Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive20

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[edit] Mimosa pudica

Several anonymous editors have been adding links to ticklemeplant.com in Mimosa pudica and inserting mentions of the name in several related articles like Houseplant, Thigmotropism, Rapid plant movement, and so forth. Tickleme Plant appears to be a trademark for a commercial product rather than a common name with significant precedent, i.e. [1] [2] [3] [4]. The name Tickleme Plant is not listed in plant databases that list common names, e.g. [5] [6] [7]. That it is a tradename or trademark is not in and of itself reason to remove the links and spam-like insertions in the body of these several articles, but that it is a name without significant precedence and that these editors are so aggressively reinserting the material attests to the fact that they are using Wikipedia as advertising space. I have dealt with spammers before, and my warnings are usually ignored, so I wonder if I could elicit help in fending of the spammers. The articles affected include Houseplant, Thigmotropism, Mimosa pudica, Mimosa, and Rapid plant movement. --♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 19:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Well,, the attacks have completely subsided, so just watch it for a while, and maybe comment at Talk:Mimosa pudica on a particular YouTube video that is illustrative but also promotional.--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 02:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Credibility

Without (known) access to a flora database for South America, is this: http://bnhm.berkeley.edu/query/sa.php?uk=UCBGSouth+America50.0970&ic=UCBG a credible source of this kind of information? -- carol (talk) 15:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

For which information? For range including Argentina or for the name, yes. For the common name, I'd be suspicious, since it's an English common name for a plant in Argentina. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
What you fail to note is that Senecio cineraria is a very common bedding annual in the US. Almost every garden center has it. Of course it has an English common name, and yes, Dusty Miller is the most common name.[8][9][10]
Heh, I put a quote on Senecio cineraria "'S. cineraria' is an old-fashioned garden plant" -- the quote is from 1917! -- heh, carol (talk) 04:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Scholarly literature really can't be used for this purpose, since it tends to shy away (rightfully) from plant common names. Google scholar turned up with plenty of S. cineraria, but no common names..--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Range. I added a range map for South America based on this url -- I started to have some questions about it. Thanks! --checking the common name there now carol (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
As far as common names go, there are legal and not legal common names? Here is an example. I had a boyfriend who called nettles 'stingweed' -- in all of my reading I had never heard this word used for that plant, yet, it was a good one and from a woodsman who probably passed this 'name' along to others. This is one of the main reasons I really dislike articles about specific plants using the common names. History would have to be rewritten or erased to make a 'science' out of common names. When I read a list of common names, I always think that it is a partial list of more well known names for a plant. Please, let me keep this idea! -- carol (talk) 16:58, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not necessarily a reliable source for the range either - it could be that the herbarium specimen there cataloged was a cultivated plant. I've gone to Catálogo de las Plantas Vasculares de la Argentina and checked for Senecio cinerea; it isn't there. (But there are a fair number of species of Cineraria, assigned to Senecio.)
Herbarium records should be taken with a pinch of salt - apart from the possibility of error, they often lag taxonomic opinion by many years.
It could be a cultivated plant, or it could be Senecio vira-vira, which a page at ASU says is often confused with Senecio cineraria; or possibly lumper/splitter issues.
BTW, a paper in the New Zealand Journal of Botany 25: 489-501 (1987) has it naturalised in New Zealand. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the url -- ziplist, how convenient! New Zealand should make a travel poster "Land of Escapism" -- so far the only thing I have found that tops New Zealand for tales of other peoples problems moving there is Hawaii, where I found a paper that was a study of feral sheep eating feral plant species.... -- carol (talk) 04:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plant collecting

Attention plant community! This article is embarassingly short and needs content. Also, do folks think this should be rated as "top" or "High" priority? The article isn't assessed at all right now, and I'm torn as to which level of importance it merits, in part because the article has so little information right now, but could have a lot. Opinions? Help? --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Plant collecting is quite a wide-ranging topic, it has the potential to be split into a number of sub-articles which could be quite large in themselves. I would tend to put it as high priority, with the potential for a review to top priority down the track, depending on how it evolves.--Melburnian (talk) 02:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maps, 'Flora of' lists and other resources

I have been working on SVG versions of the Ecozone map which should also be selectable by political division (kind of -- it is really funny to me that Luxemborg and Russia are equals in defined area for the purposes that I am highlighting areas for, which is its own essay on how humans are so unnatural to this world...); it has been kind of slow going -- I learned that inkscape only magnifies to +25000%, and that might be missing a 0, and it is still not big enough to select one island somewhere.... Needless to say, the maps I am working with are beautiful because of the detail yet, my mind wanders because of it.

My disappointment with the plant project -- I am not going to go into all of that except for a few details. In my mind, I was thinking it would be a source of resources as well as knowledgeable people. After the kick in the balls that informs a person that they are not ever to be welcomed to 'Featured things', looking at the 'featured things' becomes a task perhaps better for those who have achieved this; that is how my narrow mind works. So, the suggestion to look at those is not the best resource, in my opinion, and how the example is delivered as an example is not the best way to get people to look at them. In real life, I have been known for the ability (and willingness) to make an apology that hurts and probably isn't one, I can see this going there now, can you? </stopping that>

I have seen, hints or examples that I think should be here. I remembered seeing a bunch of urls for Flora of sites and wandered around user pages until I found them here. Snow White (someone -- I can't remember whom) had a hack for Firefox spell checking of botanical words. The maps I am working on -- I think they will be better (once completed) with input from others who are also using them to highlight the range in which their species can be found, and I would like to put them here when they are finished -- along with a few hints I have about how to select large areas of small islands more quickly. I am certain that there are other resources like this.

Then, about the commons. I want to cry every time I look at the Category called SVG plants range maps. Flora range maps is easier to look at without crying, but how useful are they? I have been putting mine in the same category with the species. They are not two separate wiki as much as they appear to be. Logical management of those plant specific categories there should start here? I am not much into the making of gallery there -- it is a soul sucking experience which can be undone in an instant and degrades more quickly than simply putting all of the images into logical categories. This is my opinion, please do not attempt to make me change it. What is a useful category? If you needed to find a range map for some species of plant, where would you look first? -- carol (talk) 06:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

See World Geographical Scheme for recording plant distributions Lavateraguy (talk) 16:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Warning This is a 153 page PDF! -- carol (talk) 06:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Having had a resources page for quite a while, I find them extremely useful. I think it would be an excellent idea to create one for WP:PLANTS. Most of the stuff you're talking about above - links to online databases, the Firefox hack (that was me), base maps - could have a place there.
In response to your what is a useful category question, I would have to agree(?) that most people would look in the taxon category first, and the range map categories are not likely to be very useful. Still I can't see any reason to delete them. Possibly they could be made more useful by subcategorising into geographic entity covered e.g. "Flora range maps of Australia".
Hesperian 21:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The Category:Banksia distribution maps is not a category that I would ever complain about. The way the category works is easiest to see with that example. The whole lot of them can easily be categorized further into flora of Australia and whatever family they are in. However, I have been working with Senecio which is the largest genus within the largest family; if it ever gets completed, there will be thousands of range maps (I would say tens of thousands but I think that botanists have historically abused the naming of species by several factors; not always maliciously). I would like to look at SVG plants range maps and see blank maps and subcategories. I was jealous of the maps there with the smooth lines indicating the range since all of the information I have is from political divisions. -- carol (talk) 06:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
We already have a resources page Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Resources, however there's obviously a lot more that could be added there --Melburnian (talk) 23:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
On the resources page, there is a chance that I did not scroll down beyond the list of stubs. I don't completely understand stubs; I have been more involved in trying to make articles which eliminate them. My lack of understanding them should not be considered a negative towards them. I have seen articles which were possibly software generated (like from IUCN) and then humanfied and the stubs are a good bookmark-like resource -- is that what they do? Personally, I would have to feel more experienced before generating pages that require stubs; although, I might be close to that because it often would be nice to be able to paste a taxoboxen with one really interesting fact and not worry about making the whole article.
I have been wrestling with what makes a credible source or not -- often when there is such a battle within, the battle can extend among people; beyond homeo- and naturo- pathies and the selling of plants via the articles, is this a problem here? Well, according to the battle within me, there is. I have been citing some papers whose abstracts I have read and that cost to read the whole thing. I try to keep this idea in my mind; that products should not prostitute themselves at the free and factual information web site. I lost this battle with the people who manhandle the article GIMP and there is a prostitute there selling her wares -- blatently and with the support of those who 'guard' the article. That is a sad product that sucks the space of the free software projects like that. Meanwhile, I do the same thing perhaps in the botany world -- much because I am new to it and don't understand the product. Colleges and local governments and civic groups should be putting more of their papers online. I was so happy when I found a pdf from a science fair online about a plant I was writing about. I used to think that 'publish or perish' was such a horrible thing -- but the 'find corporate funding problem' for the seats of higher learning might be a much bigger problem -- in addition to the already really high tuitions. Sorry, for rambling here about credible sources and concerns I have had for years and years -- it would be really nice if the whole wikipedia could encourage civic and educational groups to put their research and information online. And it needs to be both, I have seen this while trying to write about a toxic and invasive plant -- there seems to be a lot of money available for when people are afraid; so facts get blown out of proportion at the government level. It has been really difficult not to write about using scientific method to look at the machines that are generating the information, reading it and then regurgitating it.
When I was playing on the wiki in 2003, it was so cool. All of my time up until then on the computer had been spent getting a project that was about a single thing going -- so the 'whatever' quality that the wiki had was great. I think I spent time bitching about the reordering of the tomes of the chronicles of narnia, for example. My years spent learning things had not yet been reduced to whatever it is now. I imagined that it could be this great of a thing. I had no idea it would get so big -- and the cops and robbers, I could imagine this; but the warring between wiki, that idea was beyond me. It still is. Since that time, a problem that I personally have not been able to get around or over is how something like this benefits some a lot while completely destroying others; perhaps only one person -- as what happened to me. It makes me very suspicious about censorship and about the denial of free speech and the constant abuse of fuzzy language....
I am going to work on those maps now, thank you for the urls on the resource page/section/article! If there are no objections, if Snow White could possibly put the firefox hack there and move the stubs (they are very nice, btw) down in the page -- it will be like stone soup? I find it exceedingly funny that it is the children of Great Britains criminals who have the respectible resources here and now, is it only them? --(sorry this was so long) carol (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is too bad I can't participate further here without appearing to endorse your new cryptic nickname for me. Hesperian 10:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Not even if it is intended as a compliment? In the ridiculous situation that the name occurred to me, it seems it should not be beyond imagination to perceive the compliment. -- carol (talk) 11:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the original question, the "SVG plants range maps" thing seems to be a relic of old category wars (see diff... I know you're familiar with the actors there, carol :-)), but more generally speaking awkward names on commons often relate to the tower of bable nature of the project (one name might not look any funkier than another to a Portugese speaker). There are also come recurring disputes on commons about categories due to the different ways categories are employed on the various languages of Wikipedia, and the priority of galleries vs. categories in general.
The 'wars' are interesting. There is software at the commons that puts a template that an image needs a category. It was an interesting long weekend I spent cleaning out a few of the Uncategorized category there. Upload software that tries to make category from descriptions -- I saw some sad images there that were in every category and subcategory from software attempts like that. Then there are the images that come from the other wiki and have no description -- I think I made a category "Philosophy of the Netherlands" for some of the diagrams I needed to categorize that defied a sober description. I was introduced to several image categorizing genre one which was purely numbers. The nice gallery are nice but they need maintenance. Several gallery are just thrown together, possibly to get an assignment done in a hurry or submission to people who won the 'war'. As a user, I like to throw the categories on the image and be done with it. All of the things that make a gallery nice can be done with Category pages and subcategory. The Category shows image size in the information. I like to go to the Category, see if there is a subcategory, find a nice looking thumbnail, look at the size, see if there is a thumbnail that is just as nice and and bigger -- check the larger view and eventually the full size and make a decision that way. Organizing something is a way to feel useful; organizing something to be useful is not necessarily the same thing. That being said, I already feel useful writing articles.... -- carol (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the stubs, it's long been the tradition that something is better than nothing. For example, if there is a stub about a species, it can be of some small use if it has at least some very basic information and a link to the (hopefully more robust) genus article. I certainly need to plead guilty about semi-robotic creations: see User:SBJ/ps. The good news is that a lot of the stubs I've made over the years have been picked up by other editors, improved, and fleshed out.
I want to be clear that I do not have a problem with the stubs and I appreciate the way the articles and the information in them got there. My point is more like that it is not so helpful for a beginner looking for how to flesh out a stubbed article. Heck, I didn't even know about the range maps option in the taxobox until I was under assault here, heh. Perhaps other reliable web sites can be mined in the same way -- but, I still feel terribly new here and I would not want to do something like that; it is a resource for those more experienced with the project and with the wiki and its climate and such? There is also the smell of contests in which articles will not be accepted if there are any red links in them. I am not going to be into that ever; nothing wrong with it -- I just like to see things done correctly, not to fill in all of the boxes for a contest. In my mind, the red links in articles are interesting articles that could be written. Hell, trying to determine if the red link is because the article is mentioning a synonym or if the species article is named after the common name without a forwarding link is already exhausting work here. -- carol (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding outreach and collaboration with Universities and other institutions: this was originally a task assigned to the Meta-wiki, but meta is dominated by a conservative userbase now (to paraphrase Ursula K. LeGuin, "you can measure the strength of a bureaucracy by it's ability to say no"), but there are a number of such collaborations happening now through Wikiversity, which has far fewer dealings with the foundation itself, and has a userbase dominated by academics and libertarians.
Ursula would have loved wiki, eh? Her fantasy land was one in which people did not give their real names, for instance. Probably that bureaucracy has no history of mistakes or misdealings either, eh? I find it an impressive world which is run by people with no bad experiences in their credits. No mistakes, no apologies and no problem if things are running well for them. Perhaps it is not that way here, but it is in a lot of other areas where similar take-overs have happened. Right now, here -- the people I have encountered have been funny, made some mistakes and have also accomplished a lot. Honestly, in real life (I don't consider my last 4 or 5 years to be real) ass-kissing is the worst way to actually accomplish things with real people or monkeys or dogs or cats or horses or plants even-- I suspect that is true about any real being; conservative icons/rulers are not real.
I suspect a lot of the tuckus-smooching relates to how "RFAs" have (d)evolved over time. Probably can't be helped.--SB_Johnny | talk 13:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
When the bloom clock appeared on one of the articles I had been working on, it was really cool. I had two of those plants that I was watching -- I literally could have added 5 to 6 citings per day between Christmas and a couple of days ago to the page. The rain came and battered the old one down to the cement and then a frost hit it before it stood up from the rain; well, one of them. I had a problem at the bloom clock in that I had too much information and the bloom clock project did not have enough about how to contribute there. Do you think that the bloom clock stuff can go on the resources here without destroying the nice collaboration at wikiverisity? -- carol (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean... the bloom clock is just a research project, it's not really meant to carry much content other than the bloom times and locations (so for example the bloom clock page for Senecio vulgaris links to the Wikipedia article for encyclopedic information, a Wikibooks module for horticultural techniques, and a Commons gallery for additional images.
The bloom clock in general has so far used a mentoring system rather than instructions, since the sheer number of templates and other mediawiki tricks involved can be a bit daunting. Feel free to drop me a note if you need some help. --SB_Johnny | talk 13:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I, too have been hot and cold about Wikipedia over the years. There is indeed an often mind-bending culture of policy to deal with, and a lot of folks around who are perhaps more interested in that than they are in creating content. There are also troublemakers around who have made people see the need to create policies. However, while editing has become more frustrating over the years, the encyclopedia itself only gets better with each passing hour, so it's really a matter of just ignoring the B.S. in favor of the good things, or perhaps taking a break from one project to work on another (each project has its own flavor of B.S., so it's just a trick of knowing which one doesn't have the sort that's getting to you at the moment). --SB_Johnny | talk 11:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is its own flavor of cool. I am surprised by many aspects of it. One of them is thinking that I wrote a good article and then rereading it several weeks later and seeing how wrong of a decree that was. Trying to tackle two problem genus here -- I like to think that certain problems are a magnet for me personally because, at least at one time, I was quite strong and still have it in me to be so. There is this other problem also, while I write about these little plants in the Senecio tribe (I still haven't learned how to spell the tribe version of the word) I cannot help to start to see myself to be a little like. A different example, when buying a new car. By the second or third week when I would be driving a new (to me) car around, all of a sudden, I would see a lot of other people driving the same car and I had never seen that before then. It is a trick of the brain? Anyways, just to clear this up -- how disturbed was the ground here? -- carol (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Another thing I've been meaning to point out, since it doesn't get the attention it deserves, is WikiProject Resource Exchange. Requests for resources there are usually filled successfully. --Rkitko (talk) 13:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Yikes, it is like a maze of twisty little passages -- carol (talk) 13:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Egypt

Can we put together some resources that would be useful for more than just plants and get together in Egypt? The maps are one thing like that -- but maybe there are other things? I should think that spell check hacks would be very useful and refreshingly generic, but these are the things that I have seen -- there has to be other things equally useful and able to become a Wikimedia project. There already was a certain amount of working together before I got here -- can that expand or at least continue?

This is also a little feeler to see if everyone else has that message on the wiki in their browser. -- carol (talk) 08:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] taxobox color

People might be aware of this already, but my understanding of taxobox colors is: (a) it is not desirable to specify a color if it can be deduced from the kingdom (currently, correctly handled for archaeplastida or plantae or plantae based on looking at the source to Template:Taxobox_colour), and (b) Eubot is currently working on a mass remove of the unnecessary colors from plant articles: see User:Eubot/Removing colours from taxoboxen (specifically "I'm now starting on the plants" dated 15:35, 8 March). Kingdon (talk) 18:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Having followed the discussion there, I've been manually removing the color from plant articles, as it is often a vandalism magnet.--Curtis Clark (talk) 20:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
What about a little 'how to' here for them? I read the log (from 2006) where the change was being discussed -- the example given was not vandalism but where the user had changed the 'color' to be what the color of the vegetable being represented was. It took me a while to figure out they were using the Named Colors, and I know (of) the Named Colors! When I looked for how to use them, the scrolling through all of the other kingdom started to cause me to lose my attention and when I looked at it recently, information was simply not there -- like the range maps which is useful and the second image which, I don't know if that is so good or not. Perhaps there is other stuff they can do that I haven't discovered yet which would improve the plant articles. The fact that the color can be set automatically is very cool to me. Also, I don't understand the vandalism part. -- carol (talk) 21:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The reference to "vandalism" is people changing the color. I suppose after reading some of the talk pages, perhaps some of it is confusion rather than an attempt to be disruptive. Anyway, the "how to" is very simple: "In the Template:taxobox template on a plant article, never specify color=". Kingdon (talk) 02:32, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
"color = poopy" is by any measure vandalism.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I did say "some", but point taken :-). Kingdon (talk) 16:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I sort of wonder if targets of that nature might be beneficial (like trap crops) :-). --SB_Johnny | talk 23:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, the change will certainly help among the algae. Editors have been extremely inonsistent in the past when it came to specifying a color for the Heterokonts and Red algae. I assume the color should be specified for taxa when the kingdom placement is uncertain, or is there an incertae sedis color? --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
If you specify a kingdom of incertae sedis the color will be E0D0B0, but if there is no kingdom (which for example is the current state on Giardia lamblia or Gelidium which skip from domain to phylum), then leaving out the color will just get you onto Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color. Given the state of flux in eukaryote supergroups, I don't really expect a lot of relief soon. The taxobox colorer will only work if a heterokont is given a kingdom of Chromalveolate, but my own preference would be to just call them heterokonts and not have every taxobox take a position on the relationships between the heterokonts, the alveolata, the haptophytes, the cryptomonads, and the rhizaria (see references at Eukaryote, especially Parfrey et al 2006 and Shalchian-Tabrizi et al 2007). For red algae, specifying a kingdom of Archaeplastida would get you taxobox coloring but unranked_phylum would not. And the latter is probably better for reasons not related to auto-coloration. So you are probably stuck with an explicit color here too. Kingdon (talk) 16:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia consensus on Chlorophyta and Charophyta? Lavateraguy (talk) 20:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
In what sense? They're widely used here and in the literature as names. What aspect of the nomenclature are you asking about? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
In the sense of which kingdom they're placed in, and which taxobox colour is used. Lavateraguy (talk) 03:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
It's hard to argue that the Charophyta are not plants, and if they are, the Chlorophyta might as well be, too.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I've re-read a few of the papers at October 2004 amjbot (the first place I usually stop for such topics), and yes, there is little reason to doubt the monophyly and stability of Viridplantae (embryophytes + green algae) which in taxoboxes we just call kingdom plantae. Kingdon (talk) 05:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The two leading coordination efforts researching relationships of plants at the highest level (though the two are not entriely independent efforts) both include the green algae as plants. The green plant phylogeny group includes all green algae in the plants. [11]. The Tree of Life website does as well. [12] In both projects the embryophytes are "land plants", but the clade including green algae is the "green plants". --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CfD notice

I've nominated Category:Endemic flora of Hawaii (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) for renaming to Category:Flora of Hawaii (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). Given that this category falls under the scope of this WikiProject, I thought I'd stop by and let everyone know that they should feel free to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 March 12#Category:Endemic flora of Hawaii. Thanks! --jonny-mt 02:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

After some good discussion, I've withdrawn the nomination in favor of an alternate proposal that was presented. Thank you for your comments, and feel free to help out! --jonny-mt 06:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Follow up

The alternative proposal was a suggestion that we could and perhaps should divide our flora by distribution categories into subcategories for naturalised, indigenous and endemic flora:

--Flora of Hawaii
  |--Indigenous flora of Hawaii / Native flora of Hawaii
  |  |--Endemic flora of Hawaii
  |
  |--Naturalised flora of Hawaii

This is probably not something we have to act on immediately. I suggest it should be an aspirational guideline rather than a rule. However, I intend to try this out in the Flora of Australia categories pretty soon. So if anyone wants to talk me out of it, or anyone has any wise words to offer, I'm all ears. Hesperian 06:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I've implemented the first step by placing Category:Flora of Hawaii under Category:Flora of the United States by state and Category:Endemic flora of Hawaii under Category:Flora of Hawaii (the latter as a placeholder for the time being). --jonny-mt 12:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea. --Melburnian (talk) 12:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration to endeavour in subproject WikiProject Trees

For months I've been considering the need to start WikiProject Trees as subproject to WikiProject Plants. I am gathering, and preparing a single page to start this sub, which I think should consider both botanical and cultural aspects of trees as living beings, important in both the natural aspects as well as human usage, folk and ethnic dimensions. The sub would deal and manage quality, improvements, etc of tree species, the main tree article, derivatives and cultural representations articles. It is a growing thing! I'm aware permission is not needed, but this is a community and as well as invite, I'd like to hear views, comments, suggestions and critics to the page about to be posted. And mainly: collaborators! I personally love those woody things that give me shadow, food and memories, so any other tree lovers willing to add to this... reply here. Thanks!! Abestrobi (talk) 00:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I urge you to think long and hard about this. Here are some reasons to do so:
  • The majority of WikiProjects either don't get off the ground or stall after a few months. The only guarantee that a WikiProject will be successful over a reasonable period of time is the existence of a group of people with a common interest in the topic, who are already collaborating on it. Who will the core group of WP:TREES collaborators be? If you don't already know the answer to that question, then this announcement is premature.
  • Starting up and maintaining a WikiProject requires a good deal of hard work, gumption and experience, in addition to a singleminded obsession with the topic. With less than a hundred edits to your name, you haven't demonstrated those qualities yet. I'm not saying you don't have them. But Wikipedia is littered with dead WikiProjects created by newer users who thought they had sufficient stores of these qualities, but then discovered they were wrong.
  • Starting up a separate WikiProject involves a lot of overhead that ought to be justifiable in terms of the benefits to be gained. I can't see what benefits having a separate WikiProject, as oppose to working under the WP:PLANTS banner, will deliver you.
Hesperian 00:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree with preceding. Abestrobi, if you want more people involved, keeping tree collabs active here will be more likely to attract people than starting a new one. A WP Plant collaboration may be a good starting point. I can set one up and show you how that works. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with the above. Most new niche wikiprojects begin by becoming a "taskforce" of other projects. And just take a look at the other subprojects and see how active they are: WikiProject Horticulture and Gardening and WikiProject Plant Evo Devo, both of which could probably be reduced to a taskforce. --Rkitko (talk) 01:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed and confirmed... I started the Hort and Garden one years ago, but it never really took off (except for someone who decided to template a billion talk pages several months back). Subprojects work when you have either a large number of interested people, or at least a small number of nearly rabid contributors (I think there was one for the genus Banksia a while back, which turned out great but only because there was/is a dedicated core of contributors). I gave up on the Hort/Garden one after realizing that Wikibooks was a much better place for that. A trees project might have some success, but to get a cadre together, you're best off trying to just organize collaborations first on this project, then creating a new wikiproject if you find this page being over-dominated for tree-related discussions. --SB_Johnny | talk 12:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, fellows editors for replies! I've considered your worries as well Hesperian. I think a small carefully chosen scope for start, would make advantage. It's not just about gathering a dozen or more virulent editors to build and repair... But to give guidance and fundamentals developed through some good consensus. I found out a lot of trivia-like info in the tree page itself for example. It could have been avoided to become so important in the article by just a couple agreements done before. I contribute to tree-flora only, usually, and slowly. My proposal aims to get collaboration, dearly, that's for sure!. But also to keep an eye on main eventual subproject pages. A sub, i think, adds to quality, much, since collaboration is just beyond a single editor. I think adding a scope, objectives, fundamentals and suggestions for editing and a creating new pages proposals wouldn´t be of much damage. More of a guidance thing in several aspects. Anyhow, brother Rkitko is always there to correct me when referencing! (Abestrobi (talk) 07:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC))
Well, perhaps we're talking about the same thing here, then. Just with different terminology. A new WikiProject, whether or not it's a child (or "subproject") of another existing project is usually recommended to have several editors already pledged to working on the project. A task force of an existing project is built on a subpage of the existing project (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Trees), where scope, guidelines, and collaboration discussions, etc. can be developed. When taskforces become sufficiently large enough, some will move to their own WikiProject and set up shop. Does that help clarify? --Rkitko (talk) 21:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate Proposal - a monthly collaboration?

OK folks, I am buoyed as Polar bear was the first mammal collaboration and seems to be slowly ambling toward GAN or FAC or something of that nature. I figured, like mammals, there are a few big articles which would be a herculean task for one editor but may be doable as a collaboration, and the topic is broad enough that there are a few folks interested (though sadly, Circeus has just retired). Is anyone interested in voting or participating in a plant collaboration? If more than, say one or two folks are then I can set up a voting page and we can see what happens. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I would be a collab mainstay, but I would certainly keep an eye on it and participate if the topic took my interest. Hesperian 10:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I would certainly be interested. --Rkitko (talk) 12:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea. --Melburnian (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to say, I do keep an eye around and will keep on doing minor edits here and there. While I'm not fully off the hook should I see something that sounds really interesting (a collab on an accessible topic sound interesting), I shouldn't be counted on to do much anything useful overall. A pet project of mine for a long time was to rewrite Maple (I have a bibliographical start as well as an overdetailed etymology section here). Cornus canadensis and Asclepias (specifically A. syriaca) were also targets, though I don't think I have much if anything for them. Circeus (talk) 19:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm quite busy with uni at the moment, but I've been aching to see some more FAs from the plant project, so I would be happy to help whenever possible. DJLayton4 (talk) 03:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
If you do decide to do a collaboration Crassulacean Acid Metabolism could do with some more work. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Update...they're off

OK, I started it up, listing a bunch of articles which were there already, all mainly core ones. Ambitious but maybe a bit too much so for first off. A discrete species may be a better bet first off as it is more circumscribed and requires less botanical expertise. Anyway, please add your own nomnations or vote on ones already there. You can vote more than once but it does dilute your vote. Let's see where this takes us. Front runner on march 28th will be collaboration for a month. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Collaboration. Hesperian 11:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Also

See below, but another possible collaboration would be to collect photographs and enter text descriptions of flowering plants blooming currently on the bloom clock keys. there are a lot of plants (esp. cultivars) for which we have no good images, descriptions, or even articles! --SB_Johnny | talk 12:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bloom clock: northern spring update

After noticing that the new data from England seems well into springtime plants flowering (though we need much more data from there... the chief contributor in Manchester is very much a "neophyte" when it comes to plant identification), I thought I'd drop a reminder here about the bloom clock and give some updates on its progress.

The Wikiversity Bloom Clock is now well into its fourth semi-annual cycle, with profiles of over 500 plants and counting, many of which now having multi-year and multi-regional logs. We're starting to develop the global keys for temperate regions as well, in the hopes of starting to solve the problem discussed here 2 years ago about the lack of any global standard for discussing bloom seasons. If anyone has the time, all we need is about 10 plants during a given month from a given region to start a key and have data to compare to (more is much better, of course). Data from regions outside of New England and the Mid-Atlantic region would be especially useful, and data from the Southern Hemisphere perhaps even more so.

Aside from the global keys, I've been fiddling a bit with creating horticultural lists, which are essentially plant selectors for people looking for plants that are native or non-invasive, good nectar sources, etc. The native vs. invasive lists in particular require some help from knowledgeable people from different regions, since these lists are of course geographically specific (e.g., Hesperis matronalis is a rather serious invasive here in Pennsylvania, but I'm sure it's considered a wonderful wildflower where native).

We're still working on the "wow, this is complicated!" problem. As a stop-gap measure, we are using a mentoring system... if you sign up as a contributor you will recieve a welcome message from one of the available mentors. An instruction manual is in the works, but the massive use of templates, subpages, and DynamicPageList will probably require mentorship to be a permanent institution in any case.

This year we will also be working on a "bug clock" and plant pathogen clock as well (a major aim of the bloom clock is to provide phenological data for use in Integrated Pest Management systems).

Finally, we're working on outreach flyers, which are intended to be printed out andd dropped off at arboretums, public gardens, etc. If anyone is good at writing these things (essentially proposals), please have a look at this page and edit for "professionalism" :).

One related question: a contributor asked yesterday about whether and how we could log for mosses. I know very little about them, but is there any promise in doing some sort of logs for mosses, ferns, and other primitive plants? I'm guessing it might need a different clock since the bloom clock templates wouldn't apply very well to them.

I'm going to make an additional announcement on the VP as well, since we've found that the clock works quite well for helping people who don't know plants to learn about them. Please feel free to suggest other online communities where we might find interested people. --SB_Johnny | talk 11:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plant article requests

Perhaps there should be some sort of 'priority' requests for topics of high importance like, e.g. plant ecology. Anything that would be likely to be labeled high or top importance is what I'm talking about, though even mid importance articles are pretty urgent. This could be done perhaps by having a section on the main project page, linking to the requests page for the full details and just showing the most urgent requests. It could also be done simply by putting (high priority) or {top priority) after the most important requests. If represented on the project page it could come under a broader heading 'priority tasks', including other important tasks for the project such as expanding the lead section of the plant article. Richard001 (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

We already have something that organizes this on Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Collaboration. There is a list of all Top-importance articles showing status (Start, B, or GA), and there is a list of all High-importance articles that are currently stubs. If there are other articles of urgency, they can be added in the appropriate location. If there are specific tasks needed in an article, the {{todo}} template can handle a list on that article's talk page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:02, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
But isn't this for articles that already exist? Richard001 (talk) 07:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Strawberry->Fragaria

On Talk:Strawberry#merge with garden strawberry I proposed moving Strawberry to Fragaria for the reasons described there. There has been no discussion since my proposal. I'd like to do this, and then tidy up the page to move material which should be at garden strawberry. However, because Fragaria is currently a redirect, I believe I need an admin to do this. Can one of our admins please do this (if you think it is sufficiently uncontroversial), or discuss further (if needed). Kingdon (talk) 04:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I'll get onto it. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I realise that the proposed move is in line with our naming policy, but I also think that it is inadvisable to act too hastily, if only because there will be a sizeable body of people who screech WTF?!

I think a far better approach would be to split the article into two articles:

  • Fragaria, to take the taxobox, and essentially to be an article on the taxon, with a description of the plant, its taxonomy, its distribution, ecology, etc. It would have a very brief culinary uses section with a {{main|Strawberry}} hatline.
  • Strawberry, to be an article on the fruit, with extensive information on culinary uses, nutritional value, the economics of production, etc; but with only a brief summary of the plant-specific information at Fragaria.

I would like to see a bit of discussion on this leading to some consensus, before we tackle this, as this issue is much bigger than this one pair of articles. There are an awful lot of pairs of articles that this will impact eventually e.g. Cocos nucifera/Coconut, Zea mays/Maize, Malus domestica/Apple, etcetera.

Hesperian 05:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Oops. Done now. Never mind, this one is simpler as the cultivated ones are fairly well delineated (unlike rose). Kingdon, if you're still around the above content split sounds good so getting to work on what goes where would be good. I am going to be busy for a few hours but will help later if not done by this evening Oz time. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Aren't you talking about a split between garden strawberry and Fragaria ×ananassa? That strikes me as the analog to the Malus domestica/Apple etc cases. I'm not opposed to that, but I think it is more or less unrelated to what Casliber and I have done (and I really tried to approach this thing one step at a time, with the hopes of keeping the confusion level down). What had been making strawberry such a mess is that we hadn't even split Fragaria from Fragaria ×ananassa, which made it really hard to deal with species like Fragaria nubicola (and the others which are not cultivated). Granted, there are a few gray areas here, such as the use of the word strawberry to mean a variety of plants inside and outside Fragaria (see strawberry (disambiguation)), with perhaps the most problematic case being Fragaria vesca which is also cultivated, at least occasionally. In any event, I'm done editing for this evening. So feel free to look at Special:Contributions/Kingdon to see what I did, and discuss/tweak accordingly. I should be back some time tomorrow to follow up. Kingdon (talk) 06:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Yeah, I probably am talking about a split between garden strawberry and Fragaria ×ananassa.
It sounds like this is far too complicated a case to serve as a case study for the broader issue. I shall withdraw, and leave it in your capable hands.
Hesperian 06:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I think I may be running out of cases where the answer seems (relatively) obvious to me. For one thing, I don't know whether Fragaria ×ananassa would be the right place, or whether cultivated strawberries have also been crossed with other (octoploid, presumably) species in a way that gives them a different name. Octoploid cultivated strawberry seems like a bit of a mouthful although depending on the facts perhaps it would be most accurate. There's also Fragaria × vescana (another cultivated hybrid, currently obscure), although I guess the differing chromosome number should cut down on grey areas here. Casliber is right; we should be glad this isn't Rose. Heh. But I guess at least for now I'm prepared to declare victory. I think things are improved from a day ago, and I'm most interested just in finding loose ends (for example I found one page which had Fragaria (with piping) in a taxobox, which is no longer correct now that I changed the Strawberry redirect). Kingdon (talk) 14:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mimosa pudica (again)

Would appreciate inputs from other editors at Talk:Mimosa pudica regarding ongoing insertion of references to TickleMe Plant into this article--Melburnian (talk) 04:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] OK, speak now or forever hold yer peace....

Just before we nominate it as a collaboration, just wanted to clarify the following:

Talk:Ginkgo#Splitting_article.3F - is it time to split, and what do we call the pages....Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed change to Template:Botanist

A proposal to make an inline version. Please see it there.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Palm sexuality

Some editors have gotten something together on hapaxanthy at the article titled Hapaxanth. It, in part, states that the term is one used in bamboo literature. From what I could briefly gather there seems to be mentions of the word in bamboo and rattan journals but this seemed to be the case because of the rattan palms and not the bamboo. Thats to say, I cant confirm that pleonanthy and hapaxanthy are terms related to bamboo sexuality. If they are not, and they are only related to palms, I might have a go at rewriting hapaxanth and starting pleonanthy. Does anyone have an opinion about where the articles should be out of, say, hapaxanth, hapaxanthic, hapaxanthy? I would say hapaxanthy and pleonanthy as far as naming goes but would like to hear opinions. Perhaps there needn't be both with, instead, both conditions described at Palm sexuality or similar. Or are the terms too uncommon to warrant inclusion here and both should be shoved off to Wikitionary? Plant nerds, your thoughts....Mmcknight4 (talk) 07:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The term Hapaxanthic is not limited to palms and should not be relegated to Palm sexuality. Other groups of plants die after flowering including species in Apiaceae, its a condition different from monocarpic, were plants die after producing seeds. Hardyplants (talk) 07:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
So, different from monocarpic, and exhibited in Arecaceae, Apiaceae, and Bambuseae?Mmcknight4 (talk) 08:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
And are you certain the difference is between dying after flowering and dying after seeding, because the palms seem to flower, fruit (with seeds), then die.Mmcknight4 (talk) 08:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Can not say any thing about palms, no background with them, they do not grow around here except in office buildings and malls. The question is - what happens when the palms flower but do not produce fruits with seeds? Do they still die or do they flower again? A true hapaxanthic plant will die. I would not be surprised if some species have indaviguasl that hapaxanthic and some are monocarpic. Hardyplants (talk) 08:38, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Hapaxanthic palms dont die because they produce fruit without seeds, they die because the inflorescence develops at the very top of the stem, preventing further growth or they develop inflorescences all along the stem and at the top, at which point they flower, fruit, and die. The limited use leads me to believed the term may have been adopted by writers in science articles where it may have seemed like a syn of monocarpy but was not actually relevant. Mmcknight4 (talk) 08:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The only times I have run across the term in relation to palms is in the classification of different groups, sometimes its used to speak only about a branch and not the entire plant. Do some palms have separate male and female plants? Hardyplants (talk) 08:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC) This google search turns up a number of papers using the term: http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=1Ta&q=hapaxanthic+palms&btnG=Search Hardyplants (talk) 08:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, there isnt any debate over whether it is used with palms or not, I'm trying to see if anybody can conclusively attach the term to a group of plants other than palms.Mmcknight4 (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

To put it a little differently, Wikipedia's inclusive nature, especially with regard to the variety of plant life, will necessarily oblige it to eventually address the method of reproduction in palms. Sure, they are a sliver of plant life but a diverse and important one nonetheless. And I realize many editors are working on specific tasks of their own. I know for myself I couldn't possibly begin to edit with any efficacy by hopping from here to there, so Im not asking everybody to drop what they're doing to sort out this one issue. Usually, if I can get it close enough I'm not hesitant to fill a gap but I am not trained in plant sexuality and have no material on the subject so I cant fake it. One of the obstacles is the conflicting nature of online material. One page said rather explicitly that hapaxanthy is not particular to palms. Some sources say hapaxanthy is a form of monocarpy. Some say it isnt. Some say it is the condition where a stem of a plant dies rather the whole organism but even the palm guy Dransfield has published material explaining that hapaxanthic palms may be sympodial or monopodial. Incidentally, those two articles could benefit from a trained plant person. So without assuming you have nothing better to do, if any of you learned plant people can give any kind of guidance I would appreciate it, and I believe the project and its users would be benefited. Species, genus, and other various plant articles are easily written by interloping naturalists like myself, but the hair-splitting or otherwise complex material will likely rely in large part to those editors with both specific knowledge and access to relevant material, and help from any of you would, again, be appreciated.Mmcknight4 (talk) 02:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that the article is right there in that last paragraph. It just needs to be fluffed up. This is a "science" born in the 1700s and of the thought that everything that existed then was everything that would always exist and perfect since it was made by some higher authority -- whatever the definition of THAT was then; by a Swede nonetheless! And nothing against Linnaeus or the rest of the Swedes, but that was a long time ago, before the pony express and Sweden wasn't even on their maillist.... A couple of hundred years of trying to pack new stuff into an old naming science makes the existence of the conflicting views the nature of this science and until they make their information available, conduct your own study of the science and scientists. I think that you are asking plant people here to determine "which school of thought" "the encylopedia" (that second part is a quote of a wikipedian, btw) should follow and what would come from that would not be an honest nor informative article. Assume the worst! Assume that anyone with a bachelors degree in botany or more is schooled in one line of thinking and that you, because you took the time to look into it without having anyone spoon feed their special variety or species of the science to you -- you are going to be able to clearly distinguish between the different ideologies that exist about this and write about them both without bias. Assume that the problem that you are facing is all of the 'help' that learned plant people have given. The article is already mostly written in that paragraph you wrote here.... -- carol (talk) 06:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
How considerate of you to interject. I will promptly attach your message to my newest page Things with absolutely no f*cking relevance whatsoever. Palm classification, in its complete and relevant form, didn't take shape til Moore's work was assembled in the eighties. The 1980's. And the bachelor degree botanist here often know more than me and most of them show better taste than unnecessarily flaming talk pages to wax philosophical about content. Feel free to write the article or add info on its potential content but spare me, if you will, the rhetoric. Mmcknight4 (talk) 07:32, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
So you are saying that what you have written in the paragraph before this more recent and extremely refined and incredibly gracious paragraph is NOT a good start to the article? Also, I am reading between the lines of this newer paragraph that you need a spoon -- please continue to correct me... -- carol (talk) 09:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Ugh. This is why I avoid talk pages. Look sister, I dont know what causes people to become aggressive attention seekers. Maybe daddy held you too much or not enough, late night sneaky uncle, who knows. But clear as day is the fact that, despite commenting here, you haven't included or even attempted to include a single word relevant to the subject matter. I can't (apart from attention seeking) fathom why you are even bothering to chime in on this subject. I'm here looking for help regarding plant sexuality. If you've got nothing to add to the subject then just scurry off, will ya.Mmcknight4 (talk) 16:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Please avoid personal attacks: plant people are friendly people ; ) DJLayton4 (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Although the empirical evidence accumulated in WP would seem to indicate otherwise, viz. Brya etc. :-) Has anyone ever done a psychological study of botanists? Stan (talk) 19:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Heh, brings to mind Charles Sibley (see the quoted paragraph on that page, or the 1999 article by Ahlquist who was the only one who could stand to collaborate with him). Granted, not a plant person, but he did pioneer molecular phylogeny. Kingdon (talk) 04:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I've heard some bad stories about plant physiologists, but I think I had horticulture-type "plant people" in mind. Anyways, it's obviously a gross over simplification, but I would say that most of the folks that edit here are quite civil. DJLayton4 (talk) 06:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

As regards at least the start of this argument, I have seen hapaxanthic used in combination with bamboos. For example, Mabberley's "The Plant Book" refers to some bamboo flowers as hapaxanthic in the entry for bamboo. The dominant usage does seem to be in reference to palms, but plenty of reliable sources confirm that that usage is not exclusive. DJLayton4 (talk) 06:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plant identifications needed

A new user has uploaded a large number of unknown plant requests at v:Bloom Clock/Unknown Plants. The logs are from somewhere in India, and I'm afraid we don't have anyone around who knows the flora of that region. If anyone coud venture some guesses, please do! --SB_Johnny | talk 11:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this guy User:Jmgarg1 could help.Mmcknight4 (talk) 15:44, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I ID'd the Portulaca and Calliandra (anon.).--♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 01:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)