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Draft:Nepenthes titiwangsa is in the Articles for Creation queue. Do proposed new species count as notable? Newystats (talk) 06:28, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Newystats:, a species that hasn't been formally named doesn't meet the rationale of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. However, it could be notable (Denisovans haven't been formally named but are certainly notable). Even formally naming a species is still essentially just a proposal; we would like to see secondary sources that show that other experts recognize any proposed, formally named species.

There are article on some other Nepenthes species that haven't been formally named: Nepenthes sp. Anipahan and Nepenthes sp. Misool, and the draft on Nepenthes titiwangsa is much better developed than the existing articles. It seems likely that the user Amin28th who has added most of the text to the draft is Amin-Asyraf Tamizi, who published the paper from which most of the content is derived. That paper was listed as "in press" in earlier versions of the draft (but has now been published), and now there is a second paper listed as "in press" which may end up containing the formal naming. Amin28th has created articles on two other Nepenthes species that had Amin-Asyraf Tamizi as one of the authors in the publications where they were formally named.

I would suggest leaving the page in draft space for now, pending a publication where the species is formally named. Plantdrew (talk) 16:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Newystats (talk) 10:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I have been using Template:TNCStatus created by @Dr vulpes all over as I edit plants. It has some problems, but mostly works really well once I add the status to WikiData. But as I've gone along I have started to wonder if there are objections to using this template. Should I be directly putting in status manually until the template is more developed? I have noticed, occasionally, that the status in Wikipedia will be out of date and WikiData will be more current. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 15:53, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Setting policy for lists of synonyms? for a discussion that impacts on this WikiProject. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello, there is an ongoing Featured Article Candidacy for Hypericum sechmenii at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hypericum sechmenii/archive1. All who wish to give input are invited to leave comments and improve the article. Thank you! Fritzmann (message me) 16:57, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure often you use The Wikipedia Library but you can access loads of full text content through it. I've made a file which you can download and import into the REDIRECTOR add on for Firefox and Chrome and it will redirect you to the full articles e.g. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2010.11.001 to https://www-sciencedirect-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0955395910001581?via%3Dihub. It should work wherever you find the links i.e. from google scholar etc. SmartSE (talk) 11:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello project members! Note that per WP:PIQA, all the class ratings are being harmonised across different WikiProjects so we are looking to remove any non-standard classes like SL-class from your project banner. Would you like to automatically reclassify these as List-class or perhaps Stub-class? Alternatively it could just be removed and then the articles in Category:SL-Class plant articles would inherit the quality rating from other projects (or just become "unassessed" if there were no other projects) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I think that WP:PIQA leads to a bad decision in this case. Why should we not able to assess the quality of a list class article? (So showing that more work is needed.) The SL class should be left left alone. I see no reason for this decision to be imposed on us. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree - if anything we should be standardizing in the opposite direction by making rated lists the norm. I would appreciate some further discussion on this matter. Fritzmann (message me) 12:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

So we have two main options here. The first is to opt-out of PIQA completely. That will leave your project free to continue using whatever classes it wants to use. The process to do this was described in the notification linked above. (Would have been great if people had replied to it!) The disadvantage is that your banner will not inherit the global class from the banner shell and would generally be moving against the direction of travel to other WikiProjects. The other option is to find some other way to track the information you need to run your project. For example, we could fallback to Start-class but have another indicator/category that the article is a list. I agree completely that ratings should apply to lists and we are looking at various proposals to improve the assessment scheme, but things move slowly around here :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I am glad that it is being discussed because when this notice inspired me to look at Category:List-Class_plant_articles I was appalled by the quality of some of the articles. Many of them seem to be 20% done passion projects that have been abandoned for four or five years. I am quite enthusiastic about reasonably finished plant lists (I happen to be working two of them right now) but I think most or all of the "list of plants from <place>" articles should be put back in the draft space because they're so incomplete. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

With the prospect of losing a way to keep track of some dreadfully incomplete lists, I think we should get some of them out of article space while we are still tracking them. My first thought was deletion, but draft space would work too. Plantdrew (talk) 00:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay here is a concrete proposal. SL-class will be classified as List-class but we will tag all the current articles in Category:SL-Class plant articles with |attention=yes, which will populate Category:Plant articles needing attention and can be used for editors to review. Alternatively we can add a new parameter |SL=yes which can give a more descriptive message/category. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Any further thoughts on this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There is wikibooks:Flora of New York on WikiBooks... just a thought, without any proposal. Tosha Langue (talk) 15:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ:, flagging with |attention=yes is a good solution. Plantdrew (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

This is now completed, and you have 122 articles in Category:Plant articles needing attention to look through (if you wish) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi all

I've seen Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article requests and I'm wondering if there any other high priority articles that have been identified by the community as important and missing? Eg endangered plants, edible plants, plants from a specific genus or family etc.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 14:33, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I just did a quick search and found nothing. I suspect such a category or list does not exist because it would be more work to create it than to just fill gaps with a stub. The list of articles by importance and status on the front page lists 12 articles that are top priority articles that are only "start" quality, and none that are "stub". All of them are about general subjects like bud. The "high" importance articles that are "start" status include some species like Areca catechu, Cannabis indica, Capsicum annuum, etc. There are also LOTS of "mid" importance articles about species that are listed as "stubs". That's where you'll really find the gaps.

All the articles that I have added as new articles have be judged to be "low" importance though they are quite prominent locally. Truth is that most individual species are not critical article subjects from a global point of view. Though there are still lots of local endemics that need articles. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 14:58, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article requests is garbage. Being listed there is not an indication that creating an article should be a high priority. User:Pengo/missing plants is the best list of missing plant articles; it's based on how frequently a scientific name was found in a corpus of published works. Synonyms presented there aren't always up to date (the first red link is [[[Dolichos biflorus]] which the list suggests is a synonym of Macrotyloma uniflorum; but POWO has it as a synonym of Macrotyloma biflorum).

Overall, the issue isn't so much that Wikipedia is missing lots of high priority articles (although it is missing many low priority articles) so much as it is that Wikipedia has some very poorly developed articles that should be a high priority. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Popular_pages gets at (some) existing articles that should be a high priority. Take the quality ratings there with a big grain of salt (articles may have been expanded and have a quality rating that is too low, or an article may have a high quality rating and be well developed for aspects of human use, but lacking basic botanical content (strawberry was the second most viewed article last month, is rated B-class, and doesn't have a botanical description of the plant).

Some of the redirects in Category:Plant redirects with possibilities should be at least somewhat high priority. Plantdrew (talk) 18:24, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

A pretty good way to determine high priority species without articles would be to sort by number of observations on iNaturalist. There's an old thread on their forums where that was done previously. There were only 29 species listed, and articles for all of them were created fairly quickly. Another round of that, with several hundred species listed would be a good thing. Plantdrew (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

That is a very clever idea. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 21:36, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Request for Article Improvement : Common symbiosis signaling

Recently I have created an article on common symbiosis signaling pathway. It is just an initial version and needs a lot of improvement.

This article needs following improvements.

• 1. I have added some representational images. Need better quality images.
• 2. Needs to be scrutinized by more knowledgeable people in this specific topic, to check if there are any technical mistakes or wrong informations, and subsequently correcting them.
• 3. Needs to be add some sections in plain language to make the topic more sense to non-technical readers.
• 4. Needs a lot of minor edits regarding spelling, formatting, (italics, capitalization etc.) in context of scientific conventions.
• 5. If you or your institute is a part of research that is connected to Arbuscular mycorrhiza, Myc-factors, Symbiosis genes etc; then please feel free to enrich this article with photo and data files such as confocal fluorescence photomicrographs, calcium wave electrophysiology data, protein models, protein evolution and phylogeny, etc.
• Any other improvements.

Requesting the plant biology, plant physiology and plant molecular biology task forces to look it up. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Yikes! Application of #3 is the most pressing need for this article; I'm a "technical reader" and am having difficulty reading through this detail. Please see WP:TECHNICAL for some suggestions that might help. Esculenta (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Esculenta Thank you RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 16:59, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

What does lus. mean in a scientific name? I came across Crocus heuffelianus lus. concolor and a few others under Crocus heuffelianus and elsewehere. I found the original description from 1862 for Actinostemon concolor lus. microphyllus and that does not explain the rank. Anyone know this abbreviation? -- awkwafaba (📥) 15:38, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

from here: "Isolated individuals with aberrant characteristics not caused by an invading foreign organism, and with limited or no sexual and asexual reproduction, which have been formerly designated as lusus naturae, monstrosities, or teratological taxa; or have been misidentified but named as genera, species, subspecies, varieties or formae, are to be named under the infraspecific rank lusus naturae (lus.).”" Esculenta (talk) 15:45, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That doesn’t sound like a clade, though. Why is it in IPNI as one? awkwafaba (📥) 16:17, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I think i get it now, it’s a non-rank rank to prevent people from repeatedly creating new species. awkwafaba (📥) 16:36, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

It is an old infraspecific rank of what we now call a sport Sport (botany) Weepingraf (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Is a sad stub, unsourced since 2007; can anyone here help out? Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 00:59, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

My project in box is full, but as I said at the talk page, I'm happy to explain how to use Excel to handle getting a subset of plants from the giant whole world dataset available from POWO. It is fairly easy. The hard part is then figuring out how well/much you want to check the data, what other information to add to it, and how you're going to break it up and format it for ease of use.

Alternatively, you could track down sources and turn it into a proper article about the Flora of Peru instead of a list of all the plants. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Looking for a way to improve the article for branch. The article makes it seem that branches are woody by definition. Coming at it from the perspective of nonvascular plants (Talk:Branch#Nonvascular), would it be better to create a different article on non-woody botanical branches vs. tree branches, or to loosen the definition of the page? Mbdfar (talk) 02:12, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mbdfar: The Kew Plant Glossary on p. 21 defines branch as "a lateral division of the growth axis", so in my view this should be what the whole article discusses. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:38, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I have proposed the at Categories for discussion that the Category:Blue flowers be deleted as an example of Wikipedia:Overcategorization due to the subjective nature of the inclusion criteria. If anyone wishes to comment it is open for about another 4 days. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I have started a discussion of what would be best to do about the genus on the Mahonia talk page. Please weigh in with what you know and what you think the best course of action would be. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Trema micrantha#Requested move 1 November 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abductive (reasoning) 04:49, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Quite a lot of species in Allium, e.g. Allium cernuum, Allium acuminatum, Allium schoenoprasum, etc., had their taxo boxes edited by @Dark Jackalope to add subgenus Allium subg. Cepa to the classification. Is there an authority or consensus on A. subg. Cepa that I'm not aware of or should these edits be reverted? I went to Flora of North America and they said in Allium, "Resolution of the problematic subgeneric and sectional relationships among Old and New World species will require much more extensive molecular and phylogenetic analysis of the genus." This indicates to me that it is not a good edit as there is not yet consensus, but my ignorance is vast so I would like to hear from other editors. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 15:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I recently noticed that some fern and tree articles are using a different set of plant geographic categories. Example Category:Ferns of the Americas. Since they are so incomplete I'm fairly sure these are not the preferred geographic categories.

I am less sure about the ones for trees. Category:Trees of North America seems much more complete, if a bit disorganized. When I edit articles about trees should I be using the tree equivalent of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I believe that they are deprecated but nobody wants to go through the hassle of having them deleted. Similarly for Category:Botanical taxa by author, these are useless except for Category:Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus, which is impossibly large for a list. The animal and insect guys maintain their categories better, which makes it difficult for the plant guys to WP:IAR and argue for the elimination of such categories. Abductive (reasoning) 11:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

@Abductive After thinking it over for a while, I think I'm exactly the sort of person who will go through the hassle of getting them deleted or merged as appropriate. I'm going to start with trees and I've started it at Categories for discussion. My current proposal is to merge everything into a new category "Trees of Northern America". 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I just started a new discussion over at Categories for discussion:Ornamental Grass. I think it a pretty clear case over over categorization. Plus, getting pretty close to WP:NOTGUIDE. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello all! I can ID some of these (at least to genus). Should I just add the ID to the image description? Should I add it somewhere else? Should I have it checked first? If so, where and how? How does this usually work? (I'm new to editing the Commons and wary of breaking things somehow, haha.) -- Photosynthetic430 ❧ 18:16, 20 October 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Photosynthetic430 (talk • contribs)

I'm afraid we don't have an ID system as fancy as iNaturalist so unless someone has a better suggestion, I'd say just put your ID in the description. Kingdon (talk) 05:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Could you help to disambiguate links to San Pedro cactus? There are several articles (shown at Disambig fix list for San Pedro cactus) where I am unsure whether this should be any of:

• Trichocereus macrogonus var. pachanoi, synonyms including Trichocereus pachanoi and Echinopsis pachanoi

but also:

• Echinopsis cuzcoensis
• Echinopsis lageniformis
• Trichocereus macrogonus
  • Trichocereus macrogonus var. macrogonus, synonyms including Trichocereus peruvianus and Echinopsis peruvianus

Any help appreciated.— Rod ^talk 15:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I'd like your feedback and verification/refutation of the redirect I just added for Papyrus reed, pointing to Cyperus papyrus. This term is used in various articles, such as at Reed boat and these 17 others, a couple of which pipe the expression to Cyperus papyrus (but most do not). This seems correct, afaict, but I'm not knowledgeable in this area. If this is wrong, or questionable, what would be a better destination? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Seems its a lesser used common name for the Egyptian Papyrus or just simply Papyrus, more used by garden centres than botanical sources, but used by some history museums (see Wellcome Collection, Mcclung Museum). The vernacular name can be any combination of (Egyptian) (papyrus/paper) (reed/sedge). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:59, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The species pages on The Plant List now give a Server error (500), e.g. at Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.. A search for the text "The Plant List" finds 7,613 pages in mainspace and 5,773 pages that also have a speciesbox.

I don't know if this is a temporary issue or part of phasing TPL out completely. TPL has been static for over ten years now and they've added more messages saying it is obsolete and see WFO., so it's not clear if they intend to keep it as an archive resource or not. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:57, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is a temporary hiccup or not, but I've certainly been replacing it in articles I edit with more up to date sources. It is a similar issue to how many articles in Wikipedia get written and then largely left alone for years. I just rewrote Penstemon grandiflorus which had been hanging out as a stub for a decade after a huge amount of copyrighted text had been removed from when it was created. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:09, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a citation template for WFO like {{Cite POWO}}? If not, could there be? —  AjaxSmack  16:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

You can use {{BioRef|WFO}}. It requires the |id=. You can give it a title with |title= or provide other parameters to generate a title (|family=, |genus=, |species= and |authority=, e.g.

• "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
• "Goniolimon Boiss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
• "Goniolimon besserianum (Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
• "Plumbaginaceae Juss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

It also takes all the standard {{cite web}} parameters. Wait a bit and I'll set up {{Cite WFO}}. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:07, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I've set up {{Cite WFO}}, which can be used as follows:

Using |id= and |title=

• Code:{{Cite WFO |title=''Ditrichum'' Hampe |id=4000012284 |access-date=9 April 2020}}
• "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.

Using|id= with |genus= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|genus=Goniolimon |authority=Boiss. |id=4000015998 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Goniolimon Boiss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Using |id= with |genus= , |species= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|genus=Goniolimon |species=besserianum |authority=(Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn. |id=0000706383 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Goniolimon besserianum (Schult. ex Rchb.) Kusn." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Using |id= with |family= and |authority=

• Code:{{Cite WFO|family=Plumbaginaceae |authority=Juss. |id=7000000482 |access-date=25 June 2020 }}
• "Plumbaginaceae Juss." World Flora Online. Retrieved 25 June 2020.

Are there any other citation options required? —  Jts1882 | talk  17:45, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks! —  AjaxSmack  17:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882 I'm not sure if this is needed or not. WFO says they want their cites to look more or less like this:

WFO (2023): Berberis henryi Laferr. Published on the Internet; http://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-0000563260. Accessed on: 12 Dec 2023

Up to this point I've been putting in "WFO" as author last name and the current year as the publishing date. So it would look more or less like

WFO (2023): Berberis henryi Laferr. World Flora Online. Retrieved 12 Dec 2023.

Should we put the date and WFO ahead of the cite or is that unnecessarily both belt and suspenders? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 03:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm never sure how much to prioritise following a suggested citation style from a source versus making the citations follow a consistent Wikipedia style. It seems redundant to have WFO as author and World Flora Online as the website. I can see several options:

1. Leave as is.
2. Change to use WFO as author, in which case the year parameter is also need, although this could be extracted from the access date.
3. Make it optional. If |year= is given add WFO as author.
4. Leave it up to the editor. As the template allows all the CS1/CS2 citation parameters that are no explicitly set, you could also add |author=WFO and |year=2023, e.g.

• {{Cite WFO |author=WFO |year=2023 |title=''Ditrichum'' Hampe |id=4000012284 |access-date=9 April 2020}}
• WFO (2023). "Ditrichum Hampe". World Flora Online. Retrieved 9 April 2020.

Thoughts? —  Jts1882 | talk  10:15, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I also am not sure how much to follow a source's suggested citation style, so I guess we are in the same boat with just the one paddle.

Now that I have sat down and had a think, it seems like perhaps I should have been ignoring WFO's suggested style. It does make it look more formal and impressive, but that's just being used to having citations look that way. Since the cite POWO template does not do it I think what you have works. It could always be changed later. The lovely thing about a template is the uniformity that it can impose and make it all the same everywhere if someone more expert in citation style comes along to say that it should be done the other way. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:39, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I noticed that this species and two others are classified in the genus Turritis by Plants of the World Online(1) and World Flora Online(2). In addition NatureServe now uses this as the correct species name as Turritis glabra. Is there any compelling reason not to move it? The other two species are currently red links so no need to move them. Main discussion should probably go at Talk:Arabis glabra. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:26, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm currently in the middle of fixing some misattributed translations and ran across Pelecyphora robbinsiorum which appears to be referring to the same plant as Escobaria robbinsiorum. (The German wiki which the first article was translated from actually links to the second- but I digress.) Obviously, one of the articles should be redirected to the other and the relevant information merged- but as I'm wholly unfamiliar with the classification of plants, this isn't something I'm comfortable deciding on my own. Figured I might get a response here. Thanks, GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 00:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Pelecyphora robbinsiorum appears to be the current name.Maias (talk) 04:51, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

@GreenLipstickLesbian: unless there are good reasons not too, we usually go with Plants of the World Online. (The de wiki has a history of using a different source for cactus taxonomy.) Peter coxhead (talk) 13:45, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Was just reading the Leptospermum page, and remembered I talked to a scientist from the Mt Annan Herbarium in NSW who, with one of her colleagues, released a paper recently revising the Leptospermum genus, splitting it into 5. "Revised taxonomy of the tribe Leptospermeae (Myrtaceae) based on morphological and DNA data" by Peter G. Wilson and Margaret M. Heslewood TAXON Volume 72, Issue 3 p. 550-571. (2023, doi:10.1002/tax.12892, Wikipedia Library).

Might be worth checking out, it creates a WHOLE mess of the genera though Cheers mate 161.29.14.206 (talk) 08:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Moved here from my talk to be more visible to more knowledgeable editors.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:33, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

That link will turn blue within a couple of days. There have always been good forestry resources for the US and Canada, and I've wanted to do this list for a while; the problem has been the dreaded {{globalize}} tag (i.e. "may not represent a worldwide view"). Finally, solid progress has been made on standardization of approaches in North and South America (see, for instance, https://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/2020/en/). The more forest-inventory lists we push through WP:FLC, the harder it will be (probably) to change course on formatting or perspective, so as always, early feedback works better than late feedback. - Dank (push to talk) 18:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I see this is now at User:Dank/List_of_forest-inventory_conifers_in_Canada. I mean, it seems like a plausible way to format things to me, but I don't know if I'm enough up on list policies/recommendations to say much on that. Did you have any specific questions? Kingdon (talk) 06:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm stuck for the moment, and working on some other projects, but I'm open to questions or edits, and I can move it back to article-space if you prefer. - Dank (push to talk) 14:52, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi,

I noticed that the P. mitis redirect page goes to Phyllostachys edulis rather than Polytrichadelphus mitis. This seems strage to me but I am not a botanist or have any familiarity with binomial names. Can someone who is familiar with this take a look to see if the redirect should be changed please (rather than me doing it and inadvertently making a mess)?

Thanks Carver1889 (talk) Carver1889 (talk) 21:24, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it might be because one of the (many) synonyms of Phyllostachys edulis is Phyllostachys mitis var. heterocycla, but you are right that is a weird redirect. Phyllostachys mitis is also a redirect to P. edulis, but it should be Bambusa vulgaris according to Plants of the World Online. (Or at least it was, I'm about to retarget.)

I think most abbreviated pages like P. mitis should be disambiguation pages rather than redirects because there are other species. Using duckduckgo I found Phacaspis mitis (a fly of some kind), Persicaria mitis (another plant), and Problepsis mitis (a moth) in just a quick five minute look. Would you like to learn about converting it to a disambiguation page, @Carver1889? Seems like a nice easy project and I've got you three entries in addition to Polytrichadelphus mitis. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:54, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

IPNI has 24 entries with generic names beginning with P and epithet mitis. If I counted correctly, after removing infraspecifics and duplicates there are 13 left. Puya mitis seems to be the only one which is an accepted species at POWO. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:48, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Do we really need anything at most places of the form G. species? (I mean, outside a few obvious ones like E. coli or T. rex)? I'd probably argue for delete (granted, without having thought about it much). Kingdon (talk) 06:57, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer to have them deleted. They aren't likely search terms; an abbreviated form rarely appears without the unabbreviated form, and readers are smart enough to search for the unabbreviated form E. coli and T. rex are truly exceptional in frequently appearing only in abbreviated form (e.g. in newspapers). C. elegans might be the next most frequently appearing abbreviated name. C. elegans (disambiguation) is Wikipedia's largest disambiguation page, and illustrates the folly of trying to maintain G. species abbreviations for navigation on Wikipedia. Most of the articles on the C. elegans dab page were created by the same editor who has created the largest share of G. species redirects. The redirect are rarely unambiguous and turning them into dab pages doesn't seem worth it for a minimal benefit to readers. Plantdrew (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The hygrophyte page needs some work. The text is not good English, and it's not clear precisely what it's meant to say. (Hygrophytes are plants of wet terrestrial habitats, but the exact scope escapes me at the moment.) I'm also doubtful of some of the example genera, especially Chelidonium.

I came across this while investigating the term hygrohalophyte, which I would guess refers to plants of salt marshes, marine mud flats and mangrove swamps. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Gamochaeta coarctata#Requested move 28 December 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Bensci54 (talk) 21:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Long lists of synonyms for species or genera in taxoboxes are often best set up to be initially hidden. To make this simpler, I have now added the necessary code to {{Species list}} (of which {{Genus list}} is a synonym). Basically it only requires adding |hidden=yes before the list of taxon name/authority pairs. See Template:Species list#Hiding the list. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I thought I would raise the treatment of plants at Sex here before trying to discuss it there. I'm unhappy with the way that it treats sporophytes as being unambiguously male or female. At Alternation of generations, single quotes are used when the terms male or female are applied to sporophytes, e.g. A 'male' willow tree (a microsporophyte) produces flowers with only stamens.

Is anyone else concerned? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:16, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about describing pollen as gametes.

There's a rich terminology for describing the [distribution of sexes|http://www.malvaceae.info/Biology/SexDistribution.php] in plants, and a history of usage of the terms male and female for stuff other than gametophytes. But pollen grains (and egg sacs) are not gametes. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is definitely part of it. I did start to edit the article to try to fix the specific problem relating to pollen, but then ran into wider issues. The problem, for me anyway, is that the relationship between biological sex and alternation of generations is difficult to explain briefly in the context of an article with a broad focus. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@Catfish Jim and the soapdish: might have an opinion on this matter. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:22, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll have a look at the article later, but if the suggestion in the article is that dioecious species have unambiguously male or female genotypes, that should probably be addressed (is this the concern?). I pretty much deal exclusively with monoecious plants, but any hobby breeder of the most commonly used dioecious species will tell you that 'female' plants can be induced to produce pollen to produce exclusively 'female' progeny. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 11:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

"By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male, while organisms that produce produce larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells) are called female."

Is the main issue that sporophytes do not (directly) produce gametes, thus not conforming to the quoted definition?

An attempted generalisation is "organisms that, directly or indirectly, produce only smaller, more mobile, gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male, organisms that produce, directly or indirectly, only larger, non-mobile, gametes (ova) are called females, and those that directly or indirectly produce both are called hermaphrodite. In botanical usage the terms are also applied to parts of plants, such as flowers, inflorescences, and ramets." Lavateraguy (talk) 13:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue may be this (but am not 100% sure):

"The majority of plants are bisexual, either hermaphrodite (with both stamens and pistil in the same flower) or monoecious. In dioecious species male and female sexes are on separate plants. About 5% of flowering plants are dioecious, resulting from as many as 5000 independent origins. Dioecy is common in gymnosperms, in which about 65% of species are dioecious, but most conifers are monoecious."

The problem I see with this is that 'female' dioecious plants can be induced to produce hermaphroditic flowers, for instance, by treatment with silver nitrate, producing viable pollen. The pollen is genotypically 'female' and all progeny resulting from such a cross is 'female' (but in turn can also be induced to produce hermaphroditic flowers). There are some real world benefits to using this for hybridising crop species (e.g. kiwi fruit) to introduce variation where you have limited choices of parental germplasm, or if you want to do something clever with cytoplasmic genetics, but undoubtedly the widest use is for producing feminised strains of cannabis (so I'm told). Catfish Jim and the soapdish 15:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that is specific to plants. Sequential hermaphroditism in say fish, for example, is also subject to experimental manipulation. Sex determination in Caenorhabitis elegans can also be modified by environmental stimuli. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

On a web search, I find some literature on its use with Cucurbitaceae. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Can all these Category:Plant redirects with possibilities just be deleted? It would encourage article creation, and whenever this issue is discussed here, it seems there is consensus that the redirect or redirects being discussed should be deleted. Maybe double check that they are accepted by PoWO first...I could do that if needed. Abductive (reasoning) 18:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love that and agree that it should be done, but the data hoarders at AfD will argue, "Oh, we can't delete that. Even a redirect is important to keep the history." And they'll point to some precedent that this is the way it has always been done. If you want to try I'll support you, but it might not be possible to get done due to the way the community works. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of the entries shouldn't be in this category. For example, we would almost never have articles on varieties like Asplenium scolopendrium var. americanum, so it doesn't have possibilities in my view. Others are just alternative names, like Comice. I would certainly love to delete all the redirects from a species to a non-monotypic genus. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Good point about the var. and subsp. I went in and retagged them to get them out of the category. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to see most of these go away. In my opinion most of them should have never been created in the first place (Desfontainia spinosa is an exception; the genus was monotypic when the redirect was created, and the genus article has a fair amount of content specific to the species). I think I'm largely responsible for tagging these redirects. I wasn't aware of {{R from species to genus}} when I first started adding {{R plant with possibilities}}, so not every species redirecting to genus has that category. I haven't tagged the species redirecting to List of Carex species (these all had a brief history as substubs), and there's a user who created a few thousand redirects from lower to higher taxa that I haven't attempted to tag systematically (most of them are protists or invertebrates but there are at least few plants; I have tagged the species redirecting to Ethulia). Plantdrew (talk) 22:39, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, how about this; the following redirects to non-monotypic genera (I checked) are for good species according to PoWO (also checked), and according to this massviews analysis, are used a lot and thus represent cases of WP:SURPRISE, and were never an article (unlike Calathea lutea which I will make into a stub): Thapsia garganica, Camptotheca acuminata, Myrtus nivellei, Weigela florida, Desfontainia spinosa, Manicaria saccifera, Cyrilla racemiflora, Sarcobatus vermiculatus, Harpagophytum procumbens, Saussurea involucrata, Calophyllum tacamahaca, and Pinus uncinata. Can these be deleted now? Then if some articles are created we can move down the list as appropriate. Abductive (reasoning) 22:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

This is the opposite of how I am inclined to approach it; I'd start with deleting the least-viewed redirects over the most-viewed. Myrtus and Sarcobatus cover (briefly) both species in these genera. Camptotheca has about as much content on C. acuminata as it does on the genus as a whole (although that content is not WP:MEDRS compliant (Thapsia is a similar situation). Cyrilla is written as if it were monotypic, and several of the additional species recognized by POWO are mentioned. Most of these have a significant number of incoming links; if we get Camptotheca acuminata deleted it's entirely possibly that someone seeing a red-link at chemotherapy will just recreate as a redirect again.

I don't think this set is going to be easy to delete at RfD. I think it would be easier to go with low viewed species to genus redirects that have 0 or 1 incoming links and no information about the species in the genus article beyond it's inclusion in a list of species. Plantdrew (talk) 16:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure. It will take me a while to do it, I'll have to carefully research each one. My personal desire is to make sure that any redirect that started out as an effort by a user to create an article is not deleted. Abductive (reasoning) 16:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

The article Justicia cynea has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Unreferenced article. No plant of this name, nor any synonym, listed in Plants of the World Online or World Flora Online.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tom Radulovich (talk) 00:52, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tom Radulovich A good catch. First time I've seen a patent nonsense plant article. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

They are rare but there have been a few. A number of years back there was one about a man-eating plant. Hardyplants (talk) 03:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like it could be a misspelling of Justicia cyanea Leonard, which is recognised by SiBBr and is also in this Onezoom tree. It could be a new species that hasn't yet being recognised by POWO or WFO, although it's puzzling that no scientific paper comes up on a search. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I doubt it is a new species. A general search of the internet produces only a tiny number of results all Wikipedia or sourced to Wikipedia. Also no results searching the Wikipedia library. I think the misspelling is the most likely reason and it is a good idea to totally delete it. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:07, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm actually finding a little bit, searching that alternate spelling, Justicia cyanea, including this: https://ala-bie.sibbr.gov.br/ala-bie/species/310362#classification Uporządnicki (talk) 20:04, 27 January 2024 (UTC) Oh, I see someone else already brought this up. Uporządnicki (talk) 20:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Emery Clarence Leonard, the authority cited, died in 1968, and the article was created in 2006, so it's unlikely to be a new species. Tom Radulovich (talk) 23:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

The only name that fits is Lophostachys cyanea Leonard Weepingraf (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The current name for that is Lepidagathis cyanea (Leonard) Kameyama.

Neither Justicia cyanea nor Justicia cynea is in IPNI.

Lophostachys and Lepidagathis are placed in a different tribe (Barlerieae) to Justicia (Justicieae).

The citation for Lophostachys cyanea is to Lyman B. Smith et al, The Machris Brazilian Expedition Botany: Phanerogamae Amaranthaceae and other families, Los Angeles County Mus. Contr. Sci. 32: 13 (1959). No mention is made of Justicia cyanea there, but is conceivable that the name was used as a herbarium/manuscript name prior to formal publication of the species. One might have to go so far as to examine herbarium sheets to confirm that hypothesis.

There is a possibility of changing Justicia cynea to a redirect rather than deleting it, but I reckon that would fall under WP:OR (or worse) as there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the name was validly published.

(I considered that possibility of a particular bad misspelling of Justicia carnea or Justicia cyanantha, but the cited authority makes those hypotheses unlikely, perhaps more so that the above hypothesis of a herbarium name.) Lavateraguy (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

You can now use {{plantgloss|term}} to easily create a link instead of manually doing [[Glossary of botanical terms#term|term]]. This will of course primarily be of use for terms that are only in the glossary and don't have their own articles. The utility of this will be greatly improved by adding anchors for plurals and other alternative terms covered at the same entry, as I did for the "P" section here. That way, you can just do {{plantgloss|paleae}} instead of {{plantgloss|palea|paleae}} or {{plantgloss|palea}}e. PS: The template alias {{botanygloss}} also exists for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants#Article advice is mostly stuff that should go into a MOS, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template is guidance about what should go into a plant article (although it is certainly not obvious that "Template" refers to that). Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

That collectively could maybe become an MoS page. What I would recommend (based on some experience at this):

• All the pertinent material should be combined into a single page, like WP:WikiProject Plants/Style advice.
• Rewrite it to use guideline-appropriate language.
  • Fix informal wording, long-windedness, supposition and opinion, etc.
  • Normalize the usage to current Wikipedia terminology (a lot of old project material dating from the 2000s uses terms that WP didn't eventually settle on, instead of familiar WP-isms like "notability", "due weight", "independent, secondary, reliable sources", "lead section", "original research", "living persons", etc.).
  • Avoid advice that doesn't advise, like "some editors prefer X and some prefer Y", unless it is really important (due to repeated prior dispute) to record that something in particular is left to editorial discretion. Really, everything is left to editorial discretion that isn't subject to a specific guideline about it, so it's usually not necessary to say so.
• Trim redundancy:
  • Avoid repeating other parts of MoS except for particular topic-specific applications; link to or explicitly cross-reference other guidance, as needed.
  • Remove generic non-style material already convered by other policies and guidelines (how to cite sources, etc.), except maybe notes about how to apply them to this topic in particular, if there's some kind of style-connected rationale to include it.
• Make sure any sectioning advice agrees with MOS:LAYOUT (and MOS:LEAD as applicable), and with the way botanical articles are actually written (especially modern GAs and FAs); often old sectional advice in such documentation is actually wrongheaded by current standards.
• Delete any conflicts with MoS, with other guidelines, or especially with policies, or revise the line-item in question to stop conflicting. A common conflict source in such documents is over-capitalization that doesn't agree with MOS:CAPS, and title strangeness that contradicts WP:AT or WP:DAB. For this topic, beware any inconsistency with WP:NCFAUNA.
• Delete or fix any "advice" that is not actually usually followed. In particular, look for old "we wish it would be this way, even though it's not" stuff. The purpose of guidelines is recording best practice not imposing new practice.
• Another gotcha is specific advocacy of the writing standards of some off-site organization that is not universally recognized as authoritative. IBC and its ICN are, but various national bodies are not. In this regard, it would probably be good to not repeat much of MOS:ORGANISMS except in summary. That's in good enough shape to also move to guideline status (I keep forgetting to get around to the proposal).
• Add important advice for anything that represents definite current on-site best practice in the topic area that wasn't covered in the old material. Don't go wild in this regard; if the material looks recently broadly expanded, people will notice and question its consensus level.
• Remove content advice that's not at least vaguely also style advice (maybe put it back on the main wikiproject page if it's important); people rebel against MoS proposals when they wander into trying to be content guidelines. Same goes for behavioral stuff. How (including parentheses/round-brackets, etc.) and when to provide taxonomic author names is a good example of something that's both a content issue and clearly also a style issue worth covering.
• When it seems tip-top shape, propose at WP:VPPOL that it be made into a guideline at WP:Manual of Style/Flora (to agree with WP:NCFLORA), or maybe /Botany, or /Plants I guess, though "plant" can have more than one meaning, like 'factory'). "Advertise" the proposal at relevant places like WP:VPPRO, WT:MOS, WT:PLANTS, WT:TOL, WT:NCFLORA, etc. The ongoing proposal at VPPOL about "MOS:CS" can probably be used as a model, including my process for resolving complaints about the material.

The most important part is making sure that what it contains is what is actually done, i.e. it already represents consensus and just deserves the {{Guideline}} approval stamp, and renaming/recategorization as an MoS guideline. I'll probably convert the above into an more generally-worded essay page in a moment. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Revised version now at WP:MOSPROMOTE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Metarungia is now considered monotypic, and it has its own category. Is it worthwhile requesting deletion of such categories, which will likely contain only one article (and possibly one redirect), or simply leave them be? There is a commons category for Metarungia, but it is currently empty. Tom Radulovich (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Categories with a single article in them aren't useful. You could just upcategorize the species into the family article, leaving the category empty, after which it will soon get deleted anyway (saving a deletion request). Esculenta (talk) 17:54, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

On Talk:Cupressus macnabiana I have opened the formal request to move the remaining pages from Cupressus to Hesperocyparis. Please weigh in so that this can be closed without the need for the discussion to be posted again for more comments or a clearer consensus. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I asked a question at the talk page for Linnaea borealis about the synonyms. POWO lists about 150 of them for Linnaea borealis var. borealis, mostly other subspecies. Would it be reasonable to just ignore the subspecies or should they all be listed? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

My view is that synonyms are not automatically notable. (Wikipedia is not a taxonomic database.) It is a judgement call by editors which synonyms to include. My suggestion would be ones which have an extensive history as accepted names of species. Lavateraguy (talk) 04:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That gives me the confidence to ignore the many (so many) subspecies that were published by Veit Brecher Wittrock. 152. 152! It is a little interesting and I may well put a sentence or two in the article under taxonomy, but that's just too many to list. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:50, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. I tend to write fairly compulsive nomenclature sections, but I wouldn't tackle that in the running text, let alone the infobox. (They're forms, incidentally, not subspecies.) Choess (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

There are several Festuca species such as Festuca arundinacea (the ones currently in Schedolium) which should probably be moved to Lolium, in line with POWO. There will be quite a lot of changes to be made, by the looks of it. Any objections if I start the process? E Wusk (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems entirely sensible to me. The List of Festuca species already follows POWO though it looks like it has not been checked since 2022, this would just be cleaning up all the articles to actually follow that instead of having them hang out being confusing.

I just took at look at the Category:Festuca. There are 143 pages listed there. I downloaded a list from POWO of everything they think is valid as of today and dumped it into a spreadsheet. I found seven pages that need moving, merging, or discussion.

• Festuca arundinacea → Lolium arundinaceum
• Festuca brevipila → Festuca trachyphylla
• Festuca gigantea → Lolium giganteum
• Festuca groenlandica → Festuca brachyphylla
• Festuca mairei → Lolium mairei
• Festuca paniculata → Patzkea paniculata
• Festuca pratensis → Lolium pratense

I'll use the current POWO list to update the wikipeida list tomorrow. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 06:05, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

There are also changes to be made to the Lolium article, of course, and × Festulolium which will have to be merged with Lolium (it's one of the arguments for the change because it removes these intergeneric hybrids). E Wusk (talk) 07:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I just finished up formatting the data I downloaded from POWO and updated List of Festuca species. I think × Festulolium should probably be updated to say that it was a historically used genus. Unless there is objection I'll create a new page for List of Lolium species since there are 39 of them listed on POWO and that seems a bit long for an article. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:11, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

There's precedent for longer lists in genus articles. (E.g. Mangifera has 65, and it wasn't much shorter before I updated it from POWO.) I'd place the threshold higher - perhaps around 80 to 100 species. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. Good to know. I'll just update Lolium with a formatted species list. Edit: or not... The list currently there has geographic information as well. Don't want to take that out. I will have to stop and think for a bit.🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd suggest ~100 species before considering splitting a species list out from a genus article. The presence of distribution information has often discouraged me from updating a list of species; I don't want to lose that information, but I also don't want to take the time to add it for any additional species (not to mention properly referencing the distributions; a lot of the species lists with distributions were added by User:Joseph Laferriere, with the distributions apparently taken from WCSP (which no longer exists), but the reference is to a genus page there, while the distributions are only given on the individual species pages on WCSP).

@MtBotany: looking at your update to the list of Festuca species, you're making extra work for yourself in formatting. {{Species list}} handles the italics automatically, you didn't need to specify them, and if you use {{Linked species list}} instead of {{Species list}}, it handles the linking. But that's still not the easiest way to get a list of species from POWO properly formatted and linked. With {{Format species list}}, all you need to do is copy-paste the list from POWO and the formatting and linking is taken care of for you (you do need to subst the template: i.e. you invoke it as "{{subst:Format species list|1=" (without the quotes), paste the list of species, provide "}}" at the end to close the template and then save the page. 20:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 20:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The species list template seemed not to be doing the italics correctly when I first did it. Not sure why though. I totally expected it to italicize as you can see at this old edit. Then I went back and made more work for myself to force it to display correctly. Thanks for the tip about linked species list. Definitely going to use that one. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I decided to just go with a more simple list for now on Lolium and I am going to consider how much work it will be put it in a table using the POWO native distribution information. If I can make a spreadsheet do the formatting work and then reuse that effort for other genus pages it might be worth it. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:00, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The WCSP data is available from POWO as its successor, WCVP. You can download the WCVP data as a large zip file. It has several files, including ones dealing with the taxonomy (names file) and distributions, which I assume are the tables from their database. If you get the taxon ID from the names file, you can find the associated localities from the distributions file. The distributions entries match the distribution list on the POWO pages. But unless you set up a local database using those tables, the information is no easier to extract than getting it from the POWO pages. They also had Python (pykew) and R API services, but I can't find links to them any more. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:50, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

rWCVP see here [1]https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.18919 Weepingraf (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Schedolium? Should that be Schedonorus? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:59, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

xSchedolium is the intergeneric hybrid between Schedonorus and Lolium, analogous to to xFestulolium. Neither is needed if those species move to Lolium, then just become normal hybrids. E Wusk (talk) 09:23, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The article Intsia is a stub and I can not believe that it has been rated as Low-importance! Please read the German article [2] which contains very important details about the threat and illegal deforestation.

Intsia bijuga is listed on the IUCN International Red List as NT = Near Threatened in 2020. The population of Intsia palembanica is continuously decreasing and the IUCN assessed this species as NT = “Near Threatened” in 2020.

I would rate this article as High-importance! --Plenz (talk) 07:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

German Wikipedia doesn't have articles for the species of Intsia; I'd consider the species to be topics of higher importance the the genus, and a higher priority for expanding articles (that said, both species are present in New Guinea, so the topic of illegal logging there might be best addressed in the genus article). Plantdrew (talk) 18:03, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

With regards to importance, I've compared it with some other genera of timber trees - Shorea and Hopea are mid-importance, Dipterocarpus, Mansonia and Triplochiton are low-importance. While there would be no objection to improving the article it seems a stretch to place it as high-importance. Tilia, in spite of its cultural importance in Europe and America, is only mid-importance. (Oak and pine have qualified for high-importance.) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I have reassessed Intsia as Mid-Importance. In general, Importance is a reflection of reader interest in the article as measured by pageviews, not anything inherent in the article's topic. Abductive (reasoning) 02:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I ran across a question on Talk:Cupressus about if some species should be moved to Hesperocyparis to follow Plants of the World Online and World Flora Online. I did a quick look around and it seems like this is becoming the accepted classification. Anyone have contrary information to say this is "too soon" or POWO and WFO being weird? Please weigh in if you have information or suggestions.

Edit to add: Oh, and I got sick of the long form so I made "Wikipedia:Plants talk" into a redirect to here. Redirects are cheap and it seemed like it would be useful when directing people to the talk page specifically. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:35, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

WT:PLANTS redirects here. Lavateraguy (talk) 01:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That is what I was not figuring out. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@MtBotany and Lavateraguy: – only seen this just now. I'd say 'too soon', and 'by far most likely never'. While accepted by POWO and WFO, the evidence is weak at best, and Cupressus s.l. (including Callitropsis, Hesperocyparis, Xanthocyparis, but excluding Juniperus) is almost certainly monophyletic. The Cupressus Conservation Project notably rejects the splits. There appears to be a lot of what I can only call 'political' pressure to accept these segregates, with flimsy evidence; Zhu et al. 2018 for example found that the great bulk of the tested genome (80 of 82 genes) supported a monophyletic Cupressus s.l., with just two anomalous genes (ycf1 and ycf2) supporting paraphyly with respect to Juniperus – yet in their conclusions, they accepted the nomenclatural consequences of the two anomalous genes over the evidence of the great bulk of the genome. It also remains that there is not one single morphological character that can distinguish all Cupressus s.str. from all Hesperocyparis. Best to retain Cupressus as a single genus in its traditional sense. - MPF (talk) 14:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

So the group knows I've placed a comment summarizing the situation on Talk:cupressus. Interested parties should comment there. I'd like a consensus on what to do before any more pages are moved or the two edited pages get moved back. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The thing is, as a project we have chosen to follow POWO, which accepts the split, a move that has been gaining traction in the litruature as well when you look at google.scholar use over the last 5 yeare. Why do we care what Cupressus Conservation Project says (the last updates to the "SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES" page are over a decade old now) given the lack of any transparency on who the group actually is. @MPF: you mention "politics", can you provide papers that discuss that issue and can be added to the genus level articles to maintain neutrality while we move forward with the taxonomy updates?--Kevmin § 22:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin that in the Zhu et al. paper cited above, the authors accept as most relevant, a phylogeny only supported by a tiny part of their data. Why? Same goes for the Stull et al. 2021 paper cited on the Hesperocyparis page: they demonstrate that Cupressus s.l. is monophyletic, yet accept Callitropsis, Hesperocyparis, Xanthocyparis as separate genera, even though the only reasons for accepting them was the suggestion that Cupressus s.l. might be paraphyletic with respect to Juniperus - which turns out not to be the case. "Why do we care what Cupressus Conservation Project says"?: because it is an important contributor to Cupressus taxonomic research. You're looking in the wrong place, check the Bulletin link, which is where their work is published. - MPF (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I saw the bulletin link, and I'm not sure why an in-house publication with a POV is being presented as more authoritative then the other body of literature from the last 5-ish years. you say its an important contributor to Cupressaceae research, and yet doesnt seem to have a cite record in any other literature, that feels very telling. The IPNI currently only has 8 names presented though the Bulletin, So again WHY is it superseding our project default of POWO. --Kevmin § 16:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you that the information in the Bulletin should not supersede the more generally used sources like POWO, but do you think it would be fair to have a line in articles talking about the taxonomy of Hesperocyparis saying something like "However, botanists from the Cupressus Conservation Project vigorously dispute the placement of species in the new genus and argue that they should be classified in Cupressus in a larger sense (Sensu lato)."? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@MPF: are you affiliated with the Cupressus Conservation Project?

I'm inclined to follow POWO, and mentioning the Cupressus s.l. view in the articles on the segregate genera (Volume 6 number 1 of the Bulletin has an editorial arguing for the s.l. view). Plantdrew (talk) 20:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

(I did a little digging on the editorial author, per an American Conifer Society Bulletin bio Didier Maerki is a geography teacher in Geneva , Switzerland . He has been a member of the ACS for 2 years and spends much of his spare time in France at Arboretum de Villardebelle. So I'm less inclined to give substantial prose time to the opinions in the Cupressus Conservation Project, given the fringe level nature of the opinion.--Kevmin § 15:19, 30 January 2024 (UTC) )

While he may be professionally a geography teacher, he's also at least a minor botanist. He is in the International Plant Names Index. I think one sentence using him as an example of taxonomic disagreement gives the right weight given that all the rest of the Taxonomy section is given over to the majority view. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

(I forgot to reply to this) MtBotany I feel its rather telling that the ipni you point to all originate with Maerki's pet project where he is the journal editor, which edges close to conflict of interest/self publishing territory and needs to be treated as such--Kevmin § 17:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point. I'll see if I can find any other editorials or papers that would be a better source to cite. I got the impression there was a minority of scientists that disputed the move, but it might actually be misunderstanding of the science on the part of amateur scientists. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin I found a peer-reviewed paper on JSTOR titled "Data sharing for conservation: A standardized checklist of US native tree species and threat assessments to prioritize and coordinate action" that uses Cupressus for north American native trees. And a monograph about Cupressus nevadensis from Enzyklopädie der Holzgewächse: Handbuch und Atlas der Dendrologie on Wiley. While neither of these address the taxonomic question directly I think they might be a better examples of continuing use of Cupressus instead of Hesperocyparis by professional scientists instead of the editorial currently referenced. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

"The clade comprising all three genera was found to be sister to a clade containing Juniperus and Cupressus sensu stricto."

I suggest "Studies have found the clade comprising all three genera was found to be sister to a clade containing Juniperus and Cupressus sensu stricto, or to Cupressus sensu strictu online", with cites to representative studies. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I added in a short paragraph to that effect at Hesperocyparis, open to rewording to be less awkward. I also checked the list with POWO and found one more species to add to the page. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The editorial in the Bulletin is from 2017. As part of the evidence it cites a paragraph by Christopher Earle saying why the "conifer.org website (USA) recognises only one Cupressus genus" (p7). But now the Gymnosperm Database (=conifer.org) uses Cupressus in the narrow sense. If Christopher Earle (who edits the relevant pages) has changed his mind due to new evidence, his previous arguments are not a good reason to reject the narrower circumscription. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

How many studies have presently followed these conclusions about Cupressus and Hesperocyparis being synonymous? Both POWO and the Gymnosperm Database recognize these other genera, and I've seen quite a few studies (i.e. Stull et al 2021) come to the "paraphyletic Cupressus" interpretation too. While there may be validity to the monophyletic Cupressus idea, I believe that for now we should go with what the authorities generally follow, and can change back to Cupressus if taxonomic opinion goes the other way. But I'm no expert so I'll defer to what others say. Geekgecko (talk) 22:13, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Gymnosperm Database is hedging their bets. They apparently have (mostly duplicated) pages for each species not in Cupressus s.s. at the Cupressus name and the non-Cupressus name. See Cupressus nootkatensis and Callitropsis nootkatensis. I'm not sure if it is possible to directly navigate to the Cupressus names (I noticed the Cupressus nootkatensis page as an external link in our article, and got to some others by editing the URL in my browser). Plantdrew (talk) 21:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Odd that they have slightly contradictory pages, but the Cupressus genus page (Last Modified 2023-12-17) restricts Cupressus to the old world species. The Callitropsis nootkatensis page (Last Modified 2023-12-18) is slightly newer than the Cupressusnootkatensis page (Last Modified 2023-11-26). These recent page updates suggests this is a matter they will revisit whenever there is new evidence, possibly the reason for keeping multiple pages.

Overall, I think we should follow the Gymnosperm database/POWO/WFO treatment for decisions on page titles, taxoboxes, etc and then mention the debate in the text. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Stull et al. 2021 again - like Zhu et al. 2018 - has a discord between what they say, and what they show. They say "paraphyletic Cupressus", but the phylogeny (copied below unaltered from the Hesperocyparis page) shows that Cupressus s.l. is monophyletic with respect to Juniperus. This is the heart of why I am so dubious about these studies: they are not presenting their results in a truthful manner. Why??

Stull et al. 2021[1][2]

Juniperus Cupressus s.l. Cupressus s.s. Xanthocyparis vietnamensis Farjon & Nguyên Callitropsis nootkatensis (Don) Oersted Hesperocyparis H. bakeri (Jepson) Bartel (Modoc cypress) H. macnabiana (Murray) Bartel (Macnab’s/Shasta cypress) H. goveniana (Gordon) Bartel (Gowen cypress) H. macrocarpa (Hartweg ex Gordon) Bartel (Monterey cypress) H. sargentii Jepson (Sargent cypress) H. glabra (Sudworth) Bartel (Smooth Arizona cypress) H. arizonica (Greene) Bartel (Arizona cypress) H. guadalupensis (Watson) Bartel (Guadalupe cypress) H. montana (Wiggins) Bartel (San Pedro Martir cypress) H. forbesii (Jepson) Bartel (Tecate cypress) H. lusitanica (Miller) Bartel (Mexican cypress) H. stephensonii (Jepson) Bartel (Cuyamaca cypress)

MPF (talk) 21:20, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know where the cladogram at Hesperocyparis comes from - Figure 1 at Stull et al has a paraphyletic Cupressus s.l., but with sparse taxon sampling (6 ingroup taxa).

Stull et al have a large gene set, but weak results at the relevant node. (A Cupressus s.l.-Juniperus clade has ~75% genes trees supporting and 25% uninformative, but when it comes to a paraphyletic Cupressus (with respect to Juniperus), it's about 30% supporting, 20% opposing and 50% uninformative.) To resolve the question I'd suggest a study with broad taxon sampling within Juniperus and Cupressus s.l. - but even that might be insufficient, especially if reticulation is involved.

Regardless whether Cupressus s.l. is paraphyletic with respect to Juniperus, it is paraphyletic with respect to Callitropis and Xanthocyparis. If one doesn't sink those into Cupressus to retain monophyly one has to recognise Hesperocyparis, in which case one can duck the issue of whether Juniperus lies within or without Cupressus s.l. My preference is to not rush into reclassification based on single molecular studies (to avoid the risk of repeated taxonomic changes), but having glanced at some papers I think there's a decent case for a 5 genus (as opposed to a 2 genus) classification. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy: Check out Zhu et al. 2018, they have a more detailed study, which does support a monophyletic Cupressus s.l. overall in 80 out of 82 genes. - MPF (talk) 00:46, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Zhu et al is a plastome study. Such can generate misleading trees if allopolyploidy, hybrid speciation or chloroplast capture is involved. Zhu et al conclude that something on those lines has occurred.

In their study, about 15% of the plastome supports the paraphyletic Cupressus topology.

Zhu et al report structural isomerism in Cupressaceae genomes. I've seen papers where this has resulted in anomalous results (e.g. Hibiscus and Gossypium not being mutually monophyletic); it seems that whether this is an issue depends on the tools used. On the other hand, I don't think that this is an issue in Zhu et al; the smaller IR of Cupressaceae would reduce the magnitude of any spurious signal, and the observed non-congruences are in the wrong direction for an artefact resulting from this. Zhu et al's taxonomic conclusion is "The maintenance of Cupressus s.l. is problematic due to uncertainty in the placement of Juniperus. Notably, a paraphyletic Cupressus s.l. is consistently recovered in the few studies that have utilized nuclear or mitochondrial protein-coding genes [7, 8, 12, 13] as well as a minority of plastid analyses from this (Fig. 2; Fig. 4) and other [14] studies; more nuclear and mitochondrial data is required to explore this issue further. Furthermore, while the CaHX clade is clearly monophyletic in this and many previous studies, there are a variety of morphological characters that distinguish Hesperocyparis from Ca. nootkatensis and X. vietnamensis [8], arguing against circumscribing all three genera into a single, more broadly defined genus. Collectively, while there is still room for debate on the precise relationships among species in the CaCuHJX clade of Cupressaceae, the weight of evidence strongly favors recognition of five separate genera: Callitropsis, Cupressus, Hesperocyparis, Juniperus, and Xanthocyparis." Lavateraguy (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, based on the now deleted comments at WP:technical moves and other evidence here and at the move request on Talk:Cupressus macnabiana, Its seems apparent that MPF has an undisclosed COI with conifer editing and Cupressaceae topics specifically. This is problematic as it brings the possibility of non POV editing or COI violations--Kevmin § 17:47, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Kevmin - rather than doxing, it would be better if you answered the points I raised about intergeneric hybrids, etc. Yes I have an interest in conifers, but not a conflict of interest. I am not paid for any editing I do, either here, or elsewhere. I am also entitled to privacy about my life outside of wikipedia: stop invading it publicly. Also: are people who have actually studied many of the species concerned and are familiar with them, to be prevented from editing about them? Is editing only to be done by people who know nothing about what they are editing? - MPF (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@MPF Being the subject of such questions is not pleasant, but it is not doxing. Kevmin did not post your name, date of birth, identification numbers, home or workplace address, job title and work organization, telephone number, email address, profiles on external sites, other contact information, etc. You are quite correct that all editors have biases and conflicts of interest. We have places we work, publications we contribute to, organizations we support, etc. However, if an editor contributes on Wikipedia in an area where they have an interest they need to disclose this fact. For example on my User page I disclose that I am a member of a native plant society and that I contribute to its newsletter. If I add information from the Colorado Native Plant Society's newsletter other editors should have this information so they can give greater scrutiny to my edits and judge if I am giving it undue weight or using Wikipedia to promote the group. IF you are part of the group you don't need to give your name or anything else. You should disclose this fact or clearly state that your are not a member of the Cupressus Conservation Project. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

He as good as did, by giving a link to where my name and contact details are given; this should not have been done publicly here. WP:COI says: When investigating COI editing, do not reveal the identity of editors against their wishes. Wikipedia's policy against harassment, and in particular the prohibition against disclosing personal information, takes precedence over this guideline. To report COI editing, follow the advice at How to handle conflicts of interest, below. This has certainly been breached, and the guidelines for investigaion there not followed. As it happens, I've hardly done any editing on wikipedia at all (hiatus 2008-2020, and very little since then apart from Commons image renames) from well before the Cupressus Conservation Project was formed (2012), so the matter had not arisen before now. - MPF (talk) 01:17, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

JSTOR World Plants has data and images for over 1.3 million type specimens of plants species.

For example, on Selliguea plantaginea, we cite https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.us00134691, whose URL contains the ID us00134691

I have just published a proposal for a Wikidata property, to allow the import all such IDs, and to create Wikidata items for the individual specimens - linked, of course, to the item about the relevant taxon.

This will allow us, should we choose to, to include a template (perhaps like, or even as part of {{Taxonbar}}) on a page here, to display data about the taxon's type specimen (the collector, the date and location of its collection, and its current whereabouts, and perhaps an image).

The proposal is at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID. Please use that page to express your support, or make any comments or suggestions for improvement on the proposal.

(Discussion of display of the data on Wikipedia should of course take place here, in due course). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Wikidata property has been created at JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID (P12464). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Invasive species has been nominated for a 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. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a move request at Talk:Tupelo (disambiguation) proposing that the disambiguation page replace Tupelo, currently the article name for genus Nyssa. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

There move request to replace Tupelo with Tupelo (disambiguation) is still ongoing. There are two issues with this move, currently. If it needs to be moved because of WP:NOPRIMARY, a good new article name is needed for genus Nyssa. As the plant project would we prefer Nyssa (genus) or Tupelo tree as the target?

The second issue is that it is not clear that is is a case of NOPRIMARY as the disambiguation page only has 4.5% of the long term views of Tupelo article though some editors are discounting this saying that the unmeasurable navigation through search engines like google means that Tupelo is not the primary topic. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a reason why Nyssa should be one of the exceptions to policy of using botanical names. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, Nyssa is a disambiguation page. But I think Nyssa (plant) (not Nyssa (genus)) would be appropriate as a title. The tree genera that have vernacular names as article titles are generally widely distributed in the northern hemisphere and occur in the UK, US and Canada: oak, maple, pine, fir, alder, birch, beech, willow, elm. Tupelo stands out in comparison to those as something that only occurs in a small part of a single English-speaking country (although it's range isn't restricted to English-speaking countries). Plantdrew (talk) 22:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

It appears that the name in common use for this species is not the nomenclaturally correct one. The combination was published twice in 1826 (per IPNI); as a new species description by d'Urville for the species now known as Colobanthus subulatus, and as a new combination based on Spergula subulata by Presl, the latter being what is commonly understood by that name. A replacement name was proposed in this paper, but Sagina hawaiiensis Pax (a rather unfortunate epithet for a European species) has priority and has been adopted by POWO.

Having referred to Stafleu and Cowan (Taxonomic Literature 2) the date for that latter name is October 2026; the date for the former name is not completely clear - I think that it's 1825, but I can't completely exclude 1826 and 1829(!).

Given two centuries of usage for this species in the European literature I'd be tempted to consider this a candidate for conservation.

Do we just do a move to Sagina hawaiinensis, with a section on the nomenclature, or something else. (Sagina subulata C.Presl. is still in widespread usage, for example the Euro+Med database uses this, with no mention of the other two alternative names.) Lavateraguy (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

While updating the page, I've discovered a couple of nomenclatural issues with Mangifera where the spelling used for the Wikipedia articles differs from that used at POWO (austro-indica vs austroindica, persiciformis vs persiciforma). I suspect these of being orthographical corrections by POWO.

Also, if we are following POWO a merge is needed of Mangifera torquenda (which has some content) into Mangifera similis (a bare stub); the problem is that what is true of Mangifera torquenda may not be true of the broader Mangifera similis so content can't be moved across blindly. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

austroindica resolved - austro-indica is correctable per article 60.9. I've performed the move. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Having attempted to interpret the Latin I think that Wikipedia and IUCN are correct with Mangifera persiciformis and POWO, WFO and IPNI are wrong with Mangifera persiciforma. Next step is to contact IPNI. (There's a can of worms involved - I think that there are 17 names in -forma/um that should be corrected to formis/e, and I see a few questionable spellings among the 8150 records with formis/e.) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

forma is obviously a noun (as it is e.g. an infraspecific rank) so it looks fine to me, something like peachy form, persiciformis being formed like a peach. Perhaps not what they intended exactly but not wrong. Weepingraf (talk) 13:12, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

As I understand, epithets are either adjectives, genitive forms of nouns, on nouns (nominative case) in apposition. To use a noun in apposition it has to already exist, and I doubt that persiciforma did. For comparison epithets amygdaliformis, botryformis, cerasformis, cucumiformis, maliformis, pruniformis and pyriformis, and more broadly bacciformis, nuciformis and pepoformis exist. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

No less an authority than Stearn's Botanical Latin (p.93 in the 4th paperback edition) is clear that -formis constructs adjectives whose nominative endings are -is (m & f) and -e (n). I note that PoWO corrects at least some of the spellings in IPNI, e.g. IPNI's Lithocardium cuneiforma is Lithocardium cuneiforme in PoWO. I have no doubt that the Chinese authors of Mangifera persiciforma made an error and the name should be corrected to Mangifera persiciformis. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:33, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I still think that Mangifera "persiciforma" is an error, but further study suggests that it's not so obvious that it's correctable – it seems that there's more reluctance to change the original authors' names under the current version of the ICNafp than there used to be. It's been pointed out to me that my example of Lithocardium cuneiforma → Lithocardium cuneiforme is not the same, because this is a transfer from Cordia cuneiformis so is clearly adjectival. We'll have to see what the IPNI and PoWO editors think. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I've had a reply from IPNI. They are correcting epithets in -formum to -forme. They've tabled for further consideration the issue of epithets in -forma. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sambucus#Requested move 29 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Declangi (talk) 11:15, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a discussion here about including the date of taxon publication or transfer in taxoboxes that could benefit from additional opinions, particularly from those editors affected by it (i.e., taxa under the ICNafp umbrella). Esculenta (talk) 16:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

In trying to gather sources about Coccothrinax, I have found articles (see the list on Talk:List of Coccothrinax species) from journals named Palms and Palm Arbor. I haven't been able to find out anything about those journals. Does anyone know anything about them? Donald Albury 16:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

https://palms.org/journal/

https://ucanr.edu/sites/HodelPalmsTrees/PalmArbor/

Lavateraguy (talk) 17:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Donald Albury 17:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I was checking the recently created articles Abuta fluminum, Abuta dwyerana, Abuta acutifolia, Abuta aristeguietae. Abuta acutifolia and Abuta dwyeriana have prose statements that aren't supported by the cited sources (IPNI and POWO aren't sources that generally have much that can be turned into prose). Abuta fluminum and Abuta aristeguietae cite [3] (part of the website for Selina Wamucii) for some prose statements, which I had questioned as a source a couple months ago at User_talk:GuppyGherkin9#Selina_Wamucii_as_a_source. Selina Wamucii's plant website does indeed make a bunch of prose statements for obscure species, and appears pretty high in Google results for sufficiently obscure plant species. But it appears to me that Selina Wamucii is AI-generated bulllshit (statements may be true for a few/some/most members of a higher taxon, but not necessarily true for a given species). I want to generally AGF for the editors who have cited Selina Wamucii, but the statements ostensibly sourced to POWO at Abuta acutifolia suggest that editors citing Selina Wamucii might also be relying on AI to generate articles that hallucinate other statements.

Articles mentioning Selina Wamucii:[4]. Plantdrew (talk) 02:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I found that at least part of Abuta fluminum about Tamarins is a chopped up version of this National Geo article. Which is a separate problem.

I agree that Selina Wamucii looks questionable at best. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

"statements may be true for a few/some/most members of a higher taxon, but not necessarily true for a given species" is not unique to AI - Wikipedia has had humans guilty of that practice in the past. (And a broader scale there were the Scots Wikipedia and Russian history scandals.)

However I had a look at what they wrote for some obscure mallow - Malva x arbosii, which is an obscure hybrid, with essentially no data on line; Malva setigera (the currently accepted name for Althaea hirsuta); and Malva x columbretensis (known from one small Spanish island group). Based on that sample I infer that what they have is automated scraping of some sites (POWO, IPNI, WFO, TPL) supplemented by AI text. For example it says that Malva setigera has a single cotyledon, and that Malva x columbretensis is native to India. Those are errors that I can't see a human making, and they seem to be more likely to be AI than a buggy scraper. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Selina Wamucii seems to be a digital tools provider for the agriculture business (e.g. providing a marketing App for small farmers. The Data Sources section says:

Selina Wamucii uses raw data from a wide range of relevant sources, which could be combined or used for data verification, depending on data availability, product, and geographical scope. This list includes, but is not limited to, the following primary sources:

It doesn't say how the raw data is combined but it's a small company so can't have the resources for any human oversight over a section with the same broad scope as WFO and POWO. It looks like it might be a good company to help small farmers sell avocado, but not one for reviewing scientific information, which is what we'd expect for a secondary source. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, even regardless of the AI stuff this is not really a good source. I think the best solution here is to revert to the versions of the Abuta article before the source was added, or to just excise any statement attributed to this source Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree with everyone that Selina Wamucii doesn't look like a reliable website to be citing scientific information, and even more so because Plantdrew has already pointed out that are some discrepancies with the information on the website to GuppyGherkin9. There also seems to be an issue with WP:OR if the information written in these articles isn't supported by the cited sources. Eucalyptusmint (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The article Justicia genistiformis has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No accepted plant species of this name, or valid synonym, or close misspelling, exists on definitive databases like Plants of the World Online or World Flora Online.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tom Radulovich (talk) 06:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I've added on comment at Talk:Justicia_genistiformis#Is_this_a_valid_species?. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

We currently have articles at Olive with a taxobox for the species Olea europaea, and at Olea oleaster, supposedly the "wild olive" although the latter article has a list of Greek cultivars. It seems to me that these articles need to be merged, but as with all highly cultivated species, drawing boundaries between the original wild species and cultigens is difficult. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:40, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Blighia sapida#Requested move 11 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Declangi (talk) 00:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I have made a couple of changes to Syringa josikaea, among them a paraphrase of a 2016 article discussing the species' prehistory and taxonomic affiliations. The paper identifies Syringa villosa and Syringa "wolfii" as its closest living relatives, however, the latter of which is considered by both POWO and WFO to be a subspecies of Syringa villosa. To reflect the fact that we generally follow POWO's recommendation on these questions, I have therefore decided to refer to them as subspecies in the article. This, however, seems a) redundant as it would be easier to simply name S. villosa as sister and b) runs the risk of breaching WP:NOR. How do you think we should proceed? AndersenAnders (talk) 17:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@AndersenAnders: it doesn't breach WP:NOR if you reference it. For example, you could say something like "The closest living relatives were identified as Syringa villosa, including S. villosa subsp. wolfii (under its synonym S. wolfii^[1])". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Right, I wasn't thinking of this. Thanks AndersenAnders (talk) 14:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)