Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive3

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Archives for WP:PLANTS		edit
1	2004-10 – 2005-07	Ericales; example article; Orders; food/poison; plant stubs; monotypic genus redirects; cacti; Carex
2	2005-07 – 2005-11	Acer; peer review requests; common names; headers; WikiProject Fungi proposal; stub proposals
3	2005-11 – 2006-01	Hyphenated species names; common names; article titles; tropical fruits
4	2006-01 – 2006-03	silver leaf tree; flower resource; article content/taxonomy; Poa; Wikipedia 1.0 Project
5	2006-03 – 2006-05	APGII; template botanist; flora article; article titles; common names; synonyms
6	2006-05	Plant article naming conventions; common names; categories; NPOV
7	2006-05 – 2006-06	lists/categories; Cornus; tomatoes; Horticulture and Gardening WikiProject; FA candidates; hortibox; range maps; Trifolium
8	2006-06-28	userbox; project banner; plant infobox; naming conventions
9	2006-06-28 – 2006-06-29	Taxoboxes for flowering plants; APGII
10	2006-06 – 2006-07	Original research; taxoboxes; APGII; italics
11	2006-07	interwiki cleanup for moss; illustrations of plant articles
12	2006-07 – 2006-11	Maples; citrus; photos; flora common name convention; capitalization; Vinca minor
13	2006-11 – 2007-01	Biographies needed; common names; APG and taxoboxes; species templates; image quality; microformat

Contents 1 Hyphenated plant species names 2 "New" Tropical Fruits

[edit] Hyphenated plant species names

This is a controversial topic. Is it poison-ivy or poison ivy, Osage-orange or Osage orange? I think we need a guideline on this. There is already discussion in Talk:Poison ivy and Talk:Toxicodendron#Hyphenation. The discussion should be gathered here.

The common usage is usually without hyphen. I looked up poison ivy, Douglas fir, Osage orange. They all are without hyphens in Merriam-Webster dictionary, Wordsmyth dictionary, WordNet dictionary, Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (it has only poison ivy entry, not the rest), and my English-Finnish dictionary, and are often clearly described as species, not some vague type of plant. Then I searched from several scientific databases.

ITIS:

• Maclura pomifera: osage orange, osageorange, osage-orange
• Pseudotsuga menziesii: douglas fir, Douglas-fir
• Toxicodendron diversilobum: Pacific poison oak, pacific poisonoak
• Toxicodendron radicans: eastern poison ivy, poison ivy, poisonivy

NCBI:

• Maclura pomifera: Osage orange
• Pseudotsuga menziesii: Douglas-fir
• Toxicodendron diversilobum: western poison-oak
• Toxicodendron radicans: eastern poison ivy

USDA/NRCS PLANTS:

• Maclura pomifera: osage orange
• Pseudotsuga menziesii: Douglas-fir
• Toxicodendron diversilobum: Pacific poison oak
• Toxicodendron radicans: eastern poison ivy

I also searched from Funet database, but I think that it is sketchy and not maintained, so I would exlude it from the comparison.

It seems that the scientific databases use most commonly forms without hyphens. An exception is Douglas-fir. However, these samples aren't enough to decide how some plants should be called in Wikipedia. I hope that you participate in this discussion, and give examples from books. Also, which is more important, common usage or usage in scientific works? –Hapsiainen 15:43, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

More sources

MPF would like to add [1] an online book by US Forest Service: Silvics of North America

• Maclura pomifera: Osage-orange
• Pseudotsuga menziesii: Douglas-fir

So I add these:

Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants:

• Maclura pomifera: Osage orange; hedge apple
• Toxicodendron radicans: eastern poison ivy

Horticopia (for green industry)

• Maclura pomifera: Osage Orange
• Pseudotsuga menziesii: Douglas Fir
• Toxicodendron diversilobum: Western Poison Oak
• Toxicodendron radicans: Poison Ivy

–Hapsiainen 00:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the rationale is that poison ivy isn't ivy, an Osage orange isn't an orange, and Douglas fir isn't a fir. I agree there should be consistency. I think the hyphenated forms have become deprecated in recent years in favor of the non-hyphenated, but I'd be happy to go either way. --Curtis Clark 19:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Requested move, see Talk:Poison_ivy (I think it should stay as Poison-ivy (plant), really... It's *not* a type of ivy after all and it helps differentiate. --Chaosfeary 10:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

That doesn't answer the question, how often the spelling "poison-ivy" is used. -Hapsiainen 20:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The original forms of all these names are unhyphenated. The hyphenated forms are an attempt by a few academics to impose their perception of order on the English language. Clearly Poison Ivy is not an ivy, but the way it is used in real life English is without the hyphen. I am a biologist (and am more likely to refer to many plants by the genus than by the common name), but I prefer common names to be left alone as much as possible. WormRunner 06:25, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It should also be noted that "German ivy" and "woodland ivy" are also not ivys, but are not usually hyphenated. Another example is "bigcone spruce", the other member of Pseudotsuga along with Douglas fir: It is not a spruce and is ordinarily not hyphenated. --Curtis Clark 15:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: move it to its scientific name. This avoids problems over hyphenation and capitalisation. - MPF 00:05, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur, but it seems not to be pattern and practice in Wikipedia. I suppose we could change that.--Curtis Clark 00:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I've proposed before that all plants should be moved to sci names (it's in the WP:TOL talk archives) - usually what's happened is that most of the people who actually work on plant articles agree with the idea (the no-sayers have generally been people with few or no plant article edits in their contribs), but nothing much ever gets done. Maybe it is time to get it done more fully - some time ago I got all of the non-Pinaceae conifers (except for Sequoiadendron) onto sci names as a test example, and it has worked very well. - MPF 00:24, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Some species can have several scientific names, while the taxonomists disagree which is the correct one. So we would still have disagreements about the correct title. Also, using scientific names in article titles is clearly against the Wikipedia naming conventions. "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize." I have edited many animal articles, and I don't understand, how the situation with plant names would be so different. -Hapsiainen 00:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

It has been my experience that common names for animals are far less confusing than the situation for plant common names. As an extreme example, in eastern Arkansas the common name "sugar maple" is applied both to Acer saccharum (a maple) and Populus deltoides (a poplar). That second species, P. deltoides may be called "cottonwood", "poplar", "aspen", or any number of other seemingly unrelated names, even though it's a standard and common tree. By contrast, a rat is a rat, and a skink is a skink. --EncycloPetey 04:39, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

The common names of vertebrates and showy insects such as butterflies are more stable than scientific names because, like scientific names, they are regulated (either de jure, such as birds by the AOU, or de facto, through common use in field guides), but unlike scientific names, the common names aren't subject to change when new information is found. Plants are a different matter; there are many more species, many of them either don't have common names, or have "made-up" common names, and there is more regional variation (or more precisely, regional variation is not suppressed as much as with animals). To me, the biggest irony is that every member of the two genera I study has a scientific name, but only one Encelia and three Eschscholzias have legitimate common names, so that when I write an article about each of them, the close relationship between "brittlebush" and Encelia palmeri won't be obvious from the article titles.--Curtis Clark 04:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd mostly agree with Curtis, except that common names can, and very frequently do, change. Look at an 18th or 19th century plant book, and a lot (often, most) of the names used will be different. I for one, would much rather follow an academic trying to make names more accurate, than be bound to the original spellings of the poorly-educated populist masses - the purpose of an encyclopedia is to educate, not to continue to promulgate historical errors of identification. If we are going to follow the anti-educational populist redneck supremacy that seems to be sweeping much of the world, we should also be taking on creationism rather than evolution: in this lies much of the logic in accepting names like 'poison oak' - if things are created individually, not evolved, they cannot have relationships, and a white oak is no more or less like a poison oak than it is a red oak. If we accept scientific understanding (as I believe we should), then we recognise that 'poison oak' is not an oak (Quercus) and so should not be called one, to educate and avoid confusion. - MPF 14:34, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting take. I don't disagree, but I also think that standardizing common names is a way of asserting cultural hegemony, and using scientific names is a way of freeing common names from that hegemony. In the ethnobotany garden of BioTrek, we label the plants so that the largest and easiest-to-see name is the Tongva name (the label also includes the binomial and an English common name), because that is what we are about.

I had a conversation with an Estonian botanist on a taxonomy list. He had stated that in Estonia, common names for (macroscopic) plants and animals had been standardized, and that he saw nothing wrong with that. I asked him, "What if it had been the Russians who standardized them?" He immediately got the point. Control of the names of things is control of culture, and scientific names are a system independent (as much as possible) of that. Wikipedia should not be in the business of enforcing cultural hegemony.

And I'd suggest checking out Red deer as an example of how common names can go awry. It would be better IMO to have the article entitled Cervus elaphus, followed with something along the lines of "called 'red deer' in Eurasia and 'elk' or 'wapiti' in North America".--Curtis Clark 19:41, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Coming in late, but I am opposed to the hyphenation of "common" names like "poison-ivy" unless that is truly a common usage. This is a recent and rather tortured linguistic device that is making an attempt at precision but has little or no support in the real world. I don't even know any botanists who do this, although I don't doubt that there are a few out there. But the bottom line is that "Poison ivy", without a hyphen, is far and away the commonest form of the name you will find. Common names by their very nature often don't have any rhyme or reason (although in this case there's the excellent reason that outside the rarified world of systematic botany many vining plants are commonly known as "ivy" whether or not they belong to the genus Hedera; that's what makes them common or vernacular, and not botanical, names). MrDarwin 17:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I have had some disagreements with MPF regarding common names, but I agree wholeheartedly with MPF that plant articles should fall under the botanical ("scientific") name, with the various and sundry common names redirecting to that, rather than vice-versa. Common names (for plants, at least) are imprecise, confusing, misleading, and the "common" names of any particular species vary too much from one English-speaking country to the next. MrDarwin 03:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, big sigh. This is wikipedia. It only takes one concerned editor a few secs to add the redirects of the hyphenated/non-hyphenated versions. And it really doesn't matter if ground ivy, boston ivy, or poison ivy aren't members of the genus Hedera. What matters is that a user (as opposed to an editor) can look up what they're trying to look up, and get to the article about the thing they're trying to look up. SB Johnny 23:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "New" Tropical Fruits

I have some knowledge about tropical fruits and wish to add them to Wikipedia for general noncommercial interest. These amount to some high quality foods generally unknown. I guess I will just do this in the appropriate plant family area (ie taxonomically), although the average person doesn't think "name of plant" when he or she sees a fruit. Cross referencing to foods would be good as well. Any comments appreciated. Dkchandlee

Sounds like you have some interesting articles to add! It would make most sense to publish them under pages by scientific (binomial) names unless the Common name is well known and unambiguous. Then link them to other pages as you mentioned. Check out the list on the page on tropical fruit. NoahElhardt 05:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)