Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants

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Section title question

Is this the correct way to title a section for species that have been changed? It seems a bit odd and unclear and I cant find any common name usage. Also many of the articles make no mention of being changed from this genus. Croton_(plant)#Formerly_placed_here When I first saw this, I thought it was a placeholder or something. ← Metallurgist (talk) 04:27, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

@Metallurgist: two points:

• It seems to be common to use "Formerly placed here" meaning "Formerly placed in this genus", but maybe some other section title would be better.
• Such lists should be supported by one or more sources. Often a single citation to a search for the genus name in a taxonomic database like Plants of the World Online works, rather than needing a reference for each synonym.

Peter coxhead (talk) 09:26, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Actually all of the linked articles in the list I looked at either have the Croton synonym in the taxobox or the taxonbar. Added citation to PoWO I suggested above. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead Oh yes I see that at the bottom now. I wasnt disputing it, just thought it might help to be more clear. I may seek out sources to establish this in each article at some point, but thanks for the update. ← Metallurgist (talk) 07:38, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

In the case of Croton, I would suggest placing this content as a subsection within the Taxonomy section. When I include this information in genus or family articles I typically place it after the current list of daughter taxa under a Species or Taxonomy header (see Ophidius or Actinonaias for examples), but in the case of very large genera such as this a subsection or perhaps even standalone list may be more appropriate. When good sources are available detailing these former species I think that info is definitely worth including here on Wikipedia. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 07:49, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Calystegia tuguriorum (or Convolvulus) of uncertain taxonomic status

Hi! I initially wanted to add some missing details about this species, but my main question before I edited was which genus it should be placed in. I mean, like what genus should Wikipedia list it as? Most sources seem to differ between Calystegia and Convolvulus. The Plants of World Online places it in the genus Convolvulus, and so does the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network. However, the International Plant Names Index and GBIF list it in Calystegia. I see that there was a study done in 2025 that placed (or re-placed) the species in Convolvulus. I haven't read the entire article, but this seems like a reputable source... and an interesting genus which I'm not familar with. I personally think the article should be moved to "Convolvulus tuguriorum", based on the recent work done by researchers and acceptance by POWO, although it's strange that IPNI doesn't accept it. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 11:32, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

IPNI is a database of names, not of taxa, and hence has records for this species placed in Convolvulus, Calystegia and Volvulus. Therefore IPNI is not a relevant source for the accepted name for a taxon.

The paraphyly of Convolvulus with respect to Calystegia has been known for some time (your citation indicates for over 20 years), but it had not been reflected in the taxonomy. (British botanists still use Calystegia.) Since POWO has grasped the nettle it's justifiable to move the article to Convolvulus tuguriorum. However it shouldn't be moved independent of moving the other species (and merging Calystegia to Convolvulus). Lavateraguy (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

However WFO still accepts Calystegia. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:58, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

It seems like it is probably a recent change on POWO if it differs from WFO. WFO's Taxonomic Expertise Network for Convolvulaceae was established in March 2025; I'm not sure if that allowed enough to time to get things updated by the TEN for the December 2025 WFO snapshot. 16:13, 19 May 2026 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 16:13, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Lavateraguy and Plantdrew. I note that Calystegia soldanella is still accepted by POWO. However, NZPCN moved it to Convolvulus, as did the study? That's probably more confusing than the example of tuguriorum. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 22:32, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

POWO says that Calystegia soldanella is a synonym of Convolvulus soldanella, i.e. does not accept Calystegia soldanella. Lavateraguy (talk) 07:35, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I misread that, my apologies. As the study moved the entire genus and this was accepted by POWO, I support moving all species of that genus into Convolvulus. If anyone objects, please comment. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 07:55, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I've mentioned POWO's treatment of Calystegia on the Convolvulus page; I guess the next step is to merge the two pages - MPF (talk) 13:45, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I don't know how to move the WikiData pages, as I'm unfamiliar with it, so I'd appreciate if someone else did it. I can move the pages on WP. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 22:11, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata pages should not be moved. While Wikidata items for organisms are nominally about taxa (i.e., they have "instance of taxon"), Wikidata items actually correspond to names. Wikidata has items for both Calystegia tuguriorum (Q15482721) and Convolvulus tuguriorum (Q110702813).

The only change that should possibly be made on Wikidata if Calystegia tuguriorum is moved to Convolvulus is to link the Wikidata items for the two names to the Wikipedia pages (one of which will be a redirect). I say "possibly" because Wikidata for a long time disallowed links to Wikipedia redirects and has a principle that all articles on a subject in different languages should be linked to a single item. Currently six languages have articles titled Calystegia tuguriorum and none have Convolvulus tuguriorum. The all articles on one item would have an English article titled Calystegia tuguriorum linked from the Wikidata item for Convolvulus tuguriorum.

As it is now possible to link redirects on Wikidata, I think the all articles on one item approach needs to be revisited. Links between different language editions of Wikipedia can be handled by creating the appropriate redirects and linking Wikidata to the redirects. Plantdrew (talk) 19:01, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Draft:Yucca torreyi

I am reviewing Draft:Yucca torreyi, or at least am trying to review it. There is a redirect from Yucca torreyi to Yucca faxoniana which is tagged as the result of a page move. The history of Yucca faxoniana shows that it was moved on 23 February 2012 by User:Peter coxhead with the notation Correct name according to World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. There is a note by User:Ethmostigmus on 23 May 2026 that this draft is off to a good start, but that doesn't seem to address the issue of the species name. If Y.torreyi and Y. faxoniana are names for the same species, then the information in this draft should be added to the existing article. The Taxonomy sections discuss various specific names, but I don't see a discussion of whether Y.torreyi and Y. faxoniana are the same species or different species. Dammit, Jim, I'm a chemist, not a botanist. Is this one species with two names, or two species? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:24, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

2012 was a while ago. We generally follow Plants of the World Online now, which doesn't treat Y. torreyi as a synonym of Y. faxoniana (it does treat Y. torreyi as a synonym of Y. treculiana, but the draft has a 2025 source that treats these as separate species). Plantdrew (talk) 19:04, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I have contacted POWO recently and made them aware of the 2025 paper. They responded that they will remove the synonymity between Y. torreyi and Y. treculiana in their next update and will restore Y. torreyi as an accepted species. Joshua tx (talk) 23:21, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Ayala-Hernandez et al. 2025 conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the genus Yucca - they found that while Y. faxoniana and Y. torreyi are both species within genus Yucca section Yucca, they are of different lineages and not closely-related. You can check this for yourself on page 183 (it is repeated on pages 185 through 187). Here's a link to the paper:

https://phytotaxa.mapress.com/pt/article/view/phytotaxa.687.2.2 Joshua tx (talk) 23:16, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

In addition to the 2025 analysis linked by Joshua tx, Y. torreyi is treated as sufficiently distinct by the IUCN and NatureServe. At this stage it can be considered an accepted taxon for the purpose of WP:NSPECIES despite POWO, with discussion of the species' taxonomic history and synonymy in the article body. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:39, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Agree, definitely treat the two as separate species now. (2012 is quite a long time ago in terms of molecular phylogenetics.) Peter coxhead (talk) 11:14, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

User:Ethmostigmus wrote: You can check this for yourself on page 183 (it is repeated on pages 185 through 187). Yes. What part of: Dammit, Jim, I'm a chemist, not a botanist. didn't you understand? I know how to check CAS numbers. I know how to count carbon atoms. I don't know how to read botanical literature, and will trust that people with a different education than I have do know that. I will accept the draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Is 60 score good for a page?

i was just wondering Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I think you need to provide more context. I've no idea what you're asking? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:06, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

like my page elowan has 60 score i was just wondering if that was good? Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 22:58, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

That score is not good or bad. It is just how the bot adds new pages to be displayed. See the log for the bot to see examples of it scoring:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:InceptionBot/NewPageSearch/Plants/log

If you want feedback about the article you started, it needs work. It has very little information on the subject and right now I'm not sure that it is notable in the Wikipedia sense. See: Wikipedia:Notability 🌿MtBotany (talk) 11:49, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

its a not widely known technology so i made it a page. plus theres barely any info. Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 22:45, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

That there is barely any information available does not make a strong case for a stand alone article to exist. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:03, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

i will find as much info as possible. Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 01:30, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

I added more information on elowan. Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 01:44, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

InceptionBot is new to me, but it appears to be using vocabulary items as heuristics to identify which projects new articles should be associated with. A score of 60 is relatively low, meaning that your elowan article doesn't use much plant related vocabulary - a consequence of it being short, and not being particularly plant focussed.

With respect to notability, this would sit neatly in the cyborg article, added between the sections on animals and bacteria. Elowan could then become a redirect to cyborg#Plant cyborgs. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:29, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

I mean plant cyborgs are barely even known and they are a relatively young technology so I think its better if it would be its own page/series of pages. Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 22:48, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah I'm not sure it's notable as a standalone, it got a few news articles at the time but no sustained coverage. Probably better as a paragraph in the cyborg article, or maybe as the start of an article about plant cyborgs. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:21, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

i mean its one of the first of its kind, its a really early technology Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 22:42, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

so it would be really nice to document a thing thats less than 9 years old and not widely known to the public Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 22:43, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Rather than argue about how one structures information in an encyclopaedia, I'll mention the discoverability issues. If you leave the information at elowan no one will find it unless they type elowan into a search engine (plant cyborg doesn't find it, but does find various web pages about other plant cyborgs). If you put it in a plant cyborg section at cyborg then anyone who looks up cyborg in WikiPedia will see if it they look at enough of the article.

How things generally work is that you start off with a broad article, and if it becomes unwieldy, or overbalanced by a single section, then a section can be moved to an article of narrower scope (in this case plant cyborg or cyberbotany or ...), and replaced with a summary. In principle there could be a second round, and particular plant cyborgs could be split off into their own articles, but I doubt that, at least at the present time, any particular plant cyborg is notable enough for this to occur. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:50, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

thank you! Wikiguythatlikesbiology (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

What is up with Opuntia in FNA, POWO, PLANTS, etc?

I've noticed recently that there is not much agreement between sources on what is or is not an accepted species in the cactus genus Opuntia. Flora of North America does not even have a description of Opuntia cespitosa or a listing of what Donald J. Pinkava thinks it ought to be considered a synonym of. Which is weird, right? On the other hand Plants of the World Online lists species like Opuntia tunoidea which I have not been able to find a description of more recent than 1933. Weakley and the Southeastern Flora think it is a synonym of Opuntia stricta var. stricta and PLANTS has it as a synonym of Opuntia dillenii. I've done a search in the Wikipedia library and found what seems to be the most recent treatment of the family Cactaceae in BioOne titled Cactaceae at Caryophyllales.org – a dynamic online species-level taxonomic backbone for the family. This also disagrees in a number of ways with POWO. I'm terribly confused and suspect I may have missed something obvious. Does anyone know what is going on with this genus? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:01, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Weakley's website links both O. cespitosa and O. humifusa to the FNA treatment of O. humifusa. I've looked at several floras that include O. humifusa, and none of them mention O. cespitosa at all (not even as a synonym); I'm not sure why that is.

The FNA treatment was published in 2003, so there certainly could have been some changes in what species are recognized since then. I don't trust PLANTS to be up-to-date for anything. For POWO, there are certainly cases where it is out of step with the consensus of botanists working in North America (I have no idea whether that applies to Opuntia though). Plantdrew (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

POWO & FNA are woefully behind regarding Opuntia taxonomy (like 50+ years behind). iNaturalist typically relies on POWO for flowering plant taxonomy but for the genus Opuntia they use Opuntiads.com. It is not perfect but it is far more accurate than POWO & FNA. Joshua tx (talk) 23:31, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Good to know where iNaturalist is getting its information, thanks.

I'm currently checking out the caryophyllales.org list of Opuntia species. It seems well supported and up to date. I'll have to compare it with Opuntiads.com and see how they differ. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 19:59, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

@MtBotany I don't know myself, but could "cespitosa" be an orthographic Latin error correctable to caespitosa? Might be worth checking sources with that spelling? I know POWO returns zero hits with misspelt names - MPF (talk) 16:37, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

IPNI has O. cespitosa Raf. (1830), O.caespitosa auct. (which I expect is an orthographic variant of the preceding), and O. caespitosa Poepp. (1835) (inferred from place of publication to be a Chilean species).

cespitosa is not considered correctable to caespitosa (Art. 60.1, Ex. 1), so the original orthography (cespitosa) is to be used.

A web search for Opuntia caespitosa returns more results with the other spelling than this. It seems that O. cespitosa was recently resurrected] from the synonymy of O. humifusa, though Google Scholar finds earlier works recognising it. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:54, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

cespitosa is not correctable to caespitosa (Art. 60.1, Ex.1), so Rafineseque's original orthography is retained. IPNI has O. cespitosa Raf. (1830), O. caespitosa auct., which is expect an orthographic variant of the preceding, and O. caespitosa Poepp. (1835), which from place of publication I presume to be a Chilean plant.

O. cespitosa seems to have been recently resurrected (2012) from the synonymy of O. humifusa, though there are earlier works that separate the two taxa. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:17, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

@Lavateraguy thanks! - MPF (talk) 23:06, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

For North America, the best source is NatureServe which is also what POWO generally follows after the publication of FNA accounts, but as with all online resources, it is impossible to know what they change every month. Weepingraf (talk) 19:02, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Urtica ferox on Peer Review

Hi. I would like to inform WikiProject:Plants that the article Urtica ferox is now on Peer Review. If anyone is interested, feel free to check it out. If anyone wants to co-nominate, let me know. Cheers. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 04:53, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Restrepia: archilarum or archilae?

I was going to make a page for this species of orchid, but the sources use different names for it, and I can't tell which is technically correct. User:EmergentAnarchy/Restrepia archilarum has a list of which sources use what, and it's a fairly even split. obviously one will have to be a redirect. which should be used as the article name? EmergentAnarchy (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

R. archilarum, see the IPNI entry. Choess (talk) 23:34, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Because the epithet honours a family rather than an individual the gen.pl. rather than the gen.sing. should be used, and the epithet is corrected, according to the ICNafp, from archilae, as in the original publication,to archilarum. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:34, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Which taxonbar should this use? The wikidata for archilae has a lot more links on it. should i just move the statements to the other item? EmergentAnarchy (talk) 12:00, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Put both in the taxonbar (use |from1=, |from2=, etc. to link multiple Wikidata items in one taxonbar). I've moved the statements from the archilae item to the archilarum item where the database actually had archilarum (and Tropicos has records for both spellings).

It also would be helpful to create a redirect for archilae and link that from Wikidata; to link redirects, click on the "badge" to the right of what you are trying to link and select "intentional sitelink to redirect". The "badge" is supposed to represent like a military medal or a blue ribbon prize, but to me it looks more like a magnifying glass; it's basically just a circle on top of a stick. Plantdrew (talk) 16:25, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

thanks all. Restrepia archilarum is now a live article, with a redirect, and i think i've linked all the wikidata pages correctly. EmergentAnarchy (talk) 16:44, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Move discussion for Maize

There is a discussion at Talk:Maize proposing a move to "Corn" that may interest members of the WikiProject. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2026 (UTC)