Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants

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WikiProject Plants

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eFloras.org problem affecting many references

As of now, http://www.efloras.org/ is offline. This affects, among others, the online Flora of North America and the online Flora of China, both widely used in references. The Flora of North America seems to have moved to http://floranorthamerica.org, but with no clear mapping between old and new URLs for taxa. I can only find the Flora of China via http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/, from which you can get to PDFs for families, but apparently not individual taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

At least for references using FNA and template {{eFlora}} it looks fixable. The new urls use the taxon name, which are the third parameter in the template. So 'Quercus is at http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_alba, Quercus sect. Quercus at http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_sect._Quercus and Quercus alba http://floranorthamerica.org/Quercus_alba. I don't know how widely the template is used. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:23, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Missouri Botanical Garden websites (excluding Tropicos) have been down since March 12, with no estimate of a time to be fixed. floranorthamerica.org has existed alongside efloras.org for several years. I don't know what the long term plans are for efloras, but I expect it will be back up for the near term when the Mobot web server is fixed. Plantdrew (talk) 14:58, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

That's good to know as there are over 8,000 uses and only about 800use the template.

Not all the Mobot websites are down. APweb is still live. Others give a message about scheduled maintenances (e.g. latindict). WFO is also live, although not sure if that is hosted by mobot.—  Jts1882 | talk  08:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

APweb was down when I tried to access it last week. It looks like pages with the domain mobot.org are now up, and those with missouribotanicalgarden.org are still down. Plantdrew (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

The botanical dictionary one was down when I wrote that post, but is indeed up now, so they are making progress. Perhap eFlora will be fixed soon. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:25, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

The eFloras are back online. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882: down right now. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I saw it was down again at the weekend. This time it's giving an error page rather than not being found. Hopefully just ongoing issues with the mobot site updates. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

And both Flora of North America and Flora of China are back online. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:34, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Nomenclatural issue at Talk:Rose

A nomenclatural issue (why is the type of Rosa Rosa cinnomomea when Rosa cinnomomea is a synonym (per POWO) of Rosa pendulina?) has been raised at Talk:Rose. If anyone can shed any light ... Lavateraguy (talk) 20:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Request for input on foliosum

Hello all! I have begun work on a new type of plant article and would like to receive some input from you lovely folks before I continue. I noticed there are no articles on any specific epithets or lists containing all species with a particular name. To try to remedy this, I started the Set Index Article foliosum, which aims to collect all species that end in that epithet. I would like to take this to FLC when it is complete, so am trying to solicit input that would bring it to that standard. I also have the goal of bringing other articles of list type to FLC, so general feedback/suggestions/consensus are welcome. In particular, I have two main queries:

1. What should the criteria for inclusion be, and are the data repositories listed sufficient for completeness?
2. Does the table need any more or less information to be useful?

Thank you for any thoughts you have, whether here or at the article's talk page! Fritzmann (message me) 16:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I would find lists like these interesting, and perhaps useful in some instances. Why not include foliosa, foliosum, etc., they are all the same specific epithet in different gendered endings. Will you include varieties & forms with this name? Including fungi too? (an epithet search on 'folios' turns up 38 hits at Index Fungorum) Esculenta (talk) 16:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I thought about doing the different forms of the same word, but the list will already be long as is. I have included about half the vascular plants so far, and have a lot of work to do in finding all of the species from other kingdoms. Plus, for the sake of titles I think it makes sense to just link to the other tenses in the lede. Not planning to include varieties and forms at the moment; I think treating it as a specific epithet is the most straightforward approach. I want to include fungi, yes, as well as animals and any other organisms. I'm not as familiar with these, so would love recommendations for databases that would give me a complete view. Fritzmann (message me) 16:41, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that you should look at C. elegans (disambiguation) if you haven't already. Don't know if it will enthuse you or scare you off from this project. Esculenta (talk) 19:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Lol definitely enthuses me! Although I think I will stay away from such highly common epithets for the time. Fritzmann (message me) 21:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I for one think an article like this is lacking in wp:Notability and falls afoul of being essentially botany wp:Fancruft.--Kevmin § 16:44, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin: could you elaborate on this? I definitely had reservations about that, but felt that the navigational benefits outweigh crufty concerns. The usecase I thought of was what if a layperson saw a species abbreviation, like D. foliosum, but didn't know the genus or type of a plant. They could just search "foliosum" on wikipedia, and this list would then help them find what they are looking for. Would love to know your thoughts! Fritzmann (message me) 17:49, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

With a few exceptions (C. elegans, D. melanogaster, T. rex, H. sapiens, E. coli, Rh. ponticum) it is not normal to encounter the short form of a species name in a context where the genus is not implicit. The usual practice is to write the genus name out in full on first usage (and any subsequent uses relating to the genus as a whole) and (depending on the author's chosen style) abbreviate the genus in species name is subsequent uses. (My preference is to write the name out in full - for the benefit of search engines (it's less hassle than writing ABBR tags.)

IPNI has 960 records for foliosa/us/um (with some duplicate names) (plus 80 for foliacea/us/um and 65 for foliata/us/um), and that doesn't include occurrences among algae, fungi and possibly even animals. If a person doesn't know the genus or type of a plant a list of such magnitude is not likely to help them resolve the hypothetical ambiguity. (This isn't the largest possible list - IPNI has 1276 records for hookeri/iana/ianus/ianum, and I didn't realise it was so common, but 2189 records for elegans.)

The question has come up before, and the consensus has been against it. I think WP:NOTDB applies. For widespread and complete coverage it's a lot of work (I expect that there are several million plant binomials to cover), for little benefit (the "if a job can't be done well, it's not worth doing" principle applies), and there other places (tens of thousands of plant species lacking articles) where effort would be more usefully applied. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Lavateraguy, that definitely gives me good insight. I think I'll table the project for now, knowing that. Perhaps I'll continue it as a pet project here or there, but it's clear that there are better places to sink effort into! Thanks for your valuable advice, Fritzmann (message me) 12:35, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Penstemon alluviorum

I've been working on a Draft:List of Penstemon species (almost finished) and I've run into the fact that Penstemon alluviorum is a synonym of Penstemon digitalis according to POWO, WFO, and Flora of North America. It contains essentially no information and unless there are objections I'm going to turn it into a redirect. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment: The latest version of the Weakley Flora (Flora of the South Eastern US(2024) still recognises Penstemon alluviorum, as do a number of recent (but older than FNA) regional floras. The Weakley Flora has 5 taxa in the Penstemon digitalis complex - POWO recognises 4 of them, but not Penstemon alluviorum, probably following FNA. It seems that it's not a settled question, but since Wikipedia's default sources consider it a synonym, and the article is a stub I'd go ahead and do the redirect. Maybe add a paragraph on the Penstemon digitalis complex at Penstemon digitalis. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:58, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we should make exceptions to following POWO, like Penstemon grandiflorus, where pretty much every other source disagrees. If Weakley and FNA both listed Penstemon alluviorum I'd keep it and add more information to explain the controversy, but in this case I think redirect with more information at P. digitalis is the right move. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 16:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

No, It is FNA that POWO follows in synonymous Penstemon alluviorum. Weakley overall is much more of a splitter than FNA. Weepingraf (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Authors of synonyms

I have always blindly followed other editors of plant articles by "smalling" the authors of synonyms in taxoboxes (as for Lambertia formosa for example). I have searched for guidance but can only find examples such as here. Is describing the editors of synonyms in small font contrary to MOS:SMALLFONT as suggested at Styphelia prostrata? Gderrin (talk) 23:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

In MOS:SCIENTIFIC, it says "In the article body, wrap the authority information in {{small}} or .... (This need not be done in a taxobox, which handles this automatically.)" I think this is referring to the "authority" parameter, which does "small" automatically. It does not say to "small" authorities listed in the "synonyms" parameter, but perhaps this should be made explicit (so that authorities are a consistent size between authority listings in both of these parameters? Esculenta (talk) 23:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

The bit Esculenta quotes was added by Peter coxhead on 11 October 2020. On 7 Februray 2021 SMcCandlish added a cross-reference to MOS:SMALLFONT pointing to MOS:SCIENTIFIC. So it's been 3 years with taxon authorities noted as an exception to SMALLFONT.

MOS:SMALLTEXT goes somewhere different than SMALLFONT (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility#Font_size vs. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting#Font_size. I am inclined to take the Accessibility section of MOS more seriously than most other sections. Yeah, smalling already smalled text seems like a potential accessibility issue. {{Small}} warns against using it in "infoboxes", as do the MOS sections already linked. What is an "infobox"? Taxoboxes were the first infoboxes (Wikipedia_talk:List_of_infoboxes/Archive_1#Poll:_new_name). Taxoboxes are not based on {{Infobox}}, which displays text that is smaller than the prose content of the article. Taxoboxes display most text at the same size as the prose content of the article. Smalling authorities in a taxobox does not take them below an accessible size.

Taxoboxes are apparently MOS:INFOBOXEXCEPTIONS, as they include higher taxa not mentioned elsewhere in prose content. Infobox wars are a thing with an open (but likely soon closed) discussion at WP:RECINFOBOXRFC. There are some other "infoboxes" that aren't built off of {{Infobox}}. I don't know of any that don't small their text, but taxoboxes are an obvious exception to the notion that "infoboxes" start off with small text. Plantdrew (talk) 01:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Esculenta that it should be noted that synonym authorities are also set in smaller font, which, as Plantdrew notes, has been agreed not to be against SMALLFONT.

One way of automatically setting synonym authorities in small text is to use {{Species list}} (or the equivalents for other ranks). An issue with synonym lists is that long lists are, rightly, often hidden, e.g. by using {{Hidden}}, but this by default makes its contents smaller, so that double "smalling" gets applied to authorities, which is wrong. Using {{Species list}} with |hidden=yes avoids this. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I've now tried to clarify at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Scientific names. Please check. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to Esculenta, Plantdrew and Peter coxhead for their contibutions here. I will use {{Species list}} with {{Hidden}} from now on. Gderrin (talk) 08:40, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Opinions sought: List of Penstemon species

I have almost finished finding photographs for the Draft:List of Penstemon species and should be finished in about a week. Currently I have the list in a table with four columns: Scientific Name, Authority, Common Names, and Photo. I thought it might occasionally be useful to be able to sort the table by Authority, but if I put it into just three columns it may display better on mobile devices. Any opinions on what I should prioritize? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:09, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think those four columns should be fine on mobile. The images are small and the names will wrap if people have narrow screens. The sorting on different columns is a nice feature of wikipedia tables. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the authorities should go in the column with the binomials. Authorities don't really stand on their own (especially abbreviated ones; we'd never write "it was first described by L."). It seems unlikely that anybody would want to sort by authority, and if they did, they won't really get the results they probably would want since parenthetical authorities will sort separately from non-parenthetical authorities, and authorities following a parenthetical would sort all over the place. Although it's not very widely used (and I think isn't used at all for plants), {{Species table}} puts authorities in the same column as the binomial. Plantdrew (talk) 19:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Plantdrew for both reasons given. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:26, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

MtBotany I do have a question. You made the column for the photos sortable. How do they sort? Uporządnicki (talk) 16:56, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@AzseicsoK By the description of the photo. It is not hugely useful, but it will group the botanical illustrations together for example. And more useful for people attempting to find additional photos, group all the entries without photos. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

South African plant photo donation

Please see this quote regarding an amazing donation of tens of thousands of photos depicting South African plants:

"Greetings from the Afrikaanse Wikipedia where I am a bureaucrat. Last year I negotiated a deal with Emeritus prof. A.E. van Wyk (renowned botanist and author of various books on Flora in South Africa) whereby he agreed to share his 60,000 photos with us (a lifetime's work). He has started loading those pictures onto Commons as User:SAPlants. I think it is going to take him the better part of three years to complete this. All the pictures are categorised according to their taxonomic names. He has already loaded close to 18,000 pictures. Most of the pictures covers Southern Africa flora. We, here on the Afrikaans Wikipedia, are working hard to create articles to accommodate these pictures! A good example is the family Aizoaceae with 100 genera already created! I invite you to get stuck into those pictures and articles..." Adam Harangozó (talk) 09:16, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Fantastic! And I especially love the efforts going into creating articles to go with the photos. 17:21, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Batales

Hi there, I'm trying to add refs to very old unsourced pages and came across Batales. I'm not familiar with best practice for refs in this area, so could someone here add some refs to improve it, please? JMWt (talk) 06:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

See Cronquist system for references for the orders of the Cronquist system. Batales refers to the 1981 version; in the bibliography at the bottom of Cronquist system one can find Cronquist's 1981 publication. (This is an instance where a primary source should be acceptable.) The problem is accessing the publication is probably hard, and adding the reference unseen questionable practice.

An accessible secondary source can be found here Lavateraguy (talk) 08:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Nice find. It would be extremely useful to have that comparison table in Excel. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:27, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks,if someone could add it to the page and some point, that would be great. JMWt (talk) 09:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

A related issue is that Batidales redirects to Brassicales rather than Batales. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:05, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Bat flower vs. batflower

Hello WP:PLANTS people! I was trying to copyedit Tacca integrifolia and saw that somebody previously changed the use of the common name "white batflower" to "white bat flower." I reverted them and looked for a source to prove either spelling, and I found a lot of shop listings that said the latter, but those aren't exactly reliable. Do any of you guys have access to a source that says otherwise? I also looked at Tacca and both terms were used in the same article. Thanks! —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 13:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Google search gives roughly the same number of results for batflower and bat flower. white bat flower has over 4 times as many results as white batflower. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:30, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Lavateraguy! :) —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 21:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

One more place to find sources for common names: archive.org

It is a far from a perfect library, but it is a good place to find sources you can access, read, and search for text strings that is free. In this case there is the same result as searching google. One book (three copies) that has "white batflower" and six that have "white bat flower". Plus some other common names.

It is no replacement for Wikipedia library access, but it is great for older floras and the occasional book explaining plant name origins. Second only to Biodiversity Heritage Library for scans of old botanical books. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:51, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much @MtBotany! I actually do have access to TWL so that's perfect :). —asparagusus (interaction) ^sprouts! 00:05, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Asparagusus One thing about searching the archive library. If you put in a binomial and get very few results from older books try putting it in without double quotes. Many books are formatted so that the genus and species name appear on different lines (especially the older ones) and so searching for "Tacca integrifolia" will miss many sources prior to about 1890. You'll get a lot of false positives as well, especially with a name like integrifolia, but sometimes it is worth it for a really deep search. Hand-book of Indian Flora (1864) (p.459) is an example. Tacca integrifolia only appears there as a synonym, but even in the name they're using as correct only appears as T. aspera under a heading further up the page for Tacca. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the sources in the taxonbar, both Mobot Plant Finder and RHS use "bat flower" and iNaturalist uses "white bat flower". Both "bat flower" and "batflower" seem in use as vernacular names. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:33, 20 April 2024 (UTC)