does). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:56, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It's listed under Petiveriaceae, where 6 of 9 genera are red links. At first sight it's monotypic, and the other names should redirect to Gallesia integrifolia. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:42, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * OTOH, there's not pressing need for the redirects, as a monotypic species it should redirect to the putative genus article. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:47, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Aira praecox
Does anyone else think that the taxobox image is Anthoxanthum odoratum? Lavateraguy (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it is Anthoxanthum, not Aira praecox. Plant surfer  22:45, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Agree that it's Anthoxanthum; certainly not Aira praecox. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:35, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Parrotia
Can people take a look at the Parrotia article? Some IP added a second species to this allegedly monotypic taxon. Their addition looks like a copy-paste, but I can't find clear evidence that is was plagiarized. If there is a second species, should Parrotia be moved to Parrotia persica and a new Parrotia genus article be created? Is Parrotia subaequalis a real species? Abductive (reasoning) 05:08, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks like the specie may be part of Parrotia if the synonomy of Shaniodendron is followed, though there are few results for "Shaniodendron subaequale Parrotia" in google scholar.-- Kev min  § 05:49, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

New articles

 * Greetings, I created two new articles and included this project because of listing on other like articles. If there are some that wish to take a look and possibly make improvements, including the project ratings I would appreciate it.


 * Verdale-de-l'Hérault (olive),
 * Ascolano (olive).
 * It would not take much to get to "Start-class". Thanks, Otr500 (talk) 11:26, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * A minor problem - Ascolano redirects to list of olive cultivars. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:02, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Updating Template:PLANTS to use wikidata
There is a proposal to update Template:PLANTS to use wikidata. See Template talk:PLANTS for details and to comment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes
There is an RfC regarding recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. Inviting anybody who watches this page to contribute their thoughts to that thread.

WikiProject Plants is currently using automatic taxoboxes in 44.6% of project tagged articles that have any form of taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 01:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Special:Diff/850849046
Is this correct? <u style="text-decoration:none;font:1.1em/1em Arial Black;letter-spacing:-0.09em"><u style="color:#7f2ed1">The editor <u style="color:#bfa6d8"> whose username is <u style="color:#7f2ed1">Z0 10:32, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like it is. I might have put a citation needed against the claim that the Ryston tree succumbed to Dutch Elm disease instead of deleting it, but he's correct that it lacks a citation. (So is the claim that two specimens survive in Eastern Europe, which he left in.) Lavateraguy (talk) 22:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)