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WikiProject Plants

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Sorbus intermedia

Hi all, the taxon Sorbus intermedia (Q27980) is supposedly the same as Borkhausenia intermedia (Q41550410) and Scandosorbus intermedia (Q95988426). Is it necessary to have three distinct Wikidata items? Besides on Commons we have the category Borkhausenia intermedia and the gallery Borkhausenia intermedia but the Wikipedia article is still Sorbus intermedia. Can we fix this mess?-- Carnby (talk) 21:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Carnby: we cannot fix the mess involving Wikidata. As explained at User:Peter coxhead/Wikidata issues, contrary to what the Wikidata description claims, their "taxon" items are instances of taxon name not taxon, so there should be multiple items per taxon.
Editors here can move Sorbus intermedia to Scandosorbus intermedia and can also go over to Commons and make or ask for moves there. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:13, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So most sources now identify the plant as Scandosorbus intermedia and that should be the title?-- Carnby (talk) 06:23, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
POWO accepts the new name, with the others as synonyms, so I agree the page should be moved. POWO is the favoured source for organising article titles and taxobox classification, but the alternatives should be discussed in the text. Not sure if most sources recognise this combination yet. WFO and Tropicos don't recognise genus Scandosorbus. I assume the difference is because it's a relatively new genus (2018), although World Plants recognises xScandosorbus and xScandosorbus ×intermedia.
I've added other identifiers to the taxonbar in Sorbus intermedia. Curiously the taxonbar collapses in preview mode (because it has four identifiers), but not on the saved page. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:50, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's now been moved. POWO splits Sorbus into several genera. Under that circumscription, intermedia is an intergeneric hybrid between Torminalis, Aria, and Sorbus which is why the genus name Scandosorbus is needed for it. But the intermedia article refers to the parent species as Sorbus. There is quite a bit of work needed to implement the split of Sorbus on Wikipedia.
@Jts1882:, Tropicos isn't proactive about adding names that aren't relevant to the expertise of a taxonomist affiliated with Missouri Botanical Garden, or to a geographical region where MOBOT doesn't have a research program. Europe is not an area where MOBOT is going to have a research program (there are plenty of other institutions doing European botany). Tropicos picked up a lot of names not particularly relevant to MOBOT in the process of building The Plant List, but you should expect that Tropicos will often lack records of names of European species published after The Plant List. Plantdrew (talk) 19:39, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Importance ranking at Pitaya

A question has been raised at Talk:Pitaya#Importance ranking about this project ranking the importance of the acticle as "Top". Donald Albury 14:37, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Importance ratings aren't very important, and I don't worry about them much. Theoretically, if a WikiProject had collaborative efforts to expand articles, those efforts would focus on articles with higher importance ratings, but there really isn't a history of collaborative efforts to expand plant articles. Distribution of importance ratings follows (more or less) a power law: 75 Top, 698 High, 8,608 Mid, 83,731 Low, which I think is appropriate. Maybe it should not be (approximately) a power of 10, but it should not be 4 equally sized buckets of ~20,000 articles.
Pitaya was the 17th most viewed article last month (and been pretty consistently around that rank in other months). While I think page views should play some role in determining importance ratings, they shouldn't be the only consideration. Most of the articles rated Top importance are very basic topics in botany. The only other Top importance article about a particular plant (as opposed to a broad group like moss, flowering plant, etc.) is Arabidopsis thaliana, which I'd be inclined to demote to High importance.
Many of the most viewed articles are tropical fruits, or plants that have only recently become available and trendy in English speaking countries. That makes sense, people go to an encyclopedia to learn more about topics they are unfamiliar with. But I don't think pitaya is more important than wheat or rice, even if it does consistently get more page views. Pitaya shouldn't be Top importance. Either High or Mid would be reasonable. Plantdrew (talk) 16:44, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of years ago I went through most of this Project's articles and assessed them. I set Pitaya to High because it gets 3000 pageviews a day. Somebody put it to Top, Mid is too low. Abductive (reasoning) 20:52, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Achillea millefolium#Requested move 24 August 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Achillea millefolium#Requested move 24 August 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 03:49, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Juniper berries and arils

I'd appreciate if someone more familiar with botany would help answer my query at Talk:Juniper berry#Arils?, specifically regarding the relationship between juniper berries/galbuli and arils. – Scyrme (talk) 15:32, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki-linking of grasses?

Apparently the German as well as a number of other Wikipedias combine members of poales with a grass-like appearance into an article such as de:Gras. These articles are linked through grass (Q643352) which erroneously refers to True grass in the English Wikipedia.

The English Wikipedia as well as a few other Wikipedias on the other hand have an article Graminoid which appears to have a similar scope but cannot be linked through grass (Q643352) as these are already linked in Graminoid (Q12363071).

What to do? KaiKemmann (talk) 09:50, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's a well know limitation of Wikidata that it only allows one-to-one linking of wikidata items with language wikipedias. English Wikipedia links Poales (Q28502) with Poales, Poaceae (Q43238) with Poaceae, which is logical enough, and then links grass (Q643352) to the redirect true grass (which links to Poaceae). The problem lies with grass (Q643352), which is an item about grasses, an instance of organisms known by a particular common name (Q55983715). The cause of the problem is that the common name can be used broadly or narrowly, at least in English. The links to the broad grass article on German wikipedia and the link to the narrow grass article on English Wikipedia are both valid links, even though they cover different scope. I wouldn't say the English wikipedia link is erroneous, just because the link to the German wikipedia article has different scope. You could equally argue that the German wikipedia de:Gras should be linked to Graminoid (Q12363071) so it corresponds to the sitelink for the English wikipedia Graminoid. I'm not sure there is a solution, we just have to pick the least wrong one. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:02, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for you comprehensive answer, Jts1882.
Well, it seems to contradict the stringency of Wikidata to link true grass (= Poaceae) to grass (Q643352), which in general (i.e. in probably most of more than two dozen connected language wikipedias) seems to be about a number of poales species (of which true grass is only one).
This minor issue aside, I find it somewhat unsatisfactory that grass (Q643352) and Graminoid (Q12363071) coexist without apparent reference to each other.
Grass and true grass both redirect to Poaceae which probably does not reflect the concept of most people where "grass" is "anything that looks like grass".
Provided that we can agree on this definition (and maybe fall back onto "true grass" as a common synonym for "Poaceae") I would suggest to
Thus at least the English Wikipedia and my native Wikipedia would be linked through the Wikidata mechanism and other wikipedias could follow suit.
Any reservations about this?
Alternatively de:Gras and the respective articles in other language wikipedias could be entered manually as interwikilinks into the source code of graminoid. This would save some time but these interwikilinks would then need to be removed again if an article de:Graminoide for example would be established later on. (Or do the Wikidata-links automatically supercede the manual interwikilinks?)
KaiKemmann (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Type species sourcing

I was reviewing edits like this and was wondering... what is the best source to find the correct type species of a genus? I looked in POWO but didn't see anything. Steven Walling • talk 20:33, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IPNI or Tropicos are good for type species. Plantdrew (talk) 03:48, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ING is the most up-to-date for types of genera [1]https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/botany/ing/ Weepingraf (talk) 20:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Category: Taxa by author - a hoary old problem?

Seem to me that some editors have difficulty distinguishing between "taxa named by X" and "species named by X" (as for example here), when creating categories (eg. Category:Taxa named by X). Is there guidance somewhere to assist with an explanation of the difference? Gderrin (talk) 04:28, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • As I wrote at Talk:Sambucus australasica, I don't think there is a distinction between "taxa named by X" and "species named by X" – species are just one kind of taxon. A real issue is the difference between the nomenclature codes in how they handle transfers of species to another genus. The ICZN is only interested in the original author; the ICNafp takes account of the transferring author. So Sambucus australasica (Lindl.) Fritsch could be categorized:
  1. Only in "Taxa named by John Lindley"
  2. Only in "Taxa named by Karl Fritsch"
  3. In both these categories
There's a case for (1) – consistency across nomenclature codes – and a case for (3) – all authors cited with the taxon – but in my view no case for (2). Personally I prefer (1), since it's then consistent with "Plants described in YEAR" (except for replacement names), as well as with ICZN names. Sambucus australasica was described and named by John Lindley in 1838 (as Tripetelus australasicus), so should be categorized in "Plants described in 1838" and "Taxa named by John Lindley".
A problem with also using "Taxa named by <transferring author>" is whether current acceptance is enough to privilege one synonym of the basionym over others. In the very broadest sense a species has been named by any author transferring it to another genus. It's cleaner to categorize based on the basionym only. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:48, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I mildly prefer (3) because it is almost like a collaborative naming, just across time instead of like with a more recently named taxon where multiple authors are given credit. But I have been doing (1) because that what I have seen other editors doing. And I think I have failed to properly add the "named by" category on at least one article I wrote where the species does have two authors. Have to fix that when I'm back at editing next month.
Thanks for your comment, a very good summary, as usual. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:52, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, but it would need a wider discussion across ToL WikiProjects, I think. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:58, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion seems to reoccur with regular frequency ... maybe it's time to finally have this discussion and iron out some explanatory text to go on the category page?

Requested move at Talk:Floral emblem#Requested move 14 September 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Floral emblem#Requested move 14 September 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – MaterialWorks 16:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Distribution categorization of monotypic genera and species redirects

There seems to be a divergence of practice as to where to put the distribution categories for monotypic genera whose only species is described on a page with the genus as the title. I've consistently interpreted the guidance at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions#Using the categorization hierarchy

"Taxa of the lowest rank are always included (species, subspecies, varieties). Higher taxa are included only if endemic (for example, a genus endemic to Western Australia could have the genus article itself included in that category)"

to mean that the species redirect is always categorized, and the genus article is categorized only if endemic. So, for example, I would put both Scaraboides and Scaraboides manningii in Category:Endemic flora of the Cape Provinces. On the other hand, I would put Pentaglottis sempervirens in Category:Flora of Southwestern Europe but wouldn't put Pentaglottis in a distribution category.

I was prompted by the recent removal of a distribution category from Scaraboides manningii to look at examples to try to find out what the usual practice was. It seems to me that there isn't any consistency and I can't find any explicit guidance. I wonder if we could agree on how to handle distribution categories for monotypic genera and species redirects. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:07, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, well as no-one else has commented, and the three of us agree, I added to the guidance the sentence "In the case of monotypic taxa, redirects should be categorized in exactly the same way." Peter coxhead (talk) 09:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I also categorized the two examples I gave above as per the revised guidance. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Eruca vesicaria#Requested move 18 September 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Eruca vesicaria#Requested move 18 September 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 14:10, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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