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I now have a TUSC account!

Hi Peter coxhead. There is a plant article naming convention request at the Help Desk. I saw your name listed at Naming_conventions_(flora) contributions and am hoping you would post your thoughts at How long does speedy deletion usually take?.[1] I asked Pmanderson on the Pmanderson talk page, but not sure if she/he will see the request. Thanks. --

Hey thank you for editing . My friend

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of Salticidae species (2nd nomination). Thanks!

Hello, Peter coxhead. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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I'm new to all this but eager to make positive contributions. I just want to thank you for all the work you do here. You've removed several of my photos recently but I see that your reasoning is sound. Soryy to make more work for you. I'll try to be more pertinent and concise in the future. Thanks!

The article on Phintella parva is currently illustrated with a different species in the genus, which it would be great to replace with one of the species itself. There seems to be an image available in Openverse, from iNaturalist, here:[[2]] but when I have not been successful when I tried to upload it to Wikimedia. Are you able to help please? I have also nominated the article as a Good Article if you would be interested in taking a look. simongraham (talk) 15:23, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Simongraham: unfortunately the image is marked "CC BY-NC 4.0", i.e. not for commercial use. Commons doesn't allow this. See Commons:Licensing#Forbidden licenses. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:28, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense, and probably one of the reasons for the lack of species images. Thank you. simongraham (talk) 18:05, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Virusbox/parameter chk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 11:31, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A heads up on Noccaea montana as I expect you will come across it soon. That article was started at the title Alpine Pennycress, and was originally about a North American plant and gave it the scientific name Thlaspi montanum. A couple of weeks after it was created, the scientific name given was changed to Thlaspi caerulescens (also known as "alpine pennycress"), and over the years additional content was added that was relevant to that species. So Wikipedia was getting mixed up by a common name applied to different species.

I created the article at the ''Noccaea montana title in 2015 with content for North America (that was mostly present in the original version of Alpine Pennycress) that I split from Noccaea caerulescens. POWO treats N. montana as a solely European species, but there is a long history of North America botanists treating it as being present in North America. Recent North American publications treat the species there as N. fendleri, but there is some ongoing confusion (iNaturalist has recent observations of "N. montana" in the Rocky Mountains). I was trying to sort out the Wikipedia mix-up by common name in 2015, but didn't realize at the time that there was a taxonomic mix-up as well.

I'll try to get around to creating an article for N. fendleri. The N. montana article needs to be overhauled, and the incoming links there all have a North American context. Plantdrew (talk) 20:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Plantdrew: thanks for the note; I'll steer clear of this article.

There are, right now, 40 articles with manual taxoboxes left in those I've been looking at (not Citrus, Poaceae, Fabaceae, Asteraceae or Marchantiophyta). They get more problematic and harder to sort out as the easier ones get fixed. There's probably a hard core of about 30 in this group that may be best left alone. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked MtBotany to create an article for N. fendleri. I've looked at the search on your user page. Are you counting fossils in the hard core of 30? I've not been sure what to do with those. Should they have incertae sedis when relevant? Most of the (animal) fossils with automatic taxoboxes don't specify incertae sedis, but just have a parent at whatever rank/clade is known. And fossils often aren't linked from any higher taxon. I'm fine with leaving fossils with manual taxoboxes, but they are now the second-largest group of plants with manual taxoboxes (after Asteraceae). Plantdrew (talk) 16:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Plantdrew: I haven't really looked at the fossils yet. I agree that it's not necessary to include incertae sedis for missing principal ranks. I do have a couple of paleobotany books, so I did intend to get round to looking at them.

The problem cases for me are those like Grewia milleri. Although in the IUCN Red List as a Socotra endemic, it's not in PoWO and is "unplaced" in WFO and doesn't show up at all in Google Scholar. I've learnt to be cautious about Red List names; the lists regularly seem to use names not found in other sources (prepared by local botanists?). Peter coxhead (talk) 17:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have Fabaceae just about done. 4 manual taxoboxes left (2 synonyms per POWO, 2 unplaced). I had to lower my standards, and give up on checking whether the tribe articles are up-to-date in terms of included genera, or whether existing taxonomy templates had parents consistent with what's stated in the tribe articles (~60 genus templates have Fabaceae as the parent). I did check tribal placement against GRIN/NCBI for tribal placement and added a reference for new taxonomy templates I created.

I figured since there were already a bunch of taxonomy templates in place that weren't up to my higher standards it was worth just doing the rest of them now, and potentially coming back later to double check areas where my standards weren't met. Plantdrew (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Plantdrew: well, I don't check for parents or taxonomic sources as carefully as I once did – it really eats up time.

I've a list of those that fit my current search criteria at User:Peter_coxhead/Problem plant species articles#Some articles with manual taxoboxes. Cases I'm often not sure what to do about are those like Pyrenaria buisanensis, which PoWO regards as a synonym of Pyrenaria microcarpa var. ovalifolia. I don't like creating articles for botanical varieties so I'm reluctant to just move it. There's an article at Pyrenaria microcarpa, so relevant content of Pyrenaria buisanensis could be moved there, I guess. What do you think about such cases?

If you have time, please have a look at Oreocarya suffruticosa. The tangle of pro parte synonyms makes the relationship between species names very confused/confusing and hence I found it difficult to write up accurately. For example, what taxon does the English name "James' cryptantha" refer to, given that PoWO has Cryptantha jamesii as a synonym of Oreocarya suffruticosa var. suffruticosa, while the varieties of C. jamesii are split among the other four varieties of Oreocarya suffruticosa? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:37, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like articles for botanical varieties much either. But I don't think there is any relevant content from Pyrenaria buisanensis that should go in Pyrenaria microcarpa. The buisanensis species concept is a narrow endemic from Taiwan, and treating it in the article for P. microcarpa seems excessive for that article.

However, this is a pretty unusual case. I expected it to be a Polbot creation, but apparently it was first formally assessed for IUCN in 2017 (a decade after Polbot, and also a decade after the Flora of China treatment that is apparently the basis for POWO's synonymy). Catalogue of Life in Taiwan accepts it.

The IUCN treatment says the range (of buisanensis) is southern Taiwan (as does the paper describing P. buisanensis). Flora of China and POWO say the range (of microcarpa var. ovalifolia) includes northern Taiwan (but not southern). iNaturalist swapped buisanensis for ''microcarpa var. ovalifolia in 2020. I'm not sure how exactly taxon swap work on iNaturalist, but it looks like the Critically Endangered assessment got carried over in doing the swap (which of course is something you've dealt with in mentioning status of purported narrow endemics that are synonymized). Almost all of the observations post swap are in southern Taiwan (there were a few shown on the page for the swap itself in northern Taiwan that now don't show up on the map for microcarpa var. ovalifolia). Many of the iNat observations involve multiple photos (up to 20), which suggests to me that the observers were excited to see something special (i.e., a rare endemic).

I am skeptical that Sasaki's Camellia buisanensis (with no extant type) can be confidently said to be the same species as the plant described in 2004 as Pyrenaria buisanensis (maybe the authors should have treated it as an entirely new species with a new epithet). I am also skeptical that the time between the 2004 publication and the 2007 publication date of the Flora of China treatment was sufficient for the FoC authors to have considered whether Pyrenaria buisanensis deserved recognition as a species (versus just going with previous opinions about the possible synonymy of Camellia buisanensis, and assuming Pyrenaria buisanensis should be treated the same). Given the mistake about the range (north vs. south Taiwan) in FoC and POWO I don't think the FoC authors carefully considered the 2004 paper. I do think the 2004 authors made a mistake in not naming it as an entirely new species, which led to FoC authors to dismiss it.

In short, I think the best solution is probably to retain the article for Pyrenaria buisanensis and add a note to Pyrenaria that it is sometimes considered to be an additional species. Plantdrew (talk) 21:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I created the redirect for "James' cryptantha". I suppose I could request deletion as the creator. Broadly I guess it is a name that refers to what is now Oreocarya suffruticosa. But I certainly don't like having vernacular names made up scientists based on translating the specific epithet that end up redirecting to a different epithet after synonymization. "Real" common names survive taxonomic reassignments; golden pothos, poinsettia. Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Peter. Exomala was a subgenus of Anomala raised to genus rank in 1991, and sunk back into Anomala in 2003. This "class assignment" editor appears to have no comprehension as to how taxonomy works, or how to properly source things. It also does not appear that they read their User Talk page. This group of editors for this particular class at Washington University (and a similar class at Georgia Southern) have done a considerable amount of "collateral damage" in the course of their editing, and not a lot of higher-profile editors have noticed what's been happening. The amount of effort by regular editors getting the various affected articles into readable condition has been significant. Much of what's happened is the inclusion of generalized material into articles about single species such as this set of edits, and others are good information, but extremely badly formatted, and full of grammar and spelling errors, in addition often to bordering on plagiarism of sources, like this edit, but I'm waiting until these class assignments are done and then going back to remove the irrelevant material, since many of these students simply revert or re-enter bad content. The Anomala orientalis article is the only one I know of where they have broken the taxonomy, thankfully. Dyanega (talk) 14:34, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dyanega: thanks for the explanation. It does seems sensible to wait, although it offends me to leave articles in a poor state. When Exomala orientalis is moved back, Template:Taxonomy/Exomala can be deleted. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:12, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think Exomala is still considered a valid subgenus of Anomala, though I should probably double-check that to be certain; the 2003 revision stated that it was probably not monophyletic, but that doesn't mean that they considered the name as a synonym of the subgenus Anomala s.s. - in which case, the taxonomy template can be changed to treat Exomala as a subgenus, rather than just deleting it. Dyanega (talk) 20:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Who are we in this context, and where is the topic discussed and the rule agreed? Plantsurfer 23:05, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We=WikiProject Plants. PPG first came up in this thread: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Archive68#Pteridophyte_Phylogeny_Group. That was a month before POWO launched, so "not POWO" wasn't a consideration but "not Christenhusz & Chase" was mentioned. But, as far as I am aware, POWO follows Christenhusz & Chase. Following PPG instead of POWO pre-dates POWO itself. There are some other threads if you search WikiProject Plants talk page archives for PPG (with nobody dissenting from following PPG). Plantdrew (talk) 01:52, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]