Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants

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Assistance for Gemascolex

Hi, I was doing NPP when I came across the two articles Gemascolex stirlingi and Gemascolex. It has quite a few errors in the infobox, and when I tried to run SpeciesHelper, it returned an error. Wondering if anyone with more experience could help me out? Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 06:50, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've created the necessary taxonomy template. Btw, it's an earthworm, not a plant. — Jts1882 | talk 07:28, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh right yea, I don't know how I ended up posting it here instead of at the other wikiproject, sorry about that. Thanks for helping though! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 08:24, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers for flagging this, even if it it is accidentally in the wrong WikiProject :P I believe this is an Australian endemic genus so I will gladly take a swing at improving both articles. The sources used on both pages (iNaturalist and the Ellura Sanctuary website) are unreliable - iNaturalist is user-generated content and a Wikipedia mirror, and the Ellura Sanctuary website is run by non-experts (very nice people who I would certainly consider more knowledgeable than the average Joe, but not to the degree I would recommend using their website as a source for Wikipedia). I'll start working on fixing that in a moment, and I'll leave a message on the article creator's talk page to inform them about the sources. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 08:54, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start working on fixing that in a moment, and I'll leave a message on the article creator's talk page to inform them about the sources both done, now to track down some more sources to expand the articles... Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 09:27, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Great work on the articles. :) ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 06:49, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should Flameflower and Hummingbird flower be disambiguated?

I'm currently working on the article for Macranthera flammea, known by the common names flameflower and hummingbird-flower, and noticed that those names are currently redirects to specific taxa (Talinum and Epilobium canum respectively). These are relatively generic names that are commonly applied to several species (eg. many species commonly called flameflower formerly placed in Talium are now in other genera) - should these be converted into disambiguation pages? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 10:30, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I came across the term 'hummingbird flower' (lower case) I'd assume it was a general adaptational term for the flowers of all species adapted to ornithophily by hummingbirds. Capitalised, as 'Hummingbird Flower', then that could be the standard English name for a particular species (or genus, if 'Xxxxx Hummingbird Flower'). But because of a bad policy decision several years ago, that isn't an admissible option on wikipedia . . . MPF (talk) 11:58, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh how I agree about the inability to distinguish "hummingbird flower" and "Hummingbird Flower", but that is a battle lost. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 15:50, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If a vernacular name is commonly used to refer to multiple taxa, but redirects to a single taxon, the redirect should be changed to a page that lists all the taxa to which that vernacular name is applied. I'm sure there are plenty of redirects out there that apply to multiple taxa; there is nothing sancrosanct about keeping them as redirects. Wikipedia has not done a very good job over it's history of checking that a vernacular name is applied to multiple taxa (there are some animal articles using vernacular names as titles, where that name is more commonly used for another species, and is not the most commonly used name for the species bearing the title).

There are some editors who feel that WP:MOSDAB means that entries on a disambiguation page should be as brief as possible. For organisms sharing a vernacular name, the scientific name alone provides a unique title that is technically sufficient to disambiguate. However, readers searching for a vernacular name may not know the scientific name of the organism they are searching for, and would find additional information helpful to determine which article they are interested in. Differences in family, range, growth habit or, flower color may potentially be helpful in distinguishing plants that share a vernacular name.

Wikipedia:Set index articles were established in response to the minimalist interpretation of MOSDAB in order to provide more information to enable a reader to find the article they were looking for. The original use case for SIAs was ships sharing a name, where including a pennant number in parentheses provides a unique title, but the pennant number may not be something that most readers know. The war(s) in which a naval vessel served are more likely to provide a context relevant to readers. The disadvantage of SIAs compared to disambiguation pages is that there are reports generated for incoming links to disambiguation pages, so that the links can be found and corrected to the specific article intended.

Set index articles for plants can be tagged with {{Plant common name}} rather than {{Disambiguation}}. Plantdrew (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers for that info Plantdrew, I've gone ahead and converted Flameflower and Hummingbird flower into set index articles with the template you mentioned and distinguished them by family placement and native range. I've probably missed at least a few species for each so I'll spend a bit more time looking today. Please let me know if you see any issues! Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:18, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ethmostigmus - worth adding a link to ornithophily too I'd think - MPF (talk) 23:47, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, done :) Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 09:53, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've refactored that. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:11, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pteridospermatophytes in spermatophyte phylogeny

Pteridospermatophytes, otherwise known as seed ferns, are an extinct clade of stem seed plant and might have been ancestral to modern seed plants, but for some reason they are not included in the cladogram of spermatophytes, so could someone please add them to the cladogram of spermatophytes, i actually tried to do it but it was to hard and always met with one error or another. Monstera enjoyer (talk) 07:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The sources that the cladogram is based on don't include Pteridospermatophyta, which I believe is a polyphyletic clade. I think that's why this clade hasn't been included in the cladogram yet. PrinceTortoise (he/him • poke) 08:25, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

oh, ok anyways thanks for the info Monstera enjoyer (talk) 09:16, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, that cladogram in the spermatophyte article is of living spermatophytes. (There is a tendency for cladograms in articles on living taxa to focus on living representatives.) If you could find a well supported cladogram, Pteridospermatophyta might be a suitable home. Tracheophyta has a cladogram including progymnosperm and pteridosperm terminals, which is probably inaccurate, as both groups are thought to be paraphyletic. Note that the cladogram also doesn't include the various extinct gymnosperm orders. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:47, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The cladogram for seed plants is based on genetic analyses so is limited to living species. Phylogenetic trees that include pteridosperms will be based on morphological data and will probably conflict with the gnepine hypothesis shown in the seed plant article. — Jts1882 | talk 16:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They also generally just contradict each other. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pteridosperms are one of the remaining great enigmas of modern paleobotany. Other than the fact they are seed-bearing plants nobody really agrees how they are related to living seed plants (and this is also true for other extinct seed plant groups like Bennettitales), maybe other than lyginopterids are probably stem group seed plants. Some books and papers misleadingly present the authors pet hypotheses of seed plant relationships as some kind of consensus view when there is none. In my opinion it is highly inappropriate to include pteridosperms in cladograms because this falsely implies some kind of agreement regarding their affinities when the position of particular pteridosperm groups varies wildly from one study to the next.Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:54, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

i tried to add pteridosperms to the seedplant cladogram as wikipedia itself mentions that pteridosperms are spermatophytes. Monstera enjoyer (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pteridosperms are undoubtedly spermatophytes , but they almost certainly don't form a natural group unto themselves (i.e. they are not monophyletic) so trying to put them as a single group on a cladogram is misleading if that's what you were trying to do. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]