Talk:Ailanthus altissima/Comments

==Intro==

• Why do you capitalise common names in the lead, but not the body of the article? Also, "tree-of-heaven" is hyphenated in the lead but not the body

It's been a habit of mine - it somehow looks better to me as is makes the common names stand out a bit more. I changed it here for consistency. Tree of heaven was often hyphenated in the literature whenever it was used mid sentence to clarify that it is a name referring to a species rather than a proper thing. If you think one way or the other is better than feel free to change it.

Maybe specify in the lead that both spellings are possible, but at least stick to one in the body?

• I'm not sure the street tree and size citations are needed. They seem to be cited enough in the article.

Agreed. Done

• The age bit should probably be moved in the body. It's not even mentioned there

Agreed, but I left it in the intro as well. I think the longevity of a tree is very important information when getting an idea of how long it will persist in a place. Also, for ailanthus the period is exceptionally for a tree of its size, making it worth mentioning as I see it.

I don't mind, as long as it's not only found in the lead

Description

• You have a good description of the female flowers, but not the male.

Agreed. My source was a bit weak on that as well, but I've added a few details

Looks okay to me

• Consider looking at the commons page: we have a few good images of flowers. While the PDdrawing is nice, it's not nearly as good as an actual photograph.

Disagree- while I agree that a photograph is easier to connect in the mind with something in reality, I think that the drawing is far more interesting from a botanical perspective. For example you can't count the reproductive organs from a photograph, but its very clear in the drawing. This is why lame publications like Audubon field guides have changed to photographs, but reputable ones like the Flora of North America and China continue using drawings.

I agree to disagree. I can't use drawings for identification. But then, my field guides (Fleurbec) have excellent photographies.

• Consider also integrating the bark image in that section, if at all possible. It's out of place in "Taxonomy"

Don't know how I should manage that with the limited space and without making the current pics very small.

Good question. putting images on only one side might help. Will poke at it.

• Not sure the "varieties"subsection is warranted.

Any suggestions? Would you prefer to see it integrated in the text. If so I think that would be okay

I was just thinking about removing the header. Should have been clearer.

Taxonomy

• Consider spinning the (overall unrelated) stuff about d'Incarvill into a short stub. He looks perfectly notable on his own, and I can translate some stuff from the French stub.

Done (Pierre Nicholas d'Incarville)

Yay, will add stuff to it.

• He attached a note indicating this
  • "He" being de Jussieu or d'Incarville?

Done (d'Incarville)

• I'd personally like to see the specific name of which A. glandulosa is an homonym of mentioned, but that eludes my Internet research abilities.

I'm unable to find anything at the moment as well, but I'll see what I can do.

Yeah, it's my personal quirk here, and I wouldn't mind the absence too much.

Maybe a genus- or family-level revision or monography will have stuff?

• It might also be pertinent to cite the Swingle publication (Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 16, apparently.)

Done - However in the US Deparment of Forestry document it was cited as volume 6, while the Arnoldia document had it as 16. A database at the University of Miami with all his work listed had it as Volume 6, number 14, so I used that info.

You're right. Turns out I misread (or typoed) the number in IPNI.

Ecology

• A few plants are resistant to these chemicals and form associations with Ailanthus in areas where it is dominant, such as along highways.
  • You should really give some examples, and ideally, add a source.

Removed the sentence. That was unsourced in the article before I contributed and I never came across anything suggesting that fact while I was working on it. We can put it back in if we find a source.

Control

• I trimmed this slightly, but I still think it goes into more details than needed. Heck, it's actually significantly more thorough than the Wikimanual!

Removed almost the entire section and replaced it with a short summary and a link to the wikibooks article, where I moved all the information. It's now just a paragraph within the ecology section. I think this was the right move as that section was more like an instructional guide than encyclopedic information, but if you disagree let me know.

Looks okay, I'll just remove the self reference from the body of text.

Uses

• The intro sentence of this section was very poor, and my replacement is only a marginal improvement.

Reworded it to give more of a summary and a segue of what's to come. You should have a look to see if it's any better though.

• The second half of the wood paragraph needs a source.

Done

Medicinal

• Also significantly too much details there. Try rewording to avoid the recipe things.

Weak disagree - I personally feel that those details make for good reading and give a straightforward presentation of how the plant was utilised in times past. There were a few more recipes in that Arnoldia ref (I think), but I think the ones present give the right amount of information about their usage without the section being like a list of recipes.

The details about ingrdients are nice, the specifics of preparation, however, are unnecessary. I reworded.

• 2 Citation tags that needs to be taken care of, one of which I cited myself.

Done-though the ref doesn't mention the homeopathic remedies being under the synonym. I had a look at some herbal drug websites and this does seem to be the case, but I don't think I can use a eStore as a ref.

• If the plant is significantly toxic, that should probably be expanded upon.

Done (by you ^_^)

Culture

• Reword the beginning so it ties better with the previous paragraph.

Done, but again have a look and see if you think it is an improvment

• The book cover is pertinent (consider adding it to the book's article, but needs a proper Fair use rational. It also needs to be put at a smaller resolution. Also, identifying the specific edition (at least for the image description page) would be a good idea.

??? - This is not my area of expertise. As I understand it the cover of a book can be used so long as the resolution is low. I don't have access to a program to reduce the resolution right now, so if you could take care of that it would be great. I went ahead and added the information to the description though.

Fixed the image bits.

• Citing the book quote more precisely (e.g. chapter number or title) would be a good idea.

No Access- I agree completely, but it's a hard book to come by in Germany. The first part of the quotation is on the first page in book 1 chapter 1, but I was just looking with the Amazon preview thing and I think the second part comes a bit later.

Will look into it. Circeus 17:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

If there's anything more I can do to improve it just let me know. Thanks for your comments and critiques! Djlayton4