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Cupressus and Hesperocyparis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stull et al. 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

Redirects to genus/Plant redirects with possibilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proposed deletion of Justicia cynea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither Justicia cyanea nor Justicia cynea is in IPNI.

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

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

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

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

Proposal for JSTOR Global Plants type specimen ID property on Wikidata

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toward a MOS:FLORA

Moved from User talk:SMcCandlish

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

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

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

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

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

Template:Plantgloss

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

Categories for monotypic genera

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

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

"Intsia" needs urgently to be enhanced!

The article Intsia is a stub and I can not believe that it has been rated as Low-importance! Please read the German article [1] which contains very important details about the threat and illegal deforestation.

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

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

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

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

Change some Festuca to Lolium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

rWCVP see here [2]https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.18919 Weepingraf (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

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

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

Mangifera

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

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

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

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

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

Linnaea borealis

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

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

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

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

Notice of Cupressus to Hesperocyparis move request

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