Talk:Diplotaxis tenuifolia

Synonyms

Just wondering about the need to list synonyms in plant articles. This one has a very long list, kindly supplied by user:uanfala, I believe. It takes up a lot of space, and I wonder if it is really necessary? Wouldn't we be better off linking to a taxonomic database, which will keep this sort of thing up to date for us, and just listing the ones that are commonly used or might cause confusion? In some plant articles, synonyms are given in the taxonbox, but that's even worse from the point of view of the page layout. E Wusk (talk) 07:22, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

This is a general question, so asking at WT:PLANTS is more likely to attract feedback. In the meantime, just giving my 2 cents as I was pinged: yeah, it's annoying how those lists take up vertical space, but if collapsed into a single-paragraph list they'd become unreadable, and omitting them altogether isn't, in my opinion, a viable option. With the caveat that I'm relatively new to both botany and to wikipedia practices around organisms, I see these lists are the most basic thing in a species article: before we use any sources to provide any sort of information about D. tenuifolia, we need to be clear what those source talk about when they talk about D. tenuifolia. Uanfala (talk) 17:48, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Uanfala. I can tell from what you've written that you are new to botany, but you're doing pretty well. You can probably tell that I'm quite new to Wikipedia, so I defer to you on that. Pages I've recently been working on include Smyrnium olusatrum, which has few synonyms but an interesting origin to its name, and Helminthotheca echioides, which has many pointless synonyms (and an interesting story), so I've handled that by a simple link to a database of names. I don't think it makes sense for Wikipedia editors to try to reproduce databases in prose and keep them up to date - nomenclature is going to constantly evolve, and most of it doesn't matter. Do you mind if I have a go at improving the Diplotaxis account? E Wusk (talk) 07:04, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

My tuppence: You both make good points. I do find that duplication of effort necessitated by the many static lists and tables on WP is an issue, e.g. climate data and population tables that do not update themselves. I don't have experience with our collapsible list template, but I guessed that one might exist, and here 'tis: {{collapsible list}}. Might be the solution until some D. tenuifolia nut creates a self-updating list linked to an authoritative source? Eric ^talk 09:20, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Eric. Just seen your userpage and it's fantastic. I'm going to bookmark it for daily use. I was going to respond that to my mind an encyclopedia doesn't really lend itself to lists, but having looked around I find there is a whole subculture of list-making throughout WP. I suppose my real point here is that listing synonyms is an obvious and fairly easy thing to do, but I doubt that it's really of use to anyone reading this article. To my mind the secret to a good article is to find the story that people want to read. E Wusk (talk) 16:40, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I'm all for readability in articles. Glad to learn that my cheatsheet might be useful to others! Eric ^talk 07:41, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I added the list of synonyms accepted respectively by PoWO and AFE because those two works are the main sources for the content in the distribution section, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to be explicit about how exactly the two delimit this species (though I don't recall if there were any discrepancies in the distribution data in this particular case). In case it helps to see where I'm coming from, at the time I was updating the distributions of some southern European species, and the relevant literature was written by different botanists, who worked in different periods, and who sometimes followed different local traditions of taxonomy. So for example, the Wikipedia article about Foo baria may say that it's found in such-and-such places in the Western Balkans (citing a source that talks about Bar bazia) and in such-and-such mountains of Greece (citing the country flora entries for what are treated there as the two separate species of Foo bazia and Foo baria), with the identification between those four different names then coming from a third, more recent, source. If the Wikipedia article isn't explicit about the equivalence between those four terms, then it would appear that the article's sources have failed to verify its content. For me, the main point of the list of synonyms isn't to duplicate the potentially more up-to-date information that may be found in a taxonomy database, but to make it clear what species delimitations have been used in the article's core sources. If this sort of information is really of no use to any of our readers, then I won't object to its removal from the prose, but it has to be present somewhere (for example, as explanatory notes after each source?). Keeping it within the body of the article, but in a collapsed form, would probably not be a good idea. – Uanfala (talk) 07:04, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Habitat

The current version of the article has the following statement:

It is strictly a lowland plant (under 400 m), usually growing only in coastal areas. This affinity with the sea is supported by its tolerance to salt, being able to bear concentrations of NaCl of up to 300 mM.

This is sourced to doi:10.3390/agriculture8040055. From a quick glimpse at the paper, I see that it says the plant thrives in Italy in coastal areas under 400 m, and it mentions the salt tolerance. It doesn't explicitly make the link between the two (plausible though it may be), and more importantly, it doesn't make a strong claim about the plant being strictly lowland or coastal. In fact, the plant is widely distributed inland (as clear from the text in the distribution section). – Uanfala (talk) 21:43, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

C2 Photosynthesis

Where would be appropriate to mention Diplotaxis tenuifolia is the only crop that employs a C2 photosynthetic carbon concentrating mechanism. Source: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16494 Rocket Plant Scientist (talk) 22:40, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Interesting point. I think it deserves a new section titled chemistry or perhaps biochemistry, which could also contain the paragraph that currently sits uncomfortably in the uses section. E Wusk (talk) 07:55, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I will have a work on this. 89.105.13.42 (talk) 10:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)