Talk:Monocotyledon

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On Liliopsida, the following list of orders was given:

As far as I can tell, the degree of splitting here is very much overkill, i.e. it is unnecessary for creation of monophyletic groups. The list of orders currently given is based on what I have seen in a number of different sources, but someone more familiar with botany should compare the two schemes and make notes.

What is the point of the name being Monocotyledon and stating it to be a "class" when science says it is not the correct designation. The name is old fashioned. The justification of the name is in taxonomy. It is either a correct name or it is not. Science says it is not. Hence it should be renamed and made a redirect. GerardM 18:03, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

The name is not old fashioned. It's the common name of the group in question, and we have a policy of using common names. It's also its name as a clade, i.e. one still used in the taxonomic literature. The group is named Liliopsida when treated as a class, because classes have to be named after a type genus. On the other hand, if the rank were changed, so would that name. Further, if it turned out Lilium were not a monocot, the name Liliopsida would ened up referring to an entirely different group. That's somewhat far fetched, but the same thing has happened with Magnolia: although it is a dicot, it probably belongs in a different class than the others.

In short: Liliopsida is the name of the class containing Lilium. At the moment, it happens to be the same as the monocotyledons, and it is even likely it will stay that way. But there's no reason to prefer that name, since the other name is perfectly valid in taxonomy and more common in the vernacular. -- Josh

The text of the Monocotyledon article includes the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's most current classification scheme, which has 10 orders--Acorales, Alismatales, Asparagales, Dioscoreales, Liliales, Pandanales, Arecales, Commelinales, Poales, and Zingiberales, with two families not yet assigned an order, Petrosaviaceae and Dasypogonaceae. It is a reasonably parsimonious scheme, and is backed up by current phylogeny. I didn't, however, change the taxotable.
I didn't do so because there is a great deal of disagreement on plant taxonomy, and I am not an Angiosperm expert by any stretch of the imagination. This layperson's view is that the APG system seems like a reasonable attempt to develop a standard phylogeny. It also seems to me that Wikipedia ought to use the APG as a standard for organizing its pages on plant taxa, while noting the Cronquist and other important variations from the APG scheme in the relevant articles. What do others think?Tom Radulovich 04:05, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
I would think that is reasonable, IF we put something in the text that explains that the taxobox is based on Cronquist or some modification of Cronquist. That way the reader has a chance of understanding why there is disagreement - Marshman 04:13, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

APG II is the standard we have been using in wikipedia. To make this page more consistent with the others, in fact, we should have it in the taxobox and notable alternatives like Cronquist in the article. Josh 06:53, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Josh, at the moment the same word represts differet taxonomic levels and it makes it very messy for someone tyring to put together a new article--nixie 03:07, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Monocotyledones merge to here

I don't know enough about this or I'd do it myself. CambridgeBayWeather 07:38, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Done - MPF 10:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Note that is has not been merged, just deleted. Where it differed with this page the errors have been maintained - 20 Sep 2005
Note that there is also a separate monocots article that should be merged with this one. MrDarwin 14:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] better organization

you have got to have better organization. i mean instead of starting by monocots are plants blah blah blah, you might want to start with what is a monocot!! then you can discuss that there are certain no. of plants etc.

[edit] Seedling photograph

The photo comparing a monocot (grass) and dicot seedling purports to show the single cotyledon of a monocot seedling. In fact the "cotyledon" in the photograph is the first true leaf of the seedling, with the coleoptile barely visible below it. Neither of these is the cotyledon. MrDarwin 20:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)