Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive19

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[edit] Food plant statistics

Each food plant article should include:

  • total annual production/harvest worldwide
  • top ten country production figures
  • annual consumption per capita in various countries
  • import/export flows
  • wholesale and retail prices
  • production per acre
  • inputs: labor, water, fertilizer, weed killer, insecticide per acre and per kilo of food production
  • environmental/sustainability aspects
  • history of domestication; current split between formal vs. subsistence production/consumption

Until we incorporate such information into the articles, what are the best external sources of such information?

This seems like a good global data resource:

-69.87.199.71 (talk) 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

That seems like a good list of topics (in fact, I'm tempted to add it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template although I don't know if I should seek consensus first). I'm not sure what to say about specific statistics. Is the goal to update them every year? Or just give a rough idea - prices are the most obvious can of worms given different currencies and rapid fluctuation in many cases. And there's also trying to compare statistics from different sources. But many of the above topics can be covered without those kinds of problems, and we probably should try to give some coverage of things like how much of a crop is grown. Kingdon (talk) 17:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and added the list to Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template. Kingdon (talk) 21:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tulip

Tulip is in need of a good copy edit & reorganization by a knowledgeable editor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.4.43 (talk) 01:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Identifying some pics of plants

I had uploaded pictures of some flowers a while ago and I was wondering if someone could identify and add them to their respective articles... please drop me a note on my talk page if anyone can identify them or if anyone knows where I can get them identified. Thanks. - TwoOars 09:12, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The red fruit there -- when you ate it, was it tangy or sweet or hot or bitter? Did you survive? I would need to know these things before I could identify that fruit. Did you smell it? -- carol (talk) 15:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
My guts lean for a Solanum (which probably account for Carol's comment), but I'm not sure we can identify without any details of the flowers. Circeus (talk) 18:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
It's a Capsicum. Hesperian 23:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
SPOILER!! I was expecting to be reprimanded for suggesting using taste as identification! Or at the very least, suggesting that this probably very hot thing be taste tested. According to legend, Galileo could identify heavy metals by taste and he also went blind towards the end of his life. I think hot peppers extend lives though. -- carol (talk) 01:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
The pink flower is clearly a member of Malvaceae, and probably genus Hibiscus. It's very interesting; the carpel and stamens speak strongly of Hibiscus, but the petals are somewhat unusual.--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 00:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC) P.S. The buds are also distinctly Hibiscus-ish.--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 00:52, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
There's too many different Hibiscuses for it easy to be certain of identification, but it looks close to Hibiscus micranthus. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orchidology and orchidologist

Should I just redirect these to orchid? Do they have any potential? Richard001 (talk) 02:43, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think a redirect is the best option. It's pretty much the same as lepidopterology, and it doesn't even have a redirect (although there is a lepidopterist article). Circeus (talk) 04:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Redirect is probably best for now, although I could imagine that an Orchidology article could eventually exist, describing the history of the field and major persons who contributed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Taken care of, thanks for the input. Richard001 (talk) 04:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Josh Alman

I'd appreciate it if one of you guys checked out if this guy really is notable. Cheers. --Dweller (talk) 22:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Had a look on Harzing's Publish or Perish and WOK and could not find a single publication by this Guy Sepilok2007 (talk) 04:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added the {{prod}} template.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Cheers. If there's an AfD, I'll point the debate here. --Dweller (talk) 10:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
God1024 is constantly removing the template.AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 15:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like time for an AfD (removing an AfD template is grounds for blocking). I won't have time to set it up until this evening, but I'll be glad to weigh in if someone else does sooner (unless God1024 comes up with some evidence of notability).--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and read the discussion page. Frac2 might be a sock puppet of God1024(edit history - [1] ).AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Take it to AfD. Restoring the Template:prod tag (as AgnosticPreachersKid (talk · contribs) did) is not the right procedure (see "If any user objects — usually by removing the tag" and "If anyone, including the article's creator, removes Template:Prod from an article for any reason, do not put it back" at Wikipedia:Proposed deletion). Kingdon (talk) 20:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Done.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 2007 in paleontology

Hi, all! I noticed these articles (2006 in paleontology, etc.) that recently showed up on the new article list. So far they only list info on dinosaurs, so if you know of any plant-related paleontology discoveries that might be included in these lists, it'd be nice to balance them out with non-dino info, with all due respect to the WP:DINO folks ;-) Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 02:51, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I remember the paleontology (and plant science) sections from the Brittanica yearbooks have some stuff about paleobotany. Circeus (talk) 03:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Ah, good source. I already added one to 2005 in paleontology that I remembered. Wattieza also comes to mind as an important one to put in one of those articles. --Rkitko (talk) 03:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Power of Movement in Plants

Hi to all the plant folks, I'm doing a few scans from Darwin's book The Power of Movement in Plants and was wondering if anyone here knows of particular figures from it that would be useful to have. If so, please let me know between now and next weekend. You can check out the illustrations from he book here to see which ones might be of interest. I can provide new scans that are without question in the public domain. - tameeria (talk) 15:28, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Just having a quick look through page 370 seems to have one of the nicest illustrations, the least text and, as an image, it exemplifies the work relatively well. DJLayton4 (talk) 16:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I've scanned the page and uploaded it to Commons [2]. However, I couldn't get the book to lie completely flat, so it's not exactly the best of scans. - tameeria (talk) 14:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I just cleaned and unwarped the title page -- don't hurt your book! It is much easier to repair scans than it is to repair books!! -- carol (talk) 15:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fruit anatomy

It is requested that all articles about fruit peel or layers should be replaced and merged into one good article under the name of "fruit anatomy". Please follow the link. BriefError (talk) 16:14, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Crassulacean acid metabolism

Hi,

I'd be grateful if someone could take a look at my re-write of Crassulacean acid metabolism to ensure that I've not introduced any errors. Many thanks. Verisimilus T 19:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see errors, but I'm not expert enough for that to mean much. The article is much more readable than it was in December, though, so you (and the others helping out) clearly have improved it. Kingdon (talk) 04:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orangery

I have added Orangery to the scope, please take alook at it, because it was recently merged from Orangeries.Shoteh (talk) 23:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice article. There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Horticulture and Gardening which is perhaps even a better project for it (although we haven't been too picky about where we draw the line between the two). Kingdon (talk) 04:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Yellow Jessamine

Please comment here about the spelling issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yellow_Jessamine -- Fyslee / talk 06:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded at Talk:Gelsemium sempervirens‎ --Melburnian (talk) 10:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ukkusiksalik National Park#Flora

There is a large section on the plants found in the park and I wonder if someone could look through it to make sure I correctly linked them up and the correct capitalisations are used. That leads into another question. Is there any reason not to have redirects from alternate capitalisations? As an example, Ranunculaceae, Crowfoot family is a redirect but Crowfoot Family isn't. I understand that the capital "F" is the incorrect version. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer links to the species names instead of common names precisely for the reason that there usually aren't alternate capitalization redirects (or often any common name redirects, though they should exist). If such a redirect doesn't exist, by all means go ahead and create it! One point I will mention is that all botanical names for genus and under should be in italics. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 02:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I created several earlier but while working on the park I piped the links. It's just that a few months ago there had been a discussion between a few editors, including myself, over speedy deleting redirects like "Crowfoot Family". CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
If someone types "Crowfoot Family" into the search box, then hits "Go", they will be redirected by Crowfoot family, despite the capitalisation difference. On the other hand, as wikilinks the two are distinct, as you can see above. My view is that redirects should anticipate errors (in terms of our convention) by casual readers/searchers, but we shouldn't be going out of our way to anticipate errors by editors. i.e. erroneous links should come up red so that they get fixed. Therefore we should not have a Crowfoot Family redirect. Hesperian 04:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I know about putting it in the search box. That's why I delted a redirect like that, tagged as a speedy, several months ago and is the discussion that I was referring to above. However, if an editor creates an article that has the line in it saying "Several species of the Crowfoot Family grow in this area.", one of four things will happen. They will realise the mistake and correct it. They will create a redirect, as I did today. They will leave it because don't know that the capital is incorrect and don't feel confident in creating an article on the Crowfoot family. Which is what happened here. Or they will follow the redlink and create an second article about Ranunculaceae. The redirects don't hurt anything. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 06:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Looks like an interesting place. I did some italicizing and linkifying but there is still more to do (I wouldn't link to the same plant twice, once via the common name and once via the scientific name). I changed "26 higher families of monocots and dicots" to "26 families of flowering plants" as that seems a lot less awkward (and also sidesteps the whole issue of eudicot versus dicot). I was slightly (although not extremely) surprised to see we are missing a Lecanorales article; there are about a dozen redlinks (not too shocking, and I suppose a matter for Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi as much as us). We should probably not pipe Crowberry family to Ericaceae; either just call it the heath family (Ericaceae) or pipe it to Empetraceae and let the redirect take care of it (per Template:R with possibilities - I don't know enough about the taxonomy of the Ericaceae/Empetraceae to know whether the latter is still a recognizable group, say a subfamily or tribe). Oh, and if you know the actual source for this species list, by all means add it as a reference. It would be easy to switch one species for another when translating from English (or French, or a native language) to the German Wikipedia, and then back to English. Kingdon (talk) 01:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Basella alba, Basella rubra

Basella rubra redirects to Basella alba. That article does not mention Basella rubra. What is correct? -- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 04:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I redirected it as a synonym per IPNI cygnis insignis 07:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New plant stub proposals

I have proposed new stubs to divide up some of the larger plant stub categories. Please comment on the stub proposal page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology for Asteraceae

CarolSpears (talk · contribs) has proposed and started on Terminology for Asteraceae. I've been discussing it with her but thought a wider discussion might be helpful. I've pointed out that this might be a duplication of effort at List of plant morphology terms and I was also wary of the recreation of work from wiktionary. EncycloPetey, SBJohnny: You know the relationship between Wikipedia and Wiktionary better than I, is this an appropriate cross over? I could definitely see the benefit of such a list, however. Certainly for the larger families, plant terminology does get a bit murky and Carol has presented a few reasons why the List of plant morphology terms isn't ideal. Thoughts? Opinions? Other angles I haven't considered? Much appreciated. --Rkitko (talk) 15:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that as well. There is some Asteraceae specific terminology - such as the nature of the fenestrae and ornamentation of the pollen grains, the distribution of floret types in a capitulum (both ray vs disc, and male vs female vs hermaphrodite), and, IIRC, relating to involucral and floral bracts as well. But all the terms in Terminology for Asteraceae were general botanical terms. It seems to me that terminology in general would be better associated with pages on plant anatomy (etc) than with particular taxa - for example [3]. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
It might make more sense to put some of the specialized terms in the family article. Another family with a lot of specialized terminology is the Poaceae (and in fact "floret" has a different usage in the two families).--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't disagree with putting it in Asteraceae (and we have Poaceae as a precedent), but another possibility would be synantherology. (BTW, what's the difference between floret in the two families? - I thought that in both cases a floret was a reduced homolog of the general angiosperm flower.) Lavateraguy (talk) 17:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
As I learned it, "floret" in the Poaceae consists of the flower and investing palea and lemma; spikelets comprise glumes and florets. "Floret" in the Asteraceae never includes the chaff/receptacular bracts/paleae.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
If that's the case then Asteraceae appears to be misphrased - it refers to the "calyx of the florets". Lavateraguy (talk) 17:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
The calyx is called "pappus". It attaches to the top of the ovary, whereas the chaff attaches at the base. I'll check the article. Okay, checked it and made some changes to clarify.--Curtis Clark (talk) 21:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Aren't the lemmae and paleae considered to be modified calyx and corolla? If so, then the two definitions are actually the same. If, on the other hand, one of those structures is an associated bract and the chaff is not attached to the florets in Asteraceae (I can't recall whether it is), then the definitions are slightly different. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
The palea is a bract of the internode-less lateral branch that terminates in the flower; the palea subtends the flower. This lateral branch is in the axil of the lemma, which is a bract of the central rachilla.--Curtis Clark (talk) 21:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I made some changes to Poaceae as well.--Curtis Clark (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Curtis. Aelwyn (talk) 16:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Most of the page content is not specific to the Asteraceae, but is general terminology about plants. Moreover, the current incarnation of the page is a list of definitions. So, it duplicates the function of the List of plant morphology terms and also duplicates the content of Wiktionary. The Plant Morphology list is an experimental attempt to create a sort of glossary already, and I believe the inention was to eventually have the list point to the articles where more discussion could be found on each term. Most such glossaries in the past have eventually been Transwikied to Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Or, perhaps, we should break things up by the different organs? I'm particularly fond of leaf shape as a neat, well-illustrated list, though it could have a bit more prose text. --Rkitko (talk) 20:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
That seems like the best idea, but there is the problem that the terminology for description of leafs, sepals and petals overlaps considerably. BTW, at leaf shape stem is used in the definitions of peltate and perfoliate, but in the former case it is petiole that connects to the centre of the leaf, and in the latter a stem that is surrounded by a fused pair of leaves. IIRC, peltate leaves aren't uniformly rounded - Begonia leaves often aren't, but I don't recall offhand if they are uniformly peltate. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

{{tab reset}} I have a thing that is possibly a disadvantage and an advantage in that what little I know of botany from my plant studies from other decades has no place here -- making me almost completely new to the science. I enjoy the interwiki links very much most of the time -- grab a beer and a browser and it is fun an interesting start with a random article and interwiki to here and there and tour the known world ending that foray learning about some elementary school in Ohio. These plant articles are a different matter though. For as many as I have authored recently, I (was) am still unclear about the meanings of some of those words and how they pretain to the species that I was writing about.

Bract is an example. Most of the information about bracts has little to do with the family that I am writing about and the article seems to present more language options than it does explaining what my article needed. And a good article about bracts in botany should not be only about the bracts of Asteraceae! While authoring, I have a couple of options about how to deal with the article about bracts. Improve it -- but that is a problem because currently, I really only know about the one family because those are the species articles that I have been writing. Not wikilink to it -- that goes against the purpose of the software though. Make a list of words that I am using and have that list point to the larger article.

wiktionary had similar problems in that the botany definition was not at the top of the list.

If every family makes its own list of definitions with occasional examples from their family of the word -- a later merging might be interesting and perhaps make the bract article much better.

Duplications make merging easier and more sensible(?). It would be a really good way to see where the language merges and diverges for the whole science. A human example, one families black sheep might be another families white sheep (the syndrome that should be named after Marilyn Munster, perhaps).

I had problems with the general list of terminology, I can relist them here. Rkitkos use of htmlspan was cool but it is a lot of additional work compared to having the wiki software do the iding for you....

Potential problems with my list:

  1. When the dictionary used words in their definition that I didn't know, I added them to the list. This makes me wonder if there are words there that have nothing to do with Asteraceae.
  2. The dictionaries that I am using sometimes give different genus (sometimes using common names) as an example -- I tried to strip them from the text if I was certain that they were not Asteraceae.
  3. I don't want to piss anyone off nor do I want to get pissed off.

carol (talk) 00:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, first of all, since the article is currently in your namespace, you should feel free to format it however you like. Many users have personal references and works in progress in the personal userspace, and this is good because it allows for experimentation and development without the worry that someone will come along and slap a deletion or cleanup tag on your work in progress. I would recommend continuing to experiment, but also think ahead to what sort of finished article you might hope to contribute to Wikipedia as a result. One possibility is an article on Floral morphology of the Asteraceae, which could include text and diagrams explaining the particulars for just the one family. As you've noticed, the family is large and has its own peculiar terminology, which isn't often accessible to amateurs. An article describing and discussing the terms, and showing how they are useful for identification of particular taxa, would be one way to eventually generate an article from your work. However, there is not just one right way to set up new articles, and your own interests should guide how you procede. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I just looked up the word Morphology -- that is a good word. Right now, the list that I have moved from my namespace (Terminology for Asteraceae) is much more like a list of words than the study of the words. As much as I recently do not like to use these particular words, I have been thinking a lot about what makes human beings different than the other animals (and even plants as some of those seem to work almost thoughtfully and choose to eat meat as well) might be the ability to first make things in a top down way and then remake them from a bottom up way. I watched a friend of mine try to put a machine back together once and one of the theories of the difference between humans and animals being the ability to use tools started to fail....
The morphology could start after the words were collected -- the morphology is the interesting stuff for the whole science and about the art and history of documentation as well. The terminology is what is assisting me for writing these articles.
I don't know if a set of documents could be started sensibly from a bottom up design -- but I have on many occasions felt that the time had more than past for a bottom up redesign to start. I think now about stupid things that I had to do at my work because someone sitting in an office somewhere had to fill in a little box on some form and not so much about article writing on wikipedia; but much of the idea is similar. Perhaps the people who are writing species articles now could make a list of the words for their families? Rkitko and the bladderworts mentioned having similar problems that I am with the mostly noxious family of flowers I have seemed to start to specialize in. Already I have found an interesting morph thing with the word forb -- so far, it is only in one modern online dictionary and is used only by the USDA and wikipedia. Interesting stuff that would show up when the terminology lists are combined.
Somewhat related to this is the stuff I wrote about corolla and put on the disambiguation page. Rkitko gave me a WPthing that said that disambiguation pages were not for documentation. I have thought about it since then and I cannot think of a better place to write about a summary how the word was being used 2000 years and more ago -- with the list of how the word is being used now plainly presented at the beginning of the page. Do you think that calling the car a Corolla was an Engrish mistake thinking it meant something like carolla? I drove the car, it is not at the 'top' of their line.... if it matters, I drove a Tercel which really was the least pricey, least sized and least pampered of the line back then. -- carol (talk) 04:11, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Anyone else for the idea that what separates the humans from the other beasts and beings is the ability to build down and then up? -- carol (talk) 04:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The corolla information is a bit complicated, because you are talking about what the word meant in another language. Since this is the English Wiktionary, we are primarily concerned with names of things in an English context, not Latin or Ancient Greek, The Latin usage of corolla originally was about a crown, yes, and the term was co-opted by botanists writing in Latin. However, the two items really are different things, even if people have applied the same label to them. A "mouse" on a computer is a very different object from the biological mouse, even if the two objects have been assigned the same label by humans. In a dictionary, items with the same label are discussed together, because a dictionary is a reference about the labels. In an encyclopedia, however, they deserve separate and disctinct articles, even if the labels are the same, because an encyclopedia discusses the items being referered to. Just as Wikipedia does not have a single article discussing both computer mice and biological mice, it should not have an article discussing both Latin crowns (corollae) and floral parts. An encyclopedia only peripherally worries about the labels, and then only rarely, such as when disambiguation is necessary, or when the origin of the name has a strong history itself. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that was my point for putting it on the disambiguation page. I have used the word 'Ancient' to describe things that have happened even a week before so much that I am not certain what year/day the official term 'Ancient' starts. The information that is written there is at the least antiquated and useful only for dress-up events and such; it was still quite interesting to me and it feels like it belongs on the disambiguation page due to how antique the information is. As all of language morphs into a single language, some interesting pieces about how it got there are -- well, interesting. Pliny was fun to read -- more fun and more interesting to read than so many of the pasted citations from Grieve quoting him, the footnotes from the translators -- again, it could be considered almost ancient by now -- from the 1700s, also very funny stuff. The funny was just another plus for me -- Pliny the elder was perhaps the original wikipedian or at least the one whose work still remains. The information really has no purpose or use for being in any article -- carol (talk) 04:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
The disambiguation page now sits at Corolla. The botanical term is at Corolla (flower). The ancient head-dress material inserted on the disambiguation page has been split to a new article, Corolla (chaplet). I am in the process of resolving links on botanical pages (among others) to their proper targets (a manual process). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tribus

I am quite interested in eventually expanding the article for the Senecioneae. I have a stew of synonyms due to the (attempts to) rearrange the family Senecio. Is (Are) there a (couple of) good source(s) for this stuff? -- carol (talk) 00:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I did a bit of searching. [4] says "These problems have prevented attempts to make a modern worldwide monograph of Senecio and/or of its infrageneric groups" which isn't very encouraging. [5] concerns "Packera (= aureoid Senecio complex)" which I think is a generally accepted group (see the link to Flora of North America at Packera). Flora of North America is sometimes the best place to get started, but they only discuss worldwide taxa to a very limited extent. All of these are pretty technical, and mostly seem unsettled, so I'm not sure how helpful any of this is. Kingdon (talk) 05:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Reading (and writing) about problems which are not mine is kinda cool -- I like it even! I had to use L's othonna to find one of them in Europe; this was immensely funny to me. I had no idea this stuff would be so interesting. Those journal articles look like good reading; thank you very much for finding them. -- carol (talk) 08:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Note that there is also a Flora of China and Flora of Pakistan available on-line in the same format as Flora of North America (and also through the Missouri Botanical Garden). This doesn't help with important African species, but it does broaden the coverage and literature list. The Chinese Flora has also completed some taxa not yet completed for FNA, or which do not occur in North America. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
There are quite a few floras online, of various vintages (e.g. Flora Zambesiaca). I maintain a list of those I know about (plus some that aren't, AFAIK, online) at [6]. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of nurseries

I've seen several articles, for example, Ulmus 'Frontier', that include a list of nurseries where the hybrid is available. Uh, isn't this linkspam? After all, Wikipedia is not a seed catalog. But I didn't want to remove the offending sections without checking in here first. Thoughts? Katr67 (talk) 16:46, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S. A quick search reveals that most of them are Ulmus species. Katr67 (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd noticed these before. Ptelea has produced detailed (perhaps excessively so) pages about Ulmus and its species and cultivars, including lists of specimens and sources. I wouldn't call it linkspam - the information appears to have been added in good faith, rather than for nefarious commercial reasons - but as you say, "Wikipedia is not a directory". Lavateraguy (talk) 18:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, no bad faith assumed. So any problem if I start removing those sections? Katr67 (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
If you haven't already, I'd check with Ptelea first, since it would be quite a big change on articles that the user cares very much for. I agree, though, accession numbers and nurseries that carry the cultivars and species aren't encyclopedic and should be removed per WP:NOT. --Rkitko (talk) 21:40, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I'll make the same point - the lists aren't doing a great deal of harm, and Ptelea's put a lot of work into those articles. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, WP:NOHARM and WP:EFFORT aren't good arguments for keeping anything on Wikipedia. See also WP:OWN. I'll say something to Ptelea, but I think we can all agree on WP:NOT and WP:EL regarding outside links to nurseries. Katr67 (talk) 22:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, definitely. I was just saying that it might be nice to leave Ptelea a courtesy message to let him know why some of the content of the articles he works on was being cut. That's all. --Rkitko (talk) 23:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd go further - it is desirable that Ptelea agrees with the change before it goes ahead.
Would it be sensible to suggest that he uses Wikia for this material. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)