User talk:Plantdrew

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks }} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 16:49, 31 December 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Abishe:, thank you for the New Year's wishes, and Happy New Year to you too. Plantdrew (talk) 07:33, 1 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

Are you planning on doing the automatic taxobox conversion update this year? I was looking forward to it. The Knowledge Pirate (talk) 03:09, 1 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

@The Knowledge Pirate:, I'm planning on it. I've just been very busy over the holidays. I hope to do it tomorrow, but I might not have time before the 3rd. I had been hoping to get fungi under 1000 manual taxoboxes before I did the update, but I guess that isn't going to happen (on the other hand, I wasn't expecting insects to go under 2000, which you have accomplished, and I was more interested in getting the total transclusion count for manual taxoboxes under 10,000 than I was in getting fungi under 1000, and you've brought the total under 10,000 as well). Plantdrew (talk) 07:36, 1 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

My goal was to hit the 98% marker before the end of the year. The Knowledge Pirate (talk) 20:17, 1 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

Patience. I always enjoy these updates and appreciate the effort involved. — Jts1882 | talk 20:22, 1 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

The redirect Giant-rhubarb has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 18 §Giant-rhubarb until a consensus is reached. Taking Out The Trash (talk) 20:12, 18 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

Delivered on behalf of User:CJDinoFan who was unable to do so

MossOnALog Talk  22:19, 28 January 2026 (UTC) Reply  

Thank you for the recognition. 01:29, 29 January 2026 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 01:29, 29 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thank you for the barnstar, and thank you for creating those articles. Plantdrew (talk) 17:56, 1 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

There is no need to create redirects with an "x" for "×ばつ", as the Wikimedia software can handle people typing it. Abductive (reasoning) 03:03, 6 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for letting me know. Plantdrew (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello, you recently rated Gigamachilis as a stub. It has been expanded considerably since, and I respectfully request you to reassess it.

Regards TrueMoriarty Talk | Contribs 15:54, 16 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

@TrueMoriarty: done. But you can reassess articles you have expanded yourself. Plantdrew (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for the help. TrueMoriarty Talk | Contribs 08:48, 17 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for doing all the fixes for this. CoL, and WoRMS both changed their entries within two days of the Archinitocrella and Abnitocrella pages being started. I didn't fix anything because I had drafted a letter to the person at worms but his email address was invalid, so the email failed to send, and it was when I came back to fix everything I found it had already been done: both for the pages and WoRMs, and CoL. Very pleasing. MargaretRDonald (talk) 02:25, 22 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

You're welcome. Plantdrew (talk) 05:19, 22 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi, you tagged Telinga oculus for a history merge, but the editors claim that Mycalesis oculus "changed based on Aduse-Poku, K., Brattström, O., Kodandaramaiah, U., Lees, D.C., Brakefield, P.M., & Wahlberg, N. 2015. Systematics and historical biogeography of the old world butterfly subtribe Mycalesina (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae" I could not verify with the claimed source which is free to read, but I did just skim read. In fact it say the currently circumscribed subgenera Telinga and Henotesia, which include taxa occurring in and outside the Malagasy region in some treatments [21–23] are incorrect.

However I recognise your expertise in this area is way beyond mine so just wanted to verify your happy with the change as if I had seen it based on the claim I would have reverted? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 20:33, 4 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Same goes for Telinga davisoni. KylieTastic (talk) 20:41, 4 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@KylieTastic:, maybe it is best to just revert to the titles that were copied from, since the editor copy-pasting didn't add any sources that support placing the species in Telinga. The Synoptic Catalogue of the Butterflies of India appears to be the most recent source in the articles, and it doesn't place the species in Telinga.

The relevant bit in Aduse-Poku et al. is "We also confirm that H. oculus is most closely related to Satyrus adolphei (type species of Telinga, Moore, 1880)", but that doesn't mean they recognize Telinga as a genus and there is nothing about davisoni there.

Presumably there is some recent publication that does place the species in Telinga, but it's not cited anywhere.

Taxonomic database coverage for Lepidoptera is terrible (the only organisms with worse coverage are microscopic things most people haven't heard of). It is worth noting that iNaturalist does have them in Telinga, but iNaturalist isn't necessarily transparent about their sources. Plantdrew (talk) 21:20, 4 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

My reading of Aduse-Poku et al. (2016) is that they revise genus Telinga, including oculus and adolphei (which have been variably placed in Heteropsis and Mycalesis) and excluding non-Asian forms. The quoted sentence above that the "currently circumscribed subgenera Telinga and Henotesia ... are incorrect" is based on their phylogeny and the reason for revising Telinga (both content and rank).

This treatment is accepted in Markku Savela's website, but not at the page linked in the Telinga oculus article (see Telinga). Markku Savela is a lepidopterist and his site seems very reliable for Lepidoptera in my experience. However, he explicitly requests that the site is not used for taxonomic referencing ("Don't do it!").

The treatment is also accepted on nymphalidae.net, which I think can be used as the secondary source confirming Aduse-Poku et al. (2016). Then we can also cite Markku Savela's website as we are not relying on it as the taxonomic reference.

It's not accepted by the Global Lepidoptera Index (successor to Lepindex) but the updates there are inconsistent. Some groups are treated very well and others not at all. — Jts1882 | talk 09:08, 5 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

My reading was that they never call Telinga a genus, only a subgenus. But I might have missed something. Plantdrew (talk) 21:41, 5 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

After exactly 5 years of me trying, we have all converted 99% of transcluded manual taxoboxes to the automated system. It started to get annoying at around the 15,000 mark. Even though less than 2,500 articles remain in the articlespace, they are too much of a pain for me to attempt in large numbers. If I see one that is easy to convert, I will do it, but I expect my activity to drop after this. The Knowledge Pirate (talk) 19:55, 5 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@The Knowledge Pirate:, thank you for all your work on this over years. I'm not sure I believe you; you've quit and restarted before. But best wishes for your future endeavours.

I'm getting close to being done with it myself (getting to 0 manual taxoboxes is not a goal of mine). I'm planning on posting a brief stats update when the transclusions in article space drop below the transclusions in all other name spaces (currently 2491 articles, 2457 others), and a final stats update in at the beginning of July.

I'm about halfway through the gastropods, going article by article. Then I plan to do a final pass through fungi, beetles and lepidoptera. I haven't worked really at all on conodonts or mites, so I'll check those out too. There might be a few articles in other places I skipped because they were at the wrong title for monotypy and I didn't have page mover rights when I last looked at them.

After that, I'm going to be done with it. I'm not interested in spending much time dealing with fossils with uncertain placement, incorrect assertions of monotypy that require new articles to be written, synonyms that need articles for the accepted names, or complicated merges. And those situations cover most of the remaining manual taxoboxes. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 5 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I am not leaving Wikipedia, but I am done with these taxoboxes. The Knowledge Pirate (talk) 03:41, 6 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I didn't read you as intending to leave Wikipedia entirely this time. I'm certainly ready to be done with taxoboxes. I've been at it for a little over nine years, and I think I'll probably be able to wrap my efforts up in no more than two months. Plantdrew (talk) 04:02, 6 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I keep an eye on the plant manual taxoboxes among others. There are currently ~82, but they are all problematic in some respect. Citrus taxonomy is a complete mess, so I ignore citrus articles. There are articles on species that PoWO and other taxonomic databases either don't include or regard as "unplaced". Then there are extinct plant taxa, which can be tricky because paleobiology sources quite often use different classification systems. So I agree that a target of 0 for plants is not desirable (although it works for spiders). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:07, 6 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

There are a number of articles with manual taxoboxes, like Pinidae, about Chase & Reveal taxon names that don't appear to have been widely taken up. Personally I don't think they should have their own articles, since they mostly correspond to taxa with more established names for which we already have articles, but I'm not quite sure what the best solution is. Any thoughts? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:13, 6 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Peter coxhead:, in principle, I'd be fine with redirecting them. Are there any besides Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal, Cycadidae, Ginkgoidae, and Pinidae? There is also Cupressidae, but I don't know if that is a Chase & Reveal taxon (and it conflicts with the classification presented in Pinidae, although Template:Taxonomy/Pinidae exists and has only Pinales as a child which is consistent with the classification represented by having a Cupressidae article).

• Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal is getting just barely over 1 page view/day. The other get more, but I suspect a lot of that is due to inclusion in Template:Acrogymnospermae classification for Cycadidae, Ginkgoidae and Pinidae, or being displayed in automatic taxoboxes for Pinidae and Cupressidae. At least as an interim step, I think unlink them all from templates and see what happens to page views (I'm not sure if the Cupressidae/Pinidae split is widely supported). Plantdrew (talk) 03:25, 9 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I hadn't realized what an utter mess the classification material is in articles like Gymnosperm. The systems in the taxobox, in the Classification section and in the cladogram are inconsistent. De-linking in Template:Acrogymnospermae classification is certainly a good first step. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:44, 9 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

One of the things I find problematic about navboxes is the lack of referencing. I've had run-ins with the editor that created Template:Acrogymnospermae classification in the past over synthesizing classifications or cladograms from different sources. I'm tempted to replace the existing content with the draft at User:Peter coxhead/sandbox which is based on the latest complete system I've found (Yang et al., 2022 doi :10.1016/j.pld.202205003). I'm not sure about going down to genera. What do you think? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:28, 10 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Jonah Ginsburg (talk) 23:35, 6 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hey Plantdrew, let me know if the email didn't go through. Thanks, Jonah Ginsburg (talk) 15:10, 10 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Plantdrew: The reason why I am sending you this message is because User:ScrubbedFalcon closed the discussion as merge, I 100% disagree with it. I have created an against the merge section on the page Talk:Ferrero SpA, with multiple reasons of why I am against it. Catfurball (talk) 22:32, 12 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Catfurball:, I'm utterly mystified why you are contacting me about this. I supppose I might have done some Wikignome type edits on one of those articles, but I have no memory of having done so. I do have an interest in food related articles, but that doesn't really extend to food manufacturing companies. Plantdrew (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

The redirect Manduk pami has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 March 13 §Manduk pami until a consensus is reached. ArcticSeeress (talk) 13:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Plantdrew, this seems very curious to me. If someone searches on "Cirripedia" they are taken automatically to "Barnacle" ... where they won't see the categories? Are the categories not meant to be seen by ordinary readers? The only way to get to the categories in this system is for someone to click on the link in "(Redirected from Cirripedia)", which does seem a bit roundabout, and I can't believe any normal readers would do such a thing. I presume some decision has been made in policy circles here, but I don't see the logic in it. Surely the categories are required where the taxobox is shown, even if they're also in a redirect. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:36, 25 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Chiswick Chap:; barnacle is not a taxon that was described by one taxonomist in a particular year; Cirripedia is. Aside from birds and mammals, where article titles are almost always vernacular names, "named by"/"described in year" categories are frequently on scientific name redirects, not vernacular name titles.

I question the value of the "named by"/"described in year" categories in general, but I suspect if there is anybody interested those categories, they are likely to be browsing the categories themselves, not generally arriving at them from articles with vernacular name titles. Plantdrew (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Ok, well if the categories are trivial then it hardly matters. I'm not sure I see the relevance of whether "Barnacle" is a taxon; the point here is that Barnacle-the-article is functioning as the taxon's home, since Cirripedia redirects to it, so it is where folks will see the taxobox, the description of the taxon, and I'd have thought that would mean also any ancillary information like categories which go with the taxon, that's all. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:37, 25 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Chiswick Chap:, if you want to add the categories back to the barnacle article, I won't object. But I think, per WP:INCOMPATIBLE, that they belong on the taxon name redirects first, and on the target of the redirects second (if at all). Plantdrew (talk) 20:52, 25 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Many thanks. I'm not a cats person. I quite see that for formal reasons the cats are needed on the redirect, but as normal folks won't go there, I'll take up your suggestion of adding them to the target article now. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:33, 26 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I have to say that I think that it's quite wrong to have "Named by..." categories anywhere other than a page whose title corresponds to the name in question. I don't agree that Torrey pine belongs in Category:Taxa named by Charles Christopher Parry or Eurasian jay in Category:Animal taxa named by Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus created the combination Corvus glandarius and hence the specific name glandarius. "Eurasian jay" is an invented 'common' name, and would certainly not have been used by Linnaeus who described the species as being from Europe.

This arises not only where the article is at the English name, but for monotypic genera, where the species is a redirect. Consider Griswoldella . The genus was named by Haddad, but the specific name aculifera of the sole species is due to Strand. It would be quite wrong to put Griswoldella into Category:Spider taxa described by Embrik Strand, it has to be one or more of the species redirects that is so categorized.

However, I accept that for most groups, this isn't how the categorization is being done, although it does seem to be largely the case for plants (and spiders). Like Plantdrew, I doubt the the value of these categories in general, so I guess it's not an important issue.

Peter coxhead (talk) 10:38, 26 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Those examples you mentioned seem to be mistakes, I would not be surprised if we found they were unintended. As you said, ideally those categories refer to the species names, not vernacular names or parent monotypic genera — Snoteleks (talk) 11:47, 26 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi Plantdrew, I saw you deleted the "1911" date over at the Cryptochrysis taxobox authorities, is there a reason for that? — Snoteleks (talk) 11:43, 26 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello Plantdrew, Thank you very much for your work, especially for fixing my blunders over many years.

I can't believe I'm asking you this, but here we go: Should we be using Plants of the World Online or the International Plant names Index as an authority for plant names when they "disagree"?

I've often used PoWO as a reference for a name, rarely IPNI, but lately found examples of names that differ from the IPNI. Two examples: PoWO lists Scaevola brookeana, but IPNI gives Scaevola brooksiana for the same species.

PoWO lists the author of Eucalyptus marginata as "Donn ex Sm." but IPNI gives "Sm." (although it has "Same citation as Eucalyptus marginata").

I've asked Rafaël Govaerts about the Scaevola, and he replied "it seems IPNI has this the wrong way around", and IPNI has replied "many thanks for pointing out the error", but there is no change in PoWO after several days.

Thanks again. Gderrin (talk) 23:24, 1 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

The IPNI considers brookeana an orthographical variant, which his explained better here:

Comment: Although Mueller spelled the species epithet as "brookeana" and cited original material as having been collected by "Miss S.J. Brooke", the collector was Sarah T. Brooks (1850–1928). Mueller presumably intended to honour the collector in naming the species and later used the spelling brooksiana in Sec. Syst. Census Austral. Pl. 148 (1889). The epithet is thus corrected here following ICN Art. 60.1 (Shenzhen Code, 2018).

WFO agrees with POWO in both cases. — Jts1882 | talk 09:24, 2 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Jts1882: No, they do not agree. WFO has "Scaevola brooksiana" and as at 02:16 UTC on 3 April 2026, PoWO has Scaevola brookeana F.Muell. IPNI and POWO differ in the authors of Eucalytpus marginata. IPNI has "Sm.", and PoWO has "Donn ex Sm.". Gderrin (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

That's the WFO Plant List. World Flora Online accepts Scaevola brookeana F.Muell.. That's the first time I've seen them not in sync. I didn't expect that. The WFO Plant List is a dated list and that Dec 2025 snapshot says "At the time of this classification snapshot, this species name was unplaced by WFO (a taxonomist hasn’t yet placed the name in the taxonomy)". Perhaps it's been placed since then, although would be in disagreement with the IPNI and ANSL are correct. — Jts1882 | talk 07:25, 3 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks. That leaves the question of the author(s) of Eucalyptus marginata. Gderrin (talk) 11:15, 3 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

As far as I can tell, the name was listed by Donn but he didn't validly publish it (no description). Smith did validly publish the name and acknowledged the listing by Donn (see BHL, albeit wrong page number). Maybe the acknowledgement is optional so both are valid author statements. Examples 30-32 under Article 46.5 suggest that might be the case. But there are other examples where both names aren't appropriate and I wouldn't want to be definitive on how the rules apply. — Jts1882 | talk 17:12, 3 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

The redirect Sprenger's asparagus fern has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 7 §Sprenger's asparagus fern until a consensus is reached. ~2026-11614-51 (talk) 03:13, 7 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi. I found you in the discussion of Chaorobus and it seems you're knowledgeable about these insects :) I just took two pictures of some insect that was in my fish food (I was just testing my new setup for macro photography) and I got intrigured by these snail-shaped structures. It seems this is a Chaoborus, but I'm not sure – the structures look different than kidney-like shapes I saw online, but on the other hand it was frozen and then unfrozen, so maybe that's the reason? Could you take a look? Do you think these photos could be useful in Wikipedia to illustrate this (or another) article?

Thank you :) Circuit Chaos (talk) 20:32, 8 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

Redirects you have created have been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 9 §Afro-American sideneck turtles until a consensus is reached. Plantdrew (talk) 20:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

KJP1 (talk) 22:34, 20 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:24, 29 April 2026 (UTC) Reply

As you've probably seen, I've been trying to fix some of the remaining manual plant taxoboxes, starting with orchid nothospecies. There I've tended to keep an article at a historically accepted name where there was sufficient text in the article plus uses outside Wikipedia, otherwise I reduced the article to a redirect. I don't think I could always defend my choices very convincingly, but orchid nothospecies are a mess in sources, e.g. PoWO currently gives the original genera involved in the cross without any recognition that it no longer accepts some of them.

In the case of Actites , I took the view that as it's an Australian endemic and Australian sources recognize it, then we should go with this rather than, say, PoWO's sinking into Sonchus. There are some other plant articles with manual taxoboxes which might fall into this category as well, so I'm interested to know your opinion. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Peter coxhead:, I did a Petscan search for Taxobox and WikiProject Plants banner on the talk page. Of the 65 remaining articles, Citrus taiwanica seems to be the only one that is accepted by regional sources (Taiwan Catalogue of Life), but treated as a synonym by global sources. I know we've discussed a few others (e.g. Pyrenaria buisanensis ), and I have notes on some at User:Plantdrew/Plant automatic taxobox progress where other editors have converted to automatic taxoboxes already anyway. I think following Australian source for Actitites is reasonable.

Of the remaining 65 there are:

2 pathogens of plants (Bacterial wilt of turfgrass, Narcissus white streak virus)

4 Chase & Reveal subclasses (Cycadidae, Ginkgoidae, Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal, Pinidae)

5 unplaced names according to POWO (Chabertia elegans, Cupania elegans, Lachemilla angustata, Oxanthera brevipes, Pararistolochia enricoi)

6 citruses (Buddha's hand, Citrus taiwanica, Daidai, Hebesu, Heen naran, Jabara (citrus))

44 fossils

That leaves:

• Coelorachis; synonym, but sources disagree on accepted name
• Eremophila glabra subsp. South Coast; automatic taxoboxes won't allow this to be italicized correctly
• North American azaleas; Rhododendron subsect. Pentanthera includes one species not from North America. Move article to subsection title? Leave at current title and remove taxobox?
• Otholobium pubescens; previously treated as unplaced by POWO, now a synonym of Grimolobium pubescens

Plantdrew (talk) 18:24, 6 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for your detailed reply.

• The articles at Chase & Reveal subclasses seem to me to be about names, not taxa. A single article on the Chase & Reveal system would surely suffice?
• Unplaced names I'm inclined to leave; at least a couple have been placed since I first saw them, as Otholobium pubescens now has been.
• As I've noted before, citrus taxonomy is a mess of the first order, so I'm steering clear of it!
• I think it would be better to move North American azaleas to the subsection title.

Peter coxhead (talk) 06:33, 8 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Three of the four Chase and Reveal subclasses are just a short lede paragraph in standard form plus a section with the same cladogram, which is also used in Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal, which has further information on Magnoliidae. I think the latter can be easily converted to an article on the Chase and Reveal system and the others converted to redirects. — Jts1882 | talk 08:09, 8 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

For most of the fossils, sources/taxonbar links disagree about family placement (or don't place to family at all), and the articles aren't linked from a higher taxon. Plantdrew (talk) 16:04, 8 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Hermann Munk, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Threadworm was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 10:00, 10 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:38, 14 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Information icon Hello, I'm Zackmann08. Thank you for your recent contributions to Atlantic puffin. When you were adding content to the page, you added duplicate arguments to a template which can cause issues with how the template is rendered. In the future, please use the preview button before you save your edit; this helps you find these errors as they will display in yellow at the top of the page. Thanks. Zackmann (^{Talk to me} /_{What I been doing} ) 19:35, 1 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

For whatever reason, the automatic taxobox does not recognise the "audio" parameter even though the speciesbox does, so when you're making a mass changes on automatic taxoboxes to change it to use the "audio" parameter in practice you're really just removing the audio altogether. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:52, 1 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

I assume the lack of support in automatic taxoboxes is just an oversight (the discussion about the parameter happened on the automatic taxobox talk page, not speciesbox), and it will be fixed as soon as one of the template editors (Peter coxhead or Jts1882) checks back in. If they haven't dealt with it in a few hours I will put in an edit request. Plantdrew (talk) 22:03, 1 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Now done. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:54, 2 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

As per your comment above, I thought that one answer to the manual taxobox at North American azaleas might be to have an expanded article at "Rhododendron sect. Pentanthera" and I started a bit of work in a sandbox. Then I saw that APweb uses Rhododendron subg. Pentanthera, which our article says was "dismembered in 2005", but this Google Scholar search shows significant use of the subgenus rank in some recent papers. So I'm not sure what exactly is the best internal classification to use for Rhododendron. Do you have any knowledge or thoughts about this?

Whatever the classification, North American azaleas is a weird article, not only because it's not about a taxon but an informal group, but also because it has quite a bit of description for each species that really belongs in the species articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:39, 5 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

WFO has Rhododendron subsect. Pentanthera with a species list identical to the Wikipedia article (including the non-North American species). WFO Plantlist WFO taxon page. WFO also has a subsect. Sinensia (which is listed in Rhododendron subg. Hymenanthes). It is not immediately clear to me what the source is for the WFO classification. Plantdrew (talk) 16:14, 5 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

The American Rhododendron Society and RHS Rhododendron Group have classifications that place species in subsections, but are based on old sources (1997 for ARS, perhaps 1980 for RHS). Plantdrew (talk) 18:53, 5 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

...for cleaning up after me after my attempts at creating new articles. I am trying to learn the correct way of doing things and each time you correct me I learn from you. Best Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 23:51, 5 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

You're welcome, and thank you for working on articles about species. Plantdrew (talk) 20:26, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello Plantdrew. I have noticed your contributions on Annonaceae and would like to invite you to participate in a WikiProject about the family Annonaceae. =) Linux Luvver _{In solidarity,} (Please talk with me. I crave notifications. | What contributions? I don't see any.) 18:54, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

This is kinda canvassing, but it's okay (I think). If you're forming this, you really should have it be a taskforce. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:02, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Wikipedian12512(alt):, that wasn't really canvassing at all; canvassing is a problem if there is some kind of disagreement in a discussion and somebody only notifies editors that they think will agree with them; but if they also notify editors that the expect will disagree with them, that isn't problematic canvassing. But there isn't any disagreement here anyway.

You are right that this should be a task force; the other projects more focused than Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants (Wikipedia:WikiProject Banksia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Carnivorous plants, Wikipedia:WikiProject Hypericaceae) have long been inactive, should be turned into task forces if they are kept at all, and never attracted the collaborative efforts of more than a couple editors (if two editors are interested in collaborating, they can do so via messages on their user talk pages, a task force or Wikiproject isn't needed).

@Linux Luvver:, while some of my favorite edible fruits are from Annonaceae, I don't really have a lot of interest in working on Annonaceae articles. Most of my edits are Wikignomish stuff, not major content development. At some point I intend to set up the taxonomy templates so that Annonaceae genera display subfamilies and tribes, but I don't know if I'd do much of anything with Annonaceae beyond that. User:Gcopenhaver1 has written many articles for Annonaceae species; maybe you should contact him. Plantdrew (talk) 20:42, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

I have also tried to form a WikiProject, failed, then tried to have it be a taskforce. I fully support your goal! _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:46, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Ok! Thank you for the recommendation! =) Linux Luvver _{In solidarity,} (Please talk with me. I crave notifications. | What contributions? I don't see any.) 22:42, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi Plantdrew, you'll have seen that we're now into the eighth fruitless debate as to whether Maize should be renamed to "Corn". That has failed for multiple reasons, not least that "corn" has multiple meanings. Abductive has suggested we just call the article Zea mays, for which there is some sort of logic. What do you think? There's no hurry as the move could be made on the grounds that the common name is not settled. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:24, 17 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Темная вишня

~2026-37599-68 (talk) 06:44, 30 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Plantdrew, what do you suppose this is? I got a "grapevine" with a bunch of grapes. Odd. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:00, 30 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Chiswick Chap:, I have no idea. It's not a very dark cherry (searching the internet for "Темная вишня" pulls up images that are much darker), and the Spanish caption "Cereza oscura" is odd with the Russian? name. The "Грейпвайн" on your page mostly pulls up images of a knot (called grapevine), but the Cyrillic alt text pulls up images of grapevines. Plantdrew (talk) 16:37, 30 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Asking for your help, since you have mentioned that you are a botanist, and it looks like you are the person who uploaded the picture on this page. This picture appears to match the picture at the first reference.

I'm from Kerala, India, and even though I haven't lived there in decades, I'm very familiar with the plant that goes by the Malayalam name of "Choriyanam" (see the "Common Names" section on the referenced wiki page). That plant looks like this: . Note the serrated edges of the leaf, and the lack of "hair" on the surface.

Is the plant that I'm interested in called something else, or is the picture wrong? A really paranoid android (talk) 19:01, 13 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Marvin The Paranoid:, somebody else took the picture and uploaded it to Commons, I just added it to the article.

I guess Malayalam has the same issue English does. In the US and UK, "stinging nettle" usually refers to the genus Urtica or other plants in the family Urticaceae. However, Tragia involucrata (family Euphorbiaceae) is called "Indian stinging nettle". When I do a Google image search for "Choriyanam", there are photos of Tragia as well as photos of Urticaceae, and the indiabiodiversity.org page for Tragia involucrata includes images of both Urticaceae (like the one you linked in your message to me) as well Tragia (; this appears to be the exact same image in the T. involucrata Wikipedia article, cropped a little differently).

The Urticaceae "choriyanam" species might be Laportea bulbifera. The "choriyanam" that is used for food is certainly Urticaceae, not Tragia. Plantdrew (talk) 21:10, 13 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for reviewing multiple articles on Armorloricus. LightningThrower (talk) 01:30, 17 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thank you for writing those articles. Plantdrew (talk) 15:56, 17 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

I apologize for the trouble caused by my edits regarding Platanistoidea; I had overlooked the existence of the fossil groups. I have corrected the taxobox. コロネン (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

@コロネン:, no worries. It is easy to overlook the fossil groups when most taxonomic databases are restricted to extant taxa. I'm sure there are other cases out there where Wikipedia makes false claims about monotypy by not considering fossils. I think Platanistoidea should have it's own article anyway; river dolphin could then be more about the freshwater habitat than anything taxonomic. Plantdrew (talk) 00:21, 22 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Was this in reply to me or to the previous person? - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 20:33, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

@UtherSRG: the previous person (and the other person who complained about "disambiguation"). Plantdrew (talk) 20:36, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Can I adjust your indent level then? - In solidarity, UtherSRG (talk) 20:43, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi Plantdrew. Thank you for your work on Hemipeplinae. Another editor, Mariamnei, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

Nice start!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Mariamnei}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Mariamnei ✦ ^{reach out 🕊️} 10:56, 28 July 2026 (UTC) Reply