Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants

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eFloras down

Tried to visit http://www.efloras.org/ and got this error message. If this continues, it's going to be a nuisance; it is a valuable resource.

FortiGate Application Control

Application Blocked

You have attempted to use an application that violates your Internet usage policy.

Application HTTP.BROWSER_Firefox

Category Web.Client

URL http://www.efloras.org/flora_page.aspx?flora_id=2

Policy d6bfb262-2a3f-51ee-2382-6eaa0a36bcd7

Anyone know what might be going on? Could it be related to the trump/doge attacks on Harvard? - MPF (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Something weird with how the site is configured. I just tried it with a few browsers including Brave, Safari, and Firefox. So far Firefox is the only one that has a problem. This is holding true for all operating systems I've tried, iOS, Android, and Windows. For now try using another browser. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:33, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MtBotany thanks! Unfortunately, firefox is the only one I've got! It's still happening this morning; it was new late on yesterday, as it was OK earlier yesterday afternoon. - MPF (talk) 09:55, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MtBotany Working now, alarm over! - MPF (talk) 17:45, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Species lists

As PPG II phase I winds up, I'm hoping to spend some time this summer overhauling fern and lycophyte species lists. I'm used to formatting species lists as unbulleted lists. However, during the discussions last year over species notability, I was at least somewhat persuaded by the idea that it's useful to supply the reader with somewhat more information than the Latin binomial in these lists. It means more maintenance, but if the information added to the species list is mostly stable (i.e., name and general distribution) there shouldn't be too much risk of getting out-of-date and inconsistent with the article on the species itself.

I've put in a demo list at Lycopodiella. It mostly emulates the format of List of Hypericum species; I omitted type/habit as that tends to be less variable within genera of ferns and lycophytes. My thought is that it probably doesn't make sense to break up the list by subgenera, etc. unless the genus is large and the infrageneric classification is comprehensive. I've also separated hybrids from orthospecies.

I know @Videsh Ramsahai has been doing yeoman service adding phylogenies from Fern Tree of Life to many of these articles. I would propose to keep the phylogenies in a separate section of the genus articles (but not remove them); IMO it's rather arbitrary to have the list of species split between those that do and don't have plastid data.

I'm putting this out here for comment as I'd like to touch base with the community before putting a lot of effort into this. Choess (talk) 18:25, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think including distribution is helpful to readers, but a major problem is that most taxonomic databases only give species distribution in their records for species, not genera. I think distribution ought to be sourced, and that it is not properly sourced via a link to a genus record that doesn't list distributions of species (I'm opening to having my mind changed about that; it is pretty easy to just click once more from a genus record to a species record).

I don't use World Ferns much, but I see that it does actually have a way of outputting some detailed information (including distribution) for all the species in a genus (see this link, but note that isn't the link currently given in the Lycopodiella article).

As far as making maintenance easy, I wonder if we could have something like {{Format species list}} that formats the input as a table (with editors specifying the number of columns in the table, and then manually adding column headers and data for all the cells aside from the binomials). There is {{Species table}}, but it requires manual entry in all cells, including binomails, and I don't think it is appropriate for anything besides mammals and birds, since it makes the first column the common name rather than the binomial. Plantdrew (talk) 20:54, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are major inconsistencies between the distribution as described in the lede, and in the Distribution section, and as described in the list of species that you added. I suspect that the distribution material relates to Lycopodiella sensu lato (including the 3 segregate genera mentioned in the article), while your list relates to Lycopodiella sensu strictu. I don't know off hand which concept other material in the article relates to. Lavateraguy (talk) 00:14, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The link format in the article does follow Michael's recommendation for deep links but leads to an ambiguous page (the same one I get with your link); I'll mention it to him the next time I send an update.

The broader distribution given in the text does indeed reflect Lycopodiella s.l. (=Lycopodielloideae sensu PPG I). I will work on straightening this out–it looks like the article was expanded as part of an education project and they may not have appreciated the significance of the circumscriptions. (This indirectly illustrates a point I've made before–good genus articles are generally much more difficult to write than species articles unless there's recent monography, as one is forced to steer between synthesis and inaccuracy due to sources covering a limited portion of the genus.)

When I mentioned "general distribution", I was thinking about the distributions of individual species in the table. I'm not sure how much a template would help with this; I feel like there might be variability from genus to genus, even in vascular plants, as to what to highlight. (e.g., habit, as mentioned above; existence of English common names). Choess (talk) 14:29, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good to know about the deep links. I'd just been citing the database in general and now I'll be more specific going forward.

Though maybe when citing for all the species in a table it would be okay to do a general cite of the database as a whole without specific links for each species, at least if there are more than say 10 species in the genus. So just:

<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Hassler |first1=Michael |date=15 June 2025 |title=Synonymic Checklist and Distribution of the World Flora. Version 25.06 |url=https://www.worldplants.de |website=World Plants |access-date=24 June 2025}}</ref>

At least until/unless the database links for a genus displays all the species.

🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:00, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Instituto de Botánica Darwinion - photos?

Hello. If anyone were able to find or take one or two decent photos of the current Darwinion Institute in Buenos Aires and upload them to Commons, I would be hugely grateful. They would help illustrate Draft:Instituto de Botánica Darwinion that I'm writing at the moment. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 15:52, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move of Poaceae

There is a requested move at Talk:Poaceae#Requested move 27 June 2025. Plantdrew (talk) 20:14, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pectinopitys ferruginea

Hello. I have pretty much rewritten the Pectinopitys ferruginea article, otherwise known as 'miro' or 'brown pine'. There is a requested GA nomination on the talk page; if anyone is interested, feel free to take a look. :D Alexeyevitch^(talk) 06:44, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sources on the history of the use of Graminoid, Gramineae, & Poaceae

I've got access to the OED, but it has nothing about graminoid exactly. Just gramineous which is 1659-ish borrowing from Latin. It also does not have Gramineae or Poaceae, naturally. Does anyone have some good key words to search for books or papers that might talk about the when and why Poaceae replaced Gramineae and/or when graminoid was coined? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:47, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At some point botanical systematists standardised on 1) ending family names with -aceae, and 2) using a genus name as the stem (with a few exceptions, included Gramineae, grandfathered in). A little while back I was looking into usage of the -aceous suffix in botanical terminology, and came across the following papers, showing that the change was well in process at the end of the 19th century. The changeover is still in progress, with the grandfathered in (nom. alt.) family names declining in usage, but not yet abandoned. (I changed over decades back, but still use the corresponding English vernacular terms instead of -aceous plant, e.g. umbellifer rather than apiaceous plant, umbelliferous rather than apiaceous.)

John Hendley Barnhart, Family Nomenclature, Bull. Torrey. Bot. Club 22(1): 1-24 (1895)
V. Havard, Family Nomenclature, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 22(2): 77-78 (1895)
V. Havard, Further Remarks on Family Nomenclature, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 22(5): 216-219 (1895)

The modern rule was established by the Vienna Rules of 1906. The Laws of Botanical Nomenclature (2nd edn.) (1883) were pretty much the same, but accepted alternative terminations in some cases. The 1st edn. allows alternative endings in more cases, and grandfathers in additional groups (e.g. Coniferae (as a family = Pinaceae?) and Cupuliferae). (See ICNafp for links.)

The papers cited above show that the Laws of Botanical Nomenclature weren't accepted worldwide at the time.

Apart from the period 1928-34 Google Ngrams (take with a pinch of salt) shows Gramineae more used that Poaceae until the late 1980s, and another step change about 10 years back, since when use of Gramineae has been declining (from 35% to 20%).

I've tracked the use of graminoid as an adjective, meaning grass-like, to 1874 in Google Books (a 1799 instance seems to be an abbreviation of graminoides as a species epithet, 1839 a misdated 1972 work, and 1868 a misdated 1977 work; Graminoids is used in an 1860 work as a synonym of Glumiferae. In 1909 graminoid is found meaning grass-like plants excluding grasses. According to Google Ngrams usage of graminoid didn't take off until the mid-20th century.

According to Wiktionary gramineous is an adjectival form for grasses - equivalent to poaceous or graminaceous. I'd believe that. According to Google Ngrams graminaceous dominates the other two words.

Also in this semantic space, glumaceous, glumiferous and glumiflorous, but these are less used than graminoid. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:08, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

Sutherlandia frutescens is now Lessertia frutescens per POWO. Could someone move the page and update the speciesbox, please? Not sure how to do it myself, or if it needs Admin abilities. Thanks! - MPF (talk) 17:42, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Loopy30 (talk) 01:45, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Loopy30 Thanks! - MPF (talk) 00:34, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Template talk:Taxonomy/Polysporangiophytes § Template-protected edit request on 19 June 2025

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Taxonomy/Polysporangiophytes § Template-protected edit request on 19 June 2025. Jako96 (talk) 09:46, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life § Can't display some taxa's authorities

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life § Can't display some taxa's authorities. Jako96 (talk) 09:56, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Plantago afra is not a synonym of Plantago indica

There is a redirect. They are separate species (see: powo, wfo, wikidata). Sorry, I do not edit in English, so I can not repair it. Kenraiz (talk) 15:06, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The root issue is confusion in the application of Plantago psyllium L. (Plantago afra was originally redirected to Plantago psyllium, which redirects to Plantago indica.) See (1714–1715) Proposal to reject the names Plantago psyllium and P. cynops (Plantaginaceae) - Applequist - 2006 - TAXON - Wiley Online Library. It might be worth adding a nomenclatural section at Plantago indica.

Sell & Murrell have P. arenaria Waldst. & Kit. syn. P. psyllium L. nom. rejic., P. scabra Moench. nom. illeg., P. indica L. nom. illeg. and P. afra L. syn. P. psyllium L. (1762) non (1753), P. indica auct. Opinion seems to have changed on the illegitimacy of P. indica and POWO, etc. have P. indica rather than P. arenaria.

We could just delete Plantago afra, but given its minor commercial importance it seems worthwhile to go the effort of generating a stub. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:05, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kenraiz @Lavateraguy - Plantago afra is now its own page, awaiting expansion - MPF (talk) 22:14, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Poaceae#Requested move 27 June 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Poaceae#Requested move 27 June 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 16:05, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another AI generated site

Greg.App There were 4 links from WikiPedia EN to that site. I removed one as it was superfluous (covered by a citation to POWO) and didn't support the text. (I haven't checked Wayback Machine to see if it previously did.) I suspect the other three should go as well. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:18, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Supposed ancient dispersal of banana by Austronesians, e.g. to Africa

An editor has added a paragraph about ancient spread to this article, but the 3 sources cited do not appear to support the claim. I've tagged the paragraph and started a talk page discussion; WikiProject members are invited to assess the claim and help decide what action if any needs to be taken. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:56, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Narcissus (plant)

Narcissus (plant) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:59, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

To move Fraser fir (back) to its scientific name Abies fraseri, please. To reverse this move which as far as I can see, was done without discussion. "Fraser fir" is far from the only vernacular name, e.g. IUCN has the gramatically more accurate Fraser's Fir, and FNA cites southern balsam fir as well as fraser fir. It is also the only page in Category:Abies not to use the scientific name, so it is out of place. - MPF (talk) 17:38, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well you made the move seem reasonable. More remarkable is that all firs are today under their Latin names. I'm surprised that none have WP:COMMONNAMEs sufficient to get them renamed in English - I wonder if there wasn't a drive sometime to prevent that application of policy? Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:56, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]