Talk:Brassicaceae

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Contents 1 Onuris 2 Nasturtium 3 Wasabia 4 Cole 5 Capparidaceae and Cleomaceae 6 lead 7 edibility 8 Revamping this page

[edit] Onuris

genus Onuris now links to egyptian mythology. TeunSpaans 19:54, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Nasturtium

genus Nasturtium listed here links to a flower listed as a member of family Tropaeolaceae. TeunSpaans 19:15, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've fixed this one now... and I fixed the one above yesterday. But, hey guys, the really smart thing to do in these cases is to write a short page that really is about the genus concerned - even if it's only a taxobox and a few basic facts culled from the web. seglea 07:20, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wasabia

Wasabi describes a genus from this family (Brassicacea), which is there called Wasabia and not in the genus list on this page. Should it be added? Jerome K. 08:04, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

[edit] Cole

So where does the German word Kohl come from?--Curtis Clark 23:54, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I looked it up--it also comes from caulis, by way of the Italian cavolo.--Curtis Clark 04:30, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Capparidaceae and Cleomaceae

Brassicales article says that Capparidaceae is not now treated separately from Brassicaceae. But list of genera here uses narrower definition of Brassicaceae (it is the same as in [1]). Maybe, lists from [2] and [3] should be added.

The Brassicaceae are monophyletic, hence a good taxon in anyone's book. Some of the Capparaceae (e.g. Isomeris) are more closely related to the Brassicaceae than they are to the "core Capparaceae" (e.g., Capparis), which is itself monophyletic.

The issue is, should we lump them all into a single family (which would be called Brassicaceae by the rules of nomenclature), or should we divide them into several families: a monophyletic Capparaceae, a Brassicaceae that includes Isomeris and close relatives, and perhaps a few other small families that don't fit into either of those clades.

There are a number of other "family pairs" in which one is paraphyletic to the other. Two that come immediately to mind are Fumariaceae/Papaveraceae and Araliaceae/Apiaceae. Perhaps the best approach for now in Wikipedia is to state in Brassicales that, although Capparaceae are not monophyletic, and are often combined with Brassicaceae, they are still treated separately in Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark 18:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is not if we should treat them separately or not. The problem is that tree of taxons is not consistent. What we have now is:

(1) Brassicales says that Capparadiceae is merged to Brassicaceae.

(2) Brassicaceae circumscribes family in narrow sense.

(3) No one wants to write Capparidaceae because top-level taxon article (i. e., Brassicales) says that it is obsoleted in APG (that is supposed to be the main taxonomy system of Wikipedia articles on angiosperms).

(4) Caper article uses Cronquist systematics and says that Capparidaceae is a part of Caryophyllales.

The same situation is in pair Lemnaceae and Araceae, and so on.

Such situation when top-level taxon article uses wider circumscription of taxon than the taxon article leads to “invisible clades”. For example, most of garden plants have their articles in Wikipedia, but not spiderflower (Cleome). I think that one of causes is that the only way for Wikipedian to find the absence of this article is to type “Cleome” in search field, but not to see somewhere (in Brassicaceae or Capparaceae) something like “Cleome - spiderflower”.

I'm not a botanist, so I can't decide what solution here is preferrable, but I think one of them should be choosed and implementated consistently.

(1) Treat Brassicaceae=Bra+Cap+Cle, but mention in Bra article that it can be splitted as Cap+(Cle+Bra) (and for example, place the marks in list of genera: Brassica¹, Capparis², Cleome³).

(2) Treat Brassicaceae=Bra+Cle (and mention the possibility of splitting), also write the article Capparidaceae.

(3) Treat Brassicaceae=Bra, and write two more articles.--213.247.213.207 22:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] lead

suggest swaping 2nd and 3rd para's with each other. Gnangarra 12:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] edibility

I believe I read somewhere that Cheiranthus cheiri contains cardiotoxic glycosids making it thus possibly poisonous. Does anybody know more about this? J. Lesjak, 12:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revamping this page

I'll follow the scheme now given at the APG website (and thus Brassicaceae s.s.) and make a cladogram of Brassicaceae s.l. in the section about taxonomy to explain the topic. I'll try to write the article in a way that it will not be too difficult to merge with Capparaceae if the situation will change. I hope this will be OK for everybody. Aelwyn 12:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a small problem: I'm using as a source (amongst many others) a didactic paper from the University of Florence, which is based on the Italian translation of a book by Arthur Cronquist which is simply called Botanica (means 'Botany', there was no need to translate I suppose) and that dates 1979. I can't find the name of the original (it must be a very general introduction into botany), but I suppose it would be better to cite it directly, as translations in this field are extremely straight-foreword, nearly word by word. How should I cite this source? Aelwyn 18:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)