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Assessment and Project Banner

Greetings, all! I finally got around to setting up our project's assessment for articles. I also got a bot approved (BotanyBot) to do the heavy work of tagging most of the articles within Category:Plants with {{WikiProject Plants}}. If you have any questions on how to use it or if something needs updating, I spent quite a bit of time working out the bugs and will probably be able to figure out any issues quickly. Also let me know if you think there's a better photo for the template--I just chose one of the many featured photos.

Feel free to place {{WikiProject Plants|class=|importance=}} at the top of any talk page associated with our project (BotanyBot will be doing this but it will take some time). Better yet, assess it at the same time! You can find simple instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Assessment. The "class" parameter is pretty easy to follow. A few of us have been having a discussion at WP:CPS on the "importance" parameter. Perhaps members of WP:BANKSIA could also add to the discussion, letting us know what works for them. Here's what we've come to understand so far about the importance parameter:

From the assessment page: The criteria used for rating article importance are not meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it). Thus, subjects with greater popular notability may be rated higher than topics which are arguably more "important" but which are of interest primarily to students of botany.
A few things to consider when rating species articles:
  1. Cultivation (Yes/No/To what extent?)
  2. Endangered (Yes/No/To what extent?)
  3. Distribution (Widespread/localized)
  4. How likely is it for a general user to read this article?

The assessment allows us to look at the bot-generated assessment list and easily see what pages have been assessed as "Top" priority or importance that are also stub- or start-class articles. We get to see which pages are most needed.

Any questions, comments, suggestions? Cheers! --Rkitko 04:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and BotanyBot has already gone through Category:Polygonaceae and tagged them all. You can use that as a starting point to assess those articles while the bot tags the remaining articles. I'd also like some input on subcategories or articles within Category:Plants isn't within the scope of our project. Obviously Category:Synthetic resins isn't, but it's a subcat of Category:Plants. I'll direct the bot to omit any questionable subcategories and then come back here for opinions. --Rkitko 04:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I'll respond on behalf of WP:BANKSIA for now, and invite my fellow Banksia nerds to comment.
I don't greatly mind if the BotanyBot tags Banksia species, but it does make for more clutter. Would it make more sense if we updated {{WP Banksia}} to categorise into your assessment categories as well as ours (e.g.
{{WP Banksia | class = start | importance = mid | plants_importance = low}}
would tag articles into
Category:Start-Class Banksia articles, Category:Mid-importance Banksia articles, Category:Start-Class plant articles and Category:Low-importance plant articles
), and made our category system subservient to yours? If we do this, can the BotanyBot be tweaked to ignore articles tagged with {{WP Banksia}}?
Hesperian 04:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I just realised I misunderstood your comment re: WP BANKSIA... but I'm glad to open a discussion on this all the same. Hesperian 04:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
No problem. Good points, there. I wonder what other WikiProjects do. I have seen some articles tagged with WPScience and then descendant WikiProject tags as well. I don't personally mind the WP tag clutter on talk pages, but I'd like to hear what others might think about this. I'll hold off on tagging anything Banksia-related for the moment, but yes, the bot can ignore articles with your project's tag. We could do the same with {{Carnivorous Plants}}. (Could you imagine all the tags a species page would have if every WikiProject above ours tagged it? You'd have WP Banksia, WP Plants, WP TOL, WP Biology, WP Science... Phew!) Thoughts? --Rkitko 05:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I've seen the same problem. Also a lot of articles have multiple parents. e.g. Banksia brownii would have all the above, plus WP Western Australia, WP Australian biota, WP Australia...
I'll try setting up the Banksia template to auto-tag into WP:PLANTS, and while I'm at it I'll get it to auto-tag into WP:AUS.
As flagged above, I'll provide distinct importance tags for each project, as an article like Banksia which is of top importance to WP:BANKSIA, would be only of mid-ish importance to WP:PLANTS. We only need a single quality class I think. Ideally it should tag into the Banksia quality categories, which would be a subcategory of the Plants quality categories, but the assessment bots currently can't aggregate subcategories, and I'd like you guys to be able to count our FAs as WP PLANT FAs (for example), so for now I'll tag into both. Hesperian 02:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Sounds great! I agree that only one class parameter is needed. Isn't there some way to have that categorize it into both WP:BANKSIA and WP:PLANTS assessment categories? There should be some way to do it in the templates... Are you going to have the template also specify "This article has been rated __-class and __-importance on the WikiProject Plants assessment scale" or something similar? Or do you think it should be a template parameter and not seen in the transclusion to avoid clutter? --Rkitko 02:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps something like like this? (Seen working at User talk:Rkitko/sandbox). It gets all the categories correct and the text is smaller for the WikiProject Plants parameter. My only concern is that one importance assessment is right under the other. I'll tinker with it and see if I can put in an <hr> tag or something to break it up to keep confusion to a minimum. Ideas? --Rkitko 08:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia follows APG II?

After I just created category Chenopodiaceae, I found that category Caryophyllales is defined "as circumscribed by the APG II system (2003)". This seemed a bit POV to me so I decided to remove this part of sentence. It was originally added by User:Brya on 26th May 2006.[1] What's this project standing on the matter? --Eleassar my talk 08:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

APG circumscriptions are used extensively in the current botanical literature, so they should be left in. It is not any editor's POV that this be included, it's just current plant sciences. It doesn't matter who added it, just what its relevance is to the article. In this case, APG circumscriptions, and other standard taxonomies, that are mentioned in articles should remain. KP Botany 14:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Are we talking about the same thing here? Of course I have APG II for a reliable source but I think this kind of information belongs to the article Caryophyllales (where one can cite other sources too), not the category page with this name. IMHO it's strange to put Chenopodiaceae in the category Caryophyllales that is "circumscribed by the APG II system". --Eleassar my talk 09:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, category. No, we're not talking about the same thing, let me reread and discuss what you brought up. I see. Because the orders have been restructured deeply by the APG I and II, and because many leading botanists are using these taxonomies in their current work, but not all, it is appropriate and necessary, at this point in time, to list what specific circumscription you are using for a category you create. We're all over the place on which to use here, so don't advocate any. But we also don't advocate against any (as a group "we" as opposed to individuals who, of course, advocate their own preferences for the various taxonomies). If someone created a category already with a specific circumscription that you disagree with you should probably discuss it first. In this case, on this page. If there is no feedback, do as you see fit, backing up your decision with the most current peer-reviewed references. For example, and article in the American Journal of Botany, where an expert in a family, uses the Reveal circumscription for the order, or whatever you use. KP Botany 03:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Kandali

I ran across this as I was cleaning up Category:Plants. Anyone have any info on this plant? I ran the species name on google and it only came up with Wikipedia mirrors (maybe spelled incorrectly?). The common name gets at least one hit that indicates the plant may be Utrica diocia.[2] Others seem to indicate some kind of gourd. If we can be sure about the species name, I'd say merge what little info is there. --Rkitko (talk) 09:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Oooh, maybe it's Strobilanthes wallichii? An earlier version of the page had the scientific name as "Strobilenthes". --Rkitko (talk) 09:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I've made kandali into a dab page and started Strobilanthes wallichii as a separate stub.--Melburnian 13:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting that out! Excellent work. --Rkitko (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Flora by distribution categories

Some of you will be aware that there has been a big push lately to upmerge fauna by country categories to larger units; for example, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 8#Category:Fauna of Europe subcategories proposes merging categories like Category:Fauna of Estonia up to Category:Fauna of Europe. The main grounds for the such a merge are that (a) categorisation by political boundary is pointless; and (b) most European countries share a fairly common fauna.

I expect that debates like this will eventually reach us boring plant types. Personally, I don't like having such discussions at WP:CfD, where we're under pressure from time and drive-by 2¢-ers; I'd much prefer to discuss these issue informally here, and KP has expressed much the same sentiment. I'd like to pre-empt any move to take us to CfD, by finally getting around to proposing something that I've been mulling over and working on for quite some time:

In brief, the whole issue of how to categorise flora by distribution is a hairy one:

  1. How far down do we go? Do we stop at continents, countries, or go all the way down to states//territories/counties/provinces?
  2. What do we do with far flung provinces and islands? e.g. is the flora of Hawaii part of the flora of the Unites States? Should the flora of Macquarie Island (a sub-antarctic island) be considered part of the flora of Tasmania just because it is politically a part of that state?
  3. What do we do with countries like Vatican City, the flora of which is obviously equivalent to, or at least a subset of, the flora of Italy?
  4. How do we trade off the obvious interest in flora by political region, versus the obvious advantages of categorising by biogeographic region?

Fortunately, these questions have already been tackled by botanists, and their best answers put down in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. I created this article back in November, then created the rather long-winded tracking category Category:Flora by distribution categories that follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, and then proceeded to convert the Category:Flora of Australia subcategories to follow it. To get an idea of what I did, it is worth having a close look at Category:Flora of Australia by state or territory and, say, Category:Flora of Western Australia. Once I'd finished with Australia, I made a start on the flora of New Zealand, but this job is too big for one editor, and I ran out of puff.

I'd now like to formally propose that we adopt a policy of aligning our flora by distribution categories with the WGSfRPD. What do you think? Hesperian 11:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

So right now, Category:Flora of New South Wales is a subcat of the aforementioned mouthful category. Your proposal would maintain that category as opposed to the merging discussions in fauna categories? That seems reasonable.
On the fauna category merging: I thought the purpose of the category system was bottom-up browsing in the sense that you find one plant in your state/province/territory/country and then browse the category to see what other plants also grow in your range. Seems very useful to the average Wikipedia user. If merged up, how will users that are interested in just the fauna (or plants) of Estonia find a clear representation of those organisms that have articles on Wikipedia without mucking up the list with other European species that aren't in Estonia? Fauna and flora may be pointless by political boundary, but I think that's how average user's define their world (it would be nice, though, IMHO if we redrew those boundaries to consider ecoregions). Just some concerns I have. I think I'll post that on the discussion page.
Whatever the outcome, though, I can get BotanyBot approved for category work to make it easier on us if need be. --Rkitko (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
What I'm proposing is that we adopt the WGSfRPD for defining all our flora by distribution categories. I may have erred in giving you the impression that this is a defensive measure. I would have proposed this eventually. It is the timing, rather than the proposal itself, that is in response to the current fauna CfDs.
The mouthful is just a tracking category; i.e. a Wikipedia self-reference created to help keep track of which categories uses the WGSfRPD and which don't.
Re the fauna categories, I fully agree. The objection is that this approach results in cosmopolitan species being in hundreds of categories. Hesperian 23:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Is the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, like the Dewey Decimal system, copyrighted? --Peta 00:17, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
As far as I know it's an open standard. But it's a good question. I'll email Brummitt and double-check. Hesperian 04:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
It does look rather handy. Will it be considered original research, will we wind up with the APG usage arguments? KP Botany 04:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Quite the opposite. It's our arbitrary decisions to make this category a subcategory of that category that is (arguably) original research. This makes our entire flora by distribution category structure attributable to a reputable third-party source. Hesperian 04:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
It does seem like a reasonable standard to follow in terms of trying to follow widely understood geographical terms like political countries. It isn't really designed to follow ecological boundaries. For example, New Guinea is excluded from Australasia, the division between western and central US follows state lines rather than the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, the division between North and South/Central America follows the political boundary of Mexico despite the ecologically relevant line being somewhat north of there (this changed from the 1st to 2nd edition), etc. As for whether it will be another APG, I'd be a bit surprised if it is that bad, simply because it doesn't seem to deviate as much from long-standing practice (which I admit is a fuzzy term - if I could define it precisely our lives would be much easier). Kingdon 22:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Brummitt has confirmed that "it is open to anyone who cares to use it." Hesperian 00:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Plants}} article tagging question

Greetings, all! I'm sure you've noticed BotanyBot going through Category:Plants and tagging our articles. Sure has made a mess of my watchlist! Anyway, I've gotten to some of the "questionable" categories and wanted to get your input on which to include for tagging. These are subcats of Category:Plants that I have avoided:

Thoughts, anyone? It seems that our scope on our project page lists only the goal to describe all plants. Should we expand that to include topics within botany? Should I have BotanyBot tag the articles in Category:Plant morphology, Category:Botany, etc.? Should I have it crawl through Category:Botanists as well? I have it ready to go through Category:Botanists and Category:Flora (redundancy to see if I missed anything from the taxonomic categories) and most of Category:Botany. I'll wait for some feedback to begin. --Rkitko (talk) 01:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and one more note. If you're tagging anything, note you can also use a couple new parameters:
"attention=yes" will add the article to Category:Plant articles needing attention
"needs-taxobox=yes" will add the article to Category:Plant articles needing taxoboxes
"needs-photo=yes" will add the article to Category:Plant articles needing photos
Feel free to take a peak in those categories and see what articles need help! --Rkitko (talk) 01:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I think botanists should be in scope. Hesperian 23:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

What is with the flower in the banner? Why a cultivar? I can't see any reason for using a cultivar, there simply must be a featured picture of a non-cultivar, or use a non-featured picture if not. Did I miss this question elsewhere? Member of daisy family is good choice, though. KP Botany 23:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I just chose a featured picture at random, but it can easily be changed. Got one in mind? Doesn't necessarily have to be a photo of a flower, either. --Rkitko (talk) 01:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Rkitko, I think a member of the Asteraceae would be great, or Arabidopsis thaliana if we had a great one, but it's not pretty, certainly a flower, even though plants is bigger than flowers. It should be a featured picture if at all possible, a dandelion, frankly, would be good, but probably some sort of Aster. Something identified to species, not a subspecies. An orchid, because it is a huge family, or a lily would also be fine. Anyone else have an opinion? It takes a lot of server space to change it, so I would like to get it right for once, but I think using a cultivar is not appropriate--although this particular one would be, for many reasons, an excellent choice for a horticulture banner. KP Botany 00:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Wow! Great choice in so many ways. KP Botany 00:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
For the record, there just happen to be A FP pf a Dandelion. there's also one of a thirtle. Circeus 01:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The dandelion is gorgeous! As is the thistle, but I think I want to download the dandelion. I think the Chamomile, though, has diversity of properties, and should do just fine, unless anyone has a reason to object. I just think a cultivar didn't work, and I'm fine with Rkitko picking. Thanks for pointing out the dandelion image though. KP Botany 01:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm fine with any of those photos! The chamomile that's there now is also great. What I'm not OK with is making me pick! I'm terribly indecisive, which is why I picked randomly for the template photo in the beginning. I literally closed my eyes and poked the computer screen with a bunch of FP plant photos on the page. (I suppose I could have used a random number table generated by EXCEL, but I prefer my entirely scientific method for randomness.) --Rkitko (talk) 02:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I should have caught that. I'll repost asking folks if they approve or have a better idea KP Botany 04:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

A (northern) springtime update on Wikimedia projects

As the weather turns to the warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, I wanted to remind everyone of all the wiki-projects out there having to do with plants.

On Wikiversity, there are some budding projects, including the Bloom Clock and Plant Identification. The Bloom Clock is a "research project anyone can contribute to", where contributors can record any flowers they see blooming on any particular day and in any particular region, with the eventual goal of creating a database of bloom times that will be informative both about the plants themselves and the regions they grow in. The Plant Identification project is aimed at creating learning materials for students of horticulture, botany, and agriculture by creating quizzes that make use of the vast resource of photographs on Wikimedia Commons.

On Wikimedia Commons, there are always plants needing identification and new images needed. Check in at Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life to see what's going on there.

On Wikibooks, A Wikimanual of Gardening has been growing by leaps and bounds, thanks in no small part to the Import tool, used to copy articles from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of pages (many needing help).

So, while you might not be able to bring Wikimedia to the woodland, meadow, or garden, there are plenty of ways you can use Wikimedia to learn and teach others about the flowering plants which are so welcome a sight after a long cold winter.--SB_Johnny | talk

Use of ™ in article titles?

I've run across several of these recently:

A. Ross Central Park, (Central Park Splendor™)
Emer I or Emerald Isle, (Athena™)
Emer II or Emerald Vase, (Allee™)
Lewis & Clark, (Prairie Expedition™)
Zettler (Heritage™)

Seems very awkward. How should we handle these in our naming convention? --Rkitko (talk) 07:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

According to trademark, use of these symbols is not mandatory. I vote we deprecate its use. Hesperian 10:15, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
On the contrary, including the symbol conveys an important piece of information about the status of the name, and helps distinguish such names from cultivar names, with which they will otherwise be confused. [ETA: oops, just re-read and the comment is specifically about article titles. In that case I agree they are unnecessary, as long as the symbol appears in the text of the article.] MrDarwin 16:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. And since it's a trademark name, it seems reasonable to move them to Heritage (elm cultivar) Heritage (elm) etc. as that appears to be consistent with other elm cultivars, at least. I've noticed it's also the work of one editor, so I will alert them about this discussion so they may participate. --Rkitko (talk) 17:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Yep, bad naming. While I support the use of diacritics where appropriate, I don't see why we should be using ™ in any article title. My advice would be to move them whenever you find them. Guettarda 17:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Wow. Ptelea (talk · contribs) has done an amazing amount of work on elm cultivars. Guettarda 17:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, no, that ain't gonna fly. There are important differences between cultivars, plant breeders' rights varieties, and trademarked plant names; and this project should be making an effort to uphold the distinction.
These plants are not cultivars unless their names have been validly published under the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP), and registered with the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (AABGA), the International Cultivar Registration Authority for Ulmus. The AABGA does not appear to provide an online search facility, so I can't check the latter condition, but in any case these plant names all run afoul of the ICNCP, so they simply can't be cultivars. I suggest these be moved to the simpler title form Heritage (elm). Hesperian 23:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Following on from the above, if it can be confirmed that these really are cultivars, then they should be located at, and referred to by, one of their correct names, which would in this case would be Ulmus 'Zettler' and Ulmus parvifolia 'Zettler'. I prefer the former, and have used it here. Hesperian 23:33, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Either would work for me. In that case, here are some of the articles that would need to be checked on and then moved: Yatsubusa (elm cultivar), Acutifolia (elm cultivar), Alata (Wych Elm cultivar), Albo-dentata (elm cultivar), Albo-Variegata (Wych elm cultivar), Alksuth (elm cultivar)... Well, needless to say, there are quite a few of them. --Rkitko (talk) 23:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
There are 309 of them :-( Hesperian 00:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah, thank you for making that distinction clear. I therefore agree with you on the title. Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 23:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Not knowing Ptelea's background, I have asked the somewhat rude question whether these really are cultivars. I guess the thing to do is to wait for a response, rather than move them all over the place in search of immediate perfection. Hesperian 23:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I have discussed this with Ptelea, and eventually sought clarification from Dr Mark Tebbitt, cultivar registrar for Ulmus. Tebbitt has confirmed that none of these are registered cultivars, but has also stated that a cultivar is still a cultivar even if unregistered. This is contrary to my understanding and our article on cultivar, which states that "a cultivar is a cultivated plant that has received a name under the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants", but who am I to argue with the genus's cultivar registrar?
Given that these can be legitimately called "cultivars", their titles are not inaccurate, so there is no pressing need to move them. However I do think that these titles ought to follow the wider naming conventions for plant forms, e.g. Ulmus 'Bea Schwarz'. We don't seem to have an agreed convention on this, so rather than trying to deal with this specific case, I'll open a discussion on this below.
Hesperian 00:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
There is a style guide on trademarks. The gist of it seems to be, don't use TM. So articles with TM in the title should be moved.--Peta

A suggestion about importance

Will this WikiProject be concerned about rating article importance? (Some do, some don't, for various reasons.) I have a few thoughts on an objective criteria concerning species & genera I'd be willing to pontificate about share. -- llywrch 18:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed we do. Share away! --Rkitko (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
My suggestions are fairly simple.
  • I'm not qualified to say what ought to be in the "Top" category; I'm not a botanist. IIRC, rule of thumb is that 2% of the articles ought to be in this category, but beyond that, I'll leave it to the WikiProject to select which articles to lump in that group.
  • Genera. I feel the easiest way to avoid endless bickering is to use objective standards whenever possible, like rating the importance of cities upon number of inhabitants; note that this guidelines should not prohibit bumping an article up a rank or two due to other critera (e.g., historical importance, familiarity, etc.) I suggest that these be rated by species. Those with only one species would be rated "Low"; those with a considerable number be rated "High". Since I'm not familiar with just how many species on average are in a genus, I'll leave the numbers to the experts. Genera that can be persuasively argued to be "interesting" can be rated higher than this tool indicates.
  • Species. Maybe it's just because I've been working my way thru Zohary & Hopf's Domestication of plants in the Old World, but I have been thinking about the importance of species from an anthrocentric perspective. Certain species have been very important to man, which are known as founder crops. The Wikipedia article lists the ones that are important for Western Europe, but there are a number of others that played the same role in other parts of the world like teff, rice, enset, taro and corn. Next are a number of important crops like onions, tomatos, pearl millet, etc. Then there are crops of lesser importance like fenugreek, and saffron. Against this hierarchy, we have the fact that some plants are harvested in more important numbers than others: although Einkorn wheat is a founder crop, it is not cultivated anywhere near common wheat or rice is. In short, some plants are very important commercially, some are less important, & some are considered relect crops. So what I suggest here is that a grid be set up -- on one side is the importance in terms of domestication, on the other current harvest amounts, assign each step on each side a value, and the sum of these two values are used to rate the plant into the "high", "mid" & "low" categories -- but these may be adjusted upwards for other reasons (e.g., cultural importance).
Obviously, this only addresses a small number of all known plant species. But if this attempt is shown to work, maybe more grids can be defined to rate species according to other criteria (e.g., ecological importance). -- llywrch 00:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
My take goes:
  • Top: topical articles that cover the field (eg Herbarium, Leaf), high/top-level divisions (e.g. Dicots and Monocots). A few large and complex families and orders (e.g. Poaceae, Asteraceae).
  • High: Lesser topical articles (Shade tolerance, Serotiny), various lists of generas by families, comprehensive flora by country/geographical area, most orders and several families, a few generas and species of high interest for research or agriculture etc. (e.g. Arabidopsis thaliana, Rice). Major botanists and personalities.
    • Most orders and higher divisions, as well as most topics of interest to the field at large should be covered by High and Top categories.
  • Mid: Truly secondary topical articles (Mineral matter in plants), most families and lesser orders, some lists of species in genera, any genera or species that holds up a more than passing interest (e.g. rare plants). Minor crops, important horticultural plants and topics (e.g. Hardiness (plants))... Notable, but no major, botanists.
  • Low: Any species or genus whose article does not make a clear case for less than passing interest to the field of botany as a whole. Minor botanists.
Circeus 01:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

There are some genera and species though, that will be of top importance, Arabidopsis thaliana, obviously comes to mind, probably Amborella of high, and Nymphaeaceae, because of current research trends. Anything I work on of top, anything I don't work on of lesser might suffice.... KP Botany 02:22, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I knew A. thaliana would not be low,but wasn't sure whether it warranted top-level significance. Circeus 02:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Probably the only species we can safely put at top. KP Botany 03:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
While I think Circeus has a much better (& more comprehensive) scale, what about ecologically significant species? For example, Tsuga heterophylla is a defining member of the forests of the NW US & British Columbia, but has practically no commercial value. (IIRC, many commercial foresters consider it a weed.) I expect many prairie grasses would also fall into this category, as well as species like the Saguaro cactus, & at least some should be properly considered "High" rather than "Mid". -- llywrch 18:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Those probably fit in what I described as "genera and species of high interest for research or agriculture." The mostly layman I am might mis-assess some, but it's not exactly a big deal, IMO. Circeus 19:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there a list somewhere or way of what has been tagged that can be reviewed? The only ones I see are the ones on my watchlist, and there were so many I turned it off. I should have considered you might want to be second-guessed on some of this stuff. KP Botany 04:46, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Pulse taking

Just wanting to know what people are up to these days. Me, I'm trying to do some assessment and starting to work on a new Common Milkweed article (over here). I'm starting to find that Asclepias are a fascinating genus, but again my College's minimal coverage of botany (We do much stronger on forestry, it seems) is not helping. Circeus 00:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm studying, in addition to my usual, so I have very little time. Asclepias is, indeed, a fascinating genus. I went to a strong forestry and botany school, luckily. KP Botany 02:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not actually studying in Botany, myself, even though I love the discipline. And I should take more time to wor on some term papers, actually XD Circeus 02:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Do you mean in real life or on Wikipedia? Abridged 00:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Papers and studies in real life, indeed.Circeus 21:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Still focusing on Stylidium and recently finished off protocarnivorous plant. Lately I've been running BotanyBot for article tagging--just a few more categories to go. I have plans to get my hands on additional resources to complete (as much as I can) the taxonomy of Stylidiaceae, and I just proposed a potential split of the article Durian to include an article Durio (very tentative). And, at the very least, I'm creating stubs for the List of Durio species. In real life, I've just begun work on the Utricularia species here in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Washington. Great idea, Circeus. Anyone else going to share? --Rkitko (talk) 08:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
You have my full suport in splitting just about ANY crop plant from the associated food article. Take almond for a random example: I fail to see anything in it that makes it even attempt to cover Prunus dulcis, the plant. I almost sent Saffron to FAR for that very reason.Circeus 15:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Cultivar naming convention

Following on from the ™ discussion above, we don't seem to have agreed on a naming convention for cultivars. I propose the following:

Articles on cultivated plant forms, whether registered or not, should be titled according to the naming conventions of registered plant cultivars and PBR varieties; that is [[Genus 'Name']], with single quotes and capitalised form name. e.g. Banksia 'Stumpy Gold'.

My motivation for this is:

  1. Registered cultivars necessarily take this form, because it is mandated by the ICNCP; I feel very strongly that articles on registered cultivars should be entitled according to their registered cultivar names.
  2. PBR legislation varies from country to country, but to my knowledge most if not all PBR legislation uses this form for registration; I think that articles on PBR varieties should be entitled according to the names under which they were registered.
  3. Names of unregistered plants usually follow a convention somewhat along these lines, but with no rules regarding single- or double-quotes and capitalisation. I don't suppose it much matters what titles these plant articles take, but consistency is a good thing, so we might just as well mandate a single convention for everything.

Hesperian 00:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable idea. Excellent work. Should we also consider inviting other WikiProjects to the discussion, such as WP:WINE? They have an extensive list and category of grape "varieties". The term "variety" doesn't seem to be used correctly there. Once we flesh out the naming convention here and reach consensus, would we then take it to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and the village pump? (I'm not sure if we did that with our flora naming convention! Did we?). Looks great to me. Others may disagree because of the general naming convention guideline: "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists." --Rkitko (talk) 01:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks good. "Variety" in grapes is used for subspecies, it is an agricultural term. KP Botany 01:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, that's not very clear from the articles on grape varieties and species. Vitis vinifera contains a quote concerning the genetics of grapes and indicates that they are treated as cultivars, not "varieties" or subspecies. It may not be very clear in the literature, either, which results in the confusion on the articles. --Rkitko (talk) 02:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I thought that grape subspecies used in wine making were called varieties, but now that I think of apples, I suspect they may be cultivars. And "varietal" is a vintner's term, meaning all the grapes are of the same type or variety. Hmmmm. KP Botany 02:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) "Cultivar" is just shorthand for "cultivated variety", so both are true actually (more or less). --SB_Johnny|talk|books 03:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, you can tell cultivars are not my area. I thought that "variety" was just used in vinticulture whether it was a cultivated variety or cultivar, or a naturally occuring subspecies, that is now in cultivation. Whereas, elsewhere only varieties that were artificially produced were cultivars. However, now that I think of it, I'm writing an article about a cultivar that was discovered in the wild and is now extensively in cultivation. Don't anyone panic, I'm only writing about growing it, not about what a cultivar is! KP Botany 04:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the solution is to maintain our distinction between taxon and plant product. We already have a convention that says that there ought, ideally, to be separate articles on the plant product coconut and the plant taxon Cocos nucifera, but no-one is particularly stressed about the fact that they are currently one single article. We should take the same approach for cultivars: in a perfect world, there should be separate articles on the Granny Smith apple and the cultivar Malus 'Granny Smith', but this is not likely to happen until/unless some apple obsessive starts up WikiProject Apples and takes Granny Smith to FA. In the meantime, we won't stress about the fact that both product and cultivar are being handled in the one article, which is named for the product rather than the cultivar. Hesperian 03:07, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
In this case, though, what exactly is the taxon Granny Smith outside of cultivation? KP Botany 04:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't understand the question. All I'm saying is
  1. Coconut is to Cocos nucifera as Granny Smith is to Malus 'Granny Smith';
  2. I wouldn't advocate moving the former articles to the latter titles; but
  3. If these articles were to be split into separate plant product and plant articles, then I would like to see the latter names used for the plant articles.
Hesperian 04:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
But Cocos nucifera is an well-studied plant in its own right, and outside of economic botany or agriculture. Is the Granny Smith apple a naturally occuring plant that is studied outside of agriculture? Would it exist if not cultivated? KP Botany 05:19, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point. I suppose not. Hesperian 05:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

How about we dodge this issue altogether, at least for now:

Articles on cultivars, whether registered or not, should be titled according to the naming conventions of registered plant cultivars and PBR varieties; that is [[Genus 'Name']], with single quotes and capitalised form name; for example, Banksia 'Stumpy Gold'. Exceptions are made for cultivars associated with prominent plant products, so Granny Smith, not Malus 'Granny Smith'.

We can always revisit this at a later date. Hesperian 05:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that's already what we do, or can just bounce back on the general article naming policy for plants--use the common name for familiar ag products. KP Botany 04:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization

Archived discussions for background: August 2006

While we're talking about naming cons. it might be a good time to settle on a standard for capitalization for common names. Having dealt with the mammals (All Caps for species; lowercase for common name applied to a genus) a lot, I'm not sure an All Caps convention is worth the effort, since people love to move them back to the lower case names. But we should choose one way, or the other. --Peta 05:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

When you say all caps, do you mean the ALL CAPS or simply All Caps? I prefer lowercase common names, myself. See User:Rkitko/Common name capitalization for a few of my cut and pastes from conventions, guidelines, and articles as to what I follow. Admittedly, two of those are wiki articles and not policies or references and seem to be a bit POV without references to back them up. I'll C&P the two most pertinent parts here:
  • The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, addresses common names of plants and animals in 8.136. For the correct capitalization and spelling of common names of plants and animals, consult a dictionary or the authoritative guides to nomenclature, the ICBN and the ICZN, mentioned in 8.127. In any one work, a single source should be followed. In general, Chicago recommends capitalizing only proper nouns and adjectives, as in the following examples, which conform to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Dutchman's-breeches, mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, rhesus monkey, Rocky Mountain sheep, Cooper's hawk.
Of course, I would like to see some sort of uniformity here as well. And I haven't had the time to check the other style guides so I use the only one I had readily available. Plus I trust the CMS. And there are certainly other arguments regarding field guides and their usage (one of MPF's favorite arguments in favor of capitalization). Let's at least get a discussion going and see where it leads us. (Aside: I blame manual typeset for our problems today. With the transition to mechanical typeset and typewriters, they could no longer use the SMALL CAPS style often found when speaking of species with their common names used in the era of manual typeset. It's at least nice to know who to blame for our woes. I digress.) Apart from MPF's arguments in favor of capitalization, I haven't heard many other voices. What does everyone else think? --Rkitko (talk) 08:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Mabberley (a widely used general reference) uses lower case for common names; (ewfwatakala grass vs. Ewfwatakala Grass). --Peta 08:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'll declare myself upfront as a person who prefers capitalization, but I think we should be able to accommodate different usage based on what editor's from different parts of the world are comfortable in using in the same manner that we accomodate both American English and Commonwealth English. In terms of Australian flora, I personally prefer capitalization which is reflected in online government references, for example [3][4][5] (enter 'Banksia')--Melburnian 09:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, what do botanists do? In Australia, every important resource on common names capitalises them. The Checklist of Australian Trees, the Australian Plant Name Index, the Australian Plant Common Name Database, the Flora of Australia series.... And in Western Australia: Florabase, the Blackall & Grieve books.... I don't know too much about the other states, but I've got a copy of Beadle's Flora of the Sydney Region and it capitalises common names too, and Melburnian has pointed out that the NSW Plantnet does the same. I think it's safe to say that capitalising common names is firmly entrenched in Australia.
But this is an international project, and consistency is good. So what do botanists in other countries do? Hesperian 11:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
ITIS doesn't capitalize (see [6] for example). Of my four Mojave field guides, Knute and Mackay capitalize, Stewart and Rhode don't. Stan 14:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to distinguish between "official" common names, as established by some governing body or another, and vernacular names. For "official" names, the orthography of the governing body should be followed exactly, so that, for example, the first letter in each word of an AOU bird name should always be capitalized. Unofficial vernacular names should never be capitalized (except for parts that are proper names). By their very nature, they are not canonically tied to a specific rank in biological classification, so any argument about differing capitalization at the species level vs. higher is moot (and certainly "dog" in the vernacular use refers to a single species).

This rule would serve the needs of MPF (who holds "official" names in high esteem) and Australia, where common names seem to be well-systematized, and yet still allow us to add vernacular names. And by specifying sources for "official" common names, we will be making Wikipedia more encyclopedic.--Curtis Clark 14:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

In terms of "official" common names for plants, what are some examples of governing bodies (worldwide) that we should refer to?--Melburnian 23:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem, imo, is that if we go with "official" names and then standardize them for capitalization we can't, because the standards for capitalization are all different, and the USA generally does not have "officially" recognized plant names, so what do we do with plants endemic to the United States? Use British common names?
Also, Curtis, you're discussing birds, which do have official names (or using them as an example), and that doesn't make it easier for plants. The birders already use common names on Wikipedia, anyhow.
I agree with specifying sources, but that went over so poorly with taxonomy, are we really thinking it will work with names? KP Botany 04:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
No, no, I never said standardize them, I said preserve their original orthography, which is a different matter. The US literally has official "common names" for federally listed threatened and endangered species, and many states do, as well (California does). There's the checklist at http://plants.usda.gov/, which contains many common names, the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System, the Wisconsin Botanical Information System, and http://www.calflora.org/, not to mention List of plants by common name (this all, except calflora, from a cursory googling). How "official" these individually are is left in many cases to the reader's imagination, but there's standardization out there, and it has orthography.--Curtis Clark 07:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem with "preserving their original orthography" is the same as the problem with standardizing them, isn't it? Namely, what is their original orthography? Are these official common names in the USA? Here's what USDA says about their common names:
"Q. Why do you have only one common name when many plants have several?
A. PLANTS currently contains a single default common name, plus a single common name for each state (state common names are available only to NRCS resource managers). We expect to provide multiple common names as part of the next version of PLANTS. If we are adequately funded we plan to provide multiple common names by geographic area and language group in the year 2000."[7]
This doesn't sound like an official common name, but rather a default one since the data base wasn't designed for more than one. And doesn't CalFlora use common names from Jepson, meaning defaulting to how Jepson selected common names, and generally not one? Although I suppose their could be multiple "official common names" for plants.
The federal "official common names" for plants are just selected from the local flora or translated botanical Latin. That's why you have things called by common names no one ever used before. I suppose it could still be official, but I don't know that that is the purpose of the use of common names in the federal listings, that it is intended to confer official status upon the name.
The standardization, if left up the reader's imagination is hardly standardization, and the orthography will be all over the place, because the standardization is. What I don't see is how we get any usable policy out of this other than use what's in your source, and leave what the first editor used.KP Botany 07:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The US federal names, particularly those for endangered species, have always struck me as made up for the benefit of reporters. I've never been able to locate anything like a howto manual that tells botanists how to come up with English-language names, so I suspect it's at the whim of the people who write up descriptions, and doesn't have anything like an "official" status. In the absence of any North American organization whose goals include English name standardization, I would say there are simply no official names of any sort, and leave it at that. (I'm planning to go to Nevada Rare Plant Workshop in a couple weeks, will see if I can extract any confessions from anybody.) Stan 00:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent; replying to no-one in particular)I've never understood why this is the subject of so much debate. A golden retriever is a retriever which is either top-quality or made of precious metal; a Golden Retriever is a specific breed of dog. A black redtstart is a melanistic example of one of the eleven species of redstart; a Black Redstart is a member of the species Phoenicurus ochruros. 11:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

A dog is that critter that you refer to; a Dog is an archetype, or perhaps a deity (this is even clearer with coyote, Canis latrans, and Coyote, the Trickster). It's subject to debate because English is a global language, with multiple traditions of orthography, and because vernacular names for organisms represent an even greater number of traditions, and have had a clear association with scientific nomenclature and taxonomic ranks only within the last century or two.--Curtis Clark 13:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of MPF, has anybody heard from him lately? He has not made a single edit since 23 December 2006. Since he was one of Wikipedia's most prolific botanical editors this is quite unlike him. Perhaps he has left for good, which would be a great loss to Wikipedia. I do know he was getting frustrated with Wikipedia and with other editors (including me), in particular over discussions/arguments/edit wars with regard to "common names". He has taken breaks from Wikipedia before, but never for this long. MrDarwin 15:42, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe he still edits on Commons, but see the bottom of this edit for his comment that indicated his extended wikibreak. --Rkitko (talk) 16:42, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment tag image

Matricaria recutita on assessment banner

User:Rkitko originally picked an image at random for the WikiProject Plants assessment banner. I objected to that particular image because it was a cultivar and felt a species would be a better choice. I suggested that it could still be a member of the Asteraceae, as the first one was, and as it is a major family of flowering plants. The current choice is Matricaria recutita (above). Picked by Rkitko, but not with any particularly reasoning (pointed finger with closed eyes at screen full of featured pictures). I did not want a cultivar for the general plants banner, but felt an angiosperm would be appropriate, one of the larger and more familiar families. I am very satisfied with this random image, although I would like to see an article on the species, if we keep it, which I will start. Are there reasons for not going with this picture? Do other editors have preferences or suggestions? We could also, I suppose, pick a spectacular or notable plant, rather than a common and familiar one (my idea behind Asteraceae or Liliaceae). It is work for the servers to change images, I suppose, so deciding this sooner (with fewer banners placed) is best. Would folks weigh in? KP Botany 04:58, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I think you misunderstood my earlier comment. (But no worries). The random picking was of the initial cultivar (with my closed-eyes-pointed-finger method). User:Circeus changed the image diff. I, as stated above, have no preference. A lot of projects simply use a line-drawing or graphic, so that's another thought. (And I believe most of the banners are placed or I'm very close to it). Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 06:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Well, no worry, whoever picked it, it works now as far as I am concerned, and I think your point about getting input is a good one. I'd hate to use a line drawing when flowers are probably one of the most photogenic things on the planet. KP Botany 06:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, we have plenty of material to choose from. The main thing is that it needs to be recognizable when very small, so preferably single flower filling the image, with high-contrast background. Stan 00:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hydatellaceae

Interesting news about Hydatellaceae, don't you think? [8][9] Perhaps we can give this article a bit of attention and TLC. I'm off right now to the library to print out that Nature article. --Rkitko (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I saw the release but have not had time to read the articles yet. I did add the family to my watch list, and downloaded some info about it. Yes, needs work.
Well, I paraphrased some info from FloraBase and did a few cursory updates. The Nature article spends a lot of time on cladistics, so there's not much content to be used for our purposes here. As for Hydatella, I removed the ordo that was on the page (Nymphaeales) because while the Nature article concludes that Hydatellaceae is a "sister group" of Nymphaeales, it doesn't place it within that order. Now, I may have read that wrong, so someone check me on that if you get the chance. --Rkitko (talk) 08:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The Nature article doesn't place Hydatellaceae in Nymphaeales, but Stevens has already placed it in that order on the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. BTW it's interesting to note that Cronquist found this family to be so isolated that he placed it in its own order, Hydatellales (although in subclass Commelinidae, and attributing the order to himself, although it is attributed to Reveal & Doweld on the APweb, where it is still placed in synonymy under Poales--science just moves too fast these days!).
At any rate, given the newly discovered relationships of the family as sister to the families of Nymphaeales, it's really just a matter of opinion whether it should be included in Nymphaeales or Hydatellales. If anybody really feels the need to place it, they can put it in Nymphaeales and cite Stevens and the APweb. MrDarwin 17:09, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Monocots and Monocotyledon

I was wondering what we should do with these two articles. Monocots appears to have been a pet project of Brya. I would have just merged them, but there was some discussion on the talk pages from about a year ago so I figured I'd bring it to everyone's attention. I suppose this topic should also be a high priority for our WikiProject and it does seem a bit unorganized. Thoughts? --Rkitko (talk) 20:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have rethought this issue and agree with Brya, but draw an entirely different conclusion from the arguments. All of the higher taxa in the angiosperms have different circumscriptions and different methods of circumscription underlying every single name. There is no reason to treat the APG II circumscriptions differently from the others (well, except for the unranked arguments, but we're not dealing with that in taxoboxes, so there is no reason to deal with it in articles), by giving them their own pages, when they use the same name. In the articles on the eudicots and rosids, we should state in the introductory section of the article that in the APG II classification it is an unranked clade, and this sentence should be included in the monocotyledons article, with reference, in bold, to Monocots. And Monocots should be a redirect to Monocotyledon.
I'm not wedded to this, but think that this method both acknowledges how we've treated the APG I/II unranked clades elsewhere on Wikipedia, and the fact that we don't include different articles on each order or family for the ranked clades in each different taxonomy (not just Cronquist, versus Reveal, but either versus APG), and the fact that APG II kept and uses "monocots" because, unlike dicots, the researchers did pull a solid clade out of both the molecular and morphological data. KP Botany 18:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Agree with making Monocots a redirect to Monocotyledon. Not sure I understand all the other suggestions, but I'd keep discussion of APG etc in the "Taxonomy" section rather than the introduction (especially in this case, where there seems to be little disagreement about which plants are monocots). It also seems like we should link to the orders one way or another; that's the one thing which has been on the Monocots page which isn't on Monocotyledon. Kingdon 19:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Most plant higher taxa (higher than genus) articles include information about APG taxonomy in the introduction, so it would be appropriate to mention it also in the introduction. However, details can be accorded to the taxonomy section in depth, including orders. KP Botany 03:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Soybean

I recently added a crop history section to the Soybean article to have it conform with other articles such as Rice, Millet, etc. However, the article is much too large and contains material on topics such as 'soy controversies' that just go on and on and on...far too much detail for a 'main article'. In order to keep the article tight and readable, I suggest that some of the extraneous stuff on soy milk and health etc have their own sub-articles. I think it would be prudent to keep all the sections that are currently found in Soybean but we really need to keep just the one or two sentence summaries on how soy may or may not hurt babies etc and refer readers to the said sub-articles! I am posting here because my posts on the article talk page are ignored. Could somebody please take a look at Soybean and tell me what you think? -- Mumun 無文 13:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed that the summaries are too long and should be moved to the other articles (except where the other article already has everything which is on Soybean). Even if you don't usually get responses on the article's talk page, it still is good form to ask there. If no one responds, that is an answer of a sort. Kingdon 21:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, the infobox should be removed altogether. the article is clearly not about Glycine max, the plant. It's about soybean, the foodstuff.Circeus 20:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, good advice from Kingdon, post on the talk page, even if ignored. If you get reverted, then seek some assistance. I assure you once you remove people's pet essays from the article people will want to talk to you. Your analysis of the situation with this article seems to be on target.
The infoboxes give botanical information. No plant food product is so completely removed from its botanical roots that this information is not needed. Agriculturists still use botanical information, and people may want to learn more about the plant from a botanical perspective. When I learn about a new plant used as food or medicine the first thing I do is look it up in Wikipedia and check the taxobox for the family. KP Botany 02:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you!! --Mumun 無文 17:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Help sought for some picture captions

At Commons:Category:Kubota Garden, I've added some rather nice pictures of a Japanese Garden in Seattle, Washington. However, I know very little about plants, and right now the captions just say that it is part of this (20 acre) garden. If anyone can help identify plants, that would be great: please enhance my captions. - Jmabel | Talk 04:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Zephyranthes

Hi,

I recently did a cleanup on Zephyranthes and had some questions about formatting plant articles. I used bold for common names and Italic sp for species names within the article. There is a long list of redlink species that I left in normal font as I believe that is the convention that I have seen here.

I actually redlinked them to encourage me to start at least a stub on each of them, which may take a while but I will peck away at it. My real question is...is there an article that I can use as a 'Ideal plant stub' to base this on? Do you folks have a style and such that you would like to see all plant articles conform to? Perhaps the one linked species, Zephyranthes atamasco? I ask because if I'm going to the effort of creating all these articles I don't want someone to come along and have to make some style change to dozens of articles that I could have done in the first place.

Thanks, --killing sparrows 05:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a note: Latin species names should ALWAYS be italicized, whether or not they are bold, redlinked, or otherwise. This is a long-standing botanical convention and wasn't made up for Wikipedia, so we can't just apply it to some cases. --NoahElhardt 05:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, as soon as I read your note I realized thats the way it is done. Any help on my other Q's appreciated. For now I'll use the atamasco sp. article.--killing sparrows 07:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Didymeles

Hello! I have added a Didymelaceae handmade drawing in the Didymeles' taxobox (found in Commons), but I'm afraid of its bad quality. I am writing this because I would like to listen your judgement; if it were negative, I'm no problem with an eventual undo. Thank you --84.121.128.46 10:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

New plant-garden wiki

I've just set up a wiki just for plants and gardening. The articles on Wikipedia are by rule encyclopedic, and I want to create a plant encyclopedia and garden wiki with much more gardener friendly information, presentation. I am currently working on adding base material from Wikipedia itself, and then adding things like USDA plant zones, Sunset zones, propogation, common pests and diseases, and all the other types of things a gardener would want to know about a plant... so hopefully the sites will compliment each other with time. --RaffiKojian 15:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion for this project

Hi there,

I posted a question above re: Zephyranthes asking about style for this article. I think it would be a great idea if on your project main page you had a list of 'perfect articles,' stub class, start class, GA class, that outside editors could use when working with articles that are part of this project.

I have no formal training but a great interest in wildflowers in particular and plants in general and would enjoy copyediting, formatting, wikifying, finding images to add, etc. on these articles but don't want to waste my time if there is no commonly accepted way the articles should be constructed. A short document outlining what is desired (especially re: bold, italic etc. styles as I asked about above) would also be nice but even links to exemplars would do the trick. I think there are other people who might also enjoy improving the articles on a occasional basis if they had a format to follow. As an example, would you always want the taxo box added even if all or none of the info is available to the editor? Is there a minimum level for references if I am going to start creating stubs for the Zephyranthes species and a good place to go to get those refernces? These questions could all be answered briefly in one place and give outsiders a way to contribute.

Maybe the answer is 'just find any article, they are all about the same,' but a list would give new or amatuer editors confidence that they were doing it right. It would also help your project achieve consistancy and raise the quality of plant articles and WP in general.

Thanks! --killing sparrows 17:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'm a moron, there already is a list of articles. It still might be nice to expand the section and make it more prominent to outsiders or people like me who didn't scroll down far enough. --killing sparrows 17:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe I'm not. The articles are featured and I certainly won't be bringing any to that level, I guess my request above still stands. thanks--killing sparrows 17:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Whether you take an article to FAC level or just make it usable, the requirements are pretty much the same. It should be well-written, the introduction should be a synoposis of the entire article, and the introduction should stand alone. Include a section on the etymology of the name, if the name is interesting, add common names from the English speaking world, include an ecology section, a description, and ethnobotanical section, and a taxonomy section, include the taxobox. Some of us disagree about how a few of these things should be done. Some of these things you may not be up to the level of research necessary. Do what you can, post when you need help. KP Botany 01:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Help someone unfamiliar with plant articles!

I was new page patrolling and someone created an article on Phoebe porosa, which looked like this. It was unformatted and unsourced. I gave a shot at rewriting it so now it looks like this. However, I am woefully unfamiliar with the particulars related to this WikiProject, so I would be more comfortable if a member could look at it for me. In particular, the title of the article and the infobox information. Any help is appreciated. Leebo T/C 14:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Your edits look good to me. Thanks! Kingdon 19:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It looks like KP Botany and Rkitko have been helping out too. Thanks for checking on it, everyone. Leebo T/C 19:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Monocots and Monocotyledon

Since the existing Monocots article was redundant with respect to the Monocotyledon article, several merge suggestions were left hanging, and because numerous links on the term "monocots" took users to the less informative and helpful of the two articles, I've finally moved what little was not redundant from the Monocots to the Monocotyledon article, and made the former into a redirect to the latter. I would welcome anybody to review and clean up the article. MrDarwin 16:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Good work. Only thing which comes to mind is whether the first sentence should talk about the traditional division into two groups (monocots/dicots), or division into three-and-a-few-small-ones (monocots/eudicots/magnoliids/small-ones), or wording which doesn't really commit itself on that point. But I don't feel strongly enough to try to come up with a wording, and surely that paragraph isn't the place to get into details of non-monocot taxonomy. Like I said, thanks for finally merging these. Kingdon 19:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Anemone nemorosa

Can anyone help me solving the contradiction in the article about Anemone nemorosa? Thanks Aelwyn 13:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Found a reference and made the correction with citation. Not sure where the previous (mis)information came from as it was unreferenced. MrDarwin 14:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much Aelwyn 14:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Need ID on a weed

Anyone know what this one is? I've only seen it in one garden, but it's a serious pain there :)

Any hints? --SB_Johnny|talk|books 15:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I thumbed through my ID key written by a former professor of mine living and working in Central Pennsylvania--I figured she would have had a bias toward the local spring plants--but it would seem this species isn't there. I agree it's some kind of Brassicaceae, but beyond that I can only guess at the genus it belongs to. Where in Eastern PA was it? Have any photos of the flowers? Best guess right now would be something in the Cardamine genus. Perhaps a more dissected form of Cardamine pratensis? Or some other species in the genus; I don't have a lot of information or photos of them. --Rkitko (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Fruits! Gotta have fruits! My first thought was Coronopus didymus, but the leaves aren't quite right (despite it having very variable leaves).--Curtis Clark 04:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

It's close to Capsella when it sets fruit it should be easy to ID Hardyplants 06:40, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

This was in Lower Merion, Montgomery County. I saw fruit on one last year (elongated and upright, definitely a Brassicaceae pod)), but didn't catch the flowers. I'll keep an eye out for it, but I'm not leaving it in there to bloom :). I tryie to Key it in The Plants of Pennsylvania but without flowers, no dice. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 10:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you remember the size and shape of the stem leaves? 'New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora of the Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada' has good line drawings of most plants east of the Mississippi, but for most of the mustard family they illustrate the leaves on the flowering stems with the fruits with the basal leaves not so well pictured, your plants has an unusual pairing of the leaflets and the terminal leaflet shape should be diagnostic but I could not find a corresponding species that showed those features. Hardyplants 11:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately not, but I don't recall there being much in the way of caulines (it flowers/seeds very low). This is in a collector's garden (a "Hardy Plant Society person"), and she visits nurseries all over the country (particularly Oregon), as well as English nurseries. I haven't seen it anywhere else, so I'm presumining that it came in with one of those plants. It's actually quite pretty (at least the foliage is), but I'm afraid to let it grow out because it's obviously invasive. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 11:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Flora of COUNTRY

I noticed that in United States#Environment there is no link to an article about more detail about the Flora of the United States. This project might consider whether to include a naming convention for articles of the type Flora of {COUNTRY or REGION}. (SEWilco 05:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC))

I noticed #Flora_by_distribution_categories comments above, which might be helpful to someone writing articles about ecoregions or political regions. (SEWilco 04:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC))

"Lists of diseases"

I had spoken with the contributor about this a while back, but I'm interested in some different opinions. I'm glad to see some more information about phytopathology being added, but most of these lists (List of pear diseases, for example, is a copy of this page) are just wikitabled copies from APSnet, which is quite plain about their copyrights and conditions of use. Has anyone tried to get permission from them to release this under GFDL? I guess I'm just concerned that we're going to have to delete all these things sooner or later, and that earlier article sections about pests and diseases might be getting mixed into these pages (and so will be lost if deletion needs doing). Any thoughts? --SB_Johnny|talk|books 10:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Identification of trees of the United States

I created Identification of trees of the United States, but the source does not include all trees (covers trees east of Rockies and north of Florida). I invite expansion. I'm climbing through the listed trees, feeding the stubs like this one. (SEWilco 04:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC))

...and could someone assign an Importance estimate in the project template? I don't know how important it would be with all trees, much less what else might affect the rating. (SEWilco 19:35, 30 April 2007 (UTC))

WikiProject Plants organization

See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Sandbox

Because I apparently have nothing else better to do (!), I created a new look for the project's main page. I subsequently organized a lot of the information into subpages. I, however, didn't want to be too bold and just change it, so let me know what you think and change it at will. If there's good feedback, we can bring the formatting from Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Sandbox to the main page. Some of the changes I'd like people to review there are the scope statement, which I changed to include other topics from an earlier conversation we had here, and the list of resources. Please add some more helpful websites on that page.

I also created an invitation template for the purpose of inviting people to join us here if they're making contributions to plant-related articles. It must be substituted: {{subst:InvitePlants}}. Let me know what you think. --Rkitko (talk) 06:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I find the new version more appealing, but it does make more difficult to scan the whole article trying to find something that you're not sure where it got put. Are there some other WikiProjects which use subpages? (SEWilco 04:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC))
That was my one concern. I tried to leave links to the most important things on the main page. What resources did you use most often that you can't find? Do you see any unreasonable moves? And yes, plenty of other WikiProjects utilize the navbox and subpages: WP:BIOGRAPHY, WP:BURMA, WP:ECHO, WP:BEATLES, WP:AUS, etc. --Rkitko (talk) 04:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I haven't used either much, but until I saw the navbox I hadn't realized the /Template page existed. The existing link to that page was not obvious (I fixed that). (SEWilco 16:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC))
It would seem we need to expand that /Template page to include examples of the perfect article at every class-level (stub, start, B, good, A, and FA). That could easily be done. Any ideas on good articles for that purpose? The reason I like the navbox system is that it consolidates information into subpages, creating a nicer front-page for users not familiar with our project (e.g. no long list of participants on the front page). All of the important things are right there, including the naming convention, etc. Would there be any changes you would make to it to improve it? --Rkitko (talk) 16:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

New(ish) article

I came across this new article while adding folklore sections to various plant articles. It needs your green fingers!

PS - could you put a "new articles" section on your project page please, in case I find another one? Totnesmartin 13:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that tucked in the templates section is mention that a bot provides a list of articles which recently added a project template. (SEWilco 15:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC))
I cleaned up said article a little, although I know nothing about it. Thanks for the note. --NoahElhardt 15:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Categories by date of flowering

While typing tree descriptions I encountered the date of flowering (in North America). As gardeners are interested in when plants flower, I was wondering if there already are categories for indicating the months in which flowers tend to appear (in North America). I thought I'd ask here before WP-Gardening in case this group already has applicable Plants standards. (SEWilco 19:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC))

Months wouldn't work very well, as elevation and latitude affect flowering times relative to a calendar. If there were a scale which could relate one plant to another, that might be useful. But developing such a thing ourselves would perhaps be original research (and definitely a lot of work). Has someone else come up with a system for categorizing this? Kingdon 20:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
One of the goals of the Bloom Clock on Wikiversity is to eventually come up with such a system (original research is permitted there). It would take several years of data to get a system up and running though. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 23:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Wiki...data... Well, I could plant a variety of plants, point a webcam at it, map the location in the image of eash plant, and let people define the details of what happens during the year to each plant. No problem. Other than needing to get a garden space. At least for stuff in Wikipedia articles, it wouldn't take long for a bot to skim Plants articles looking for "Flower" and month names in the same sentence; that could at least help get month categories started. (SEWilco 04:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC))
I've seen several sources which state months (I just typed "May, June" for Black Tupelo). Obviously approximate (such as when "found in eastern North America"), although if you're a gardener and May flowers around June flowers, for many kinds of plants the June will flower after the May even if there is an early or late spring. Often the relative timing is sufficient, if you're just trying to have some early and some later flowers. Here, we don't need OR to categorize based on what a source says. We'd need the categories to be labeled to indicate "May" refers to the northern hemisphere; if the southern hemisphere wants categories they could crosslink to the corresponding northern categories. Assuming their countries allow such imports. (SEWilco 04:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC))

The question, as I understand it, is: if I add "It flowers from May to August" to an article, should I also put that article into categories Category:Plants that flower in May, Category:Plants that flower in June, Category:Plants that flower in July and Category:Plants that flower in August? I don't much like this idea, but I'm not all that fussed about it. However, I would be very very very strongly opposed to a rule that sees southern hemisphere plants that flower in March denied access to Category:Plants that flower in March. If a category is for northern hemisphere flowerings only, then call it Category:Plants that flower in March in the northern hemisphere, rather than marginalising half the planet. Hesperian 04:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have a reference in front of me that states that Black Tupelo flowers in late November. The reference relates to Australian gardens. Stating that something flowers in a particular month just doesn't work for an international encyclopaedia. It's much better to stick with seasons, i.e. "Black Tupelo flowers in late spring".--Melburnian 06:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, it starts flowering in late spring. Is there a translation from months to season? (SEWilco 07:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC))
It's an inexact science, but the translation from months to seasons could work along the lines of this example for spring:
  • Early spring: Northern Hemisphere: March; Southern Hemisphere: September
  • Mid spring: Northern Hemisphere: April; Southern Hemisphere: October
  • Late spring: Northern Hemisphere: May; Southern Hemisphere: November
--Melburnian 07:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Making any definitions along those lines is technically "OR", but this is much better than attempting to classify by month. It's not just a hemisphere problem though, because for example what flowers in early March in Georgia will be showing no signs of blooming in Quebec. The best system would be to use a combination of growing degree days and daylight hours (depending on the plant), but even then we'd need the data. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 09:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to make a calendar, just trying to make it easier to find articles with approximate dates. If something more precise becomes available the indexing can be improved. Spring (season) says March, April, and May. Dividing the 12 months up in the 4 seasons matches nicely the three terms "Early", "Mid" and "Late". I'll specify the details in a separate comment and invite the Gardening group to it. (SEWilco 17:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC))
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