Talk:Nasturtium (plant genus)

It should be noted that ITIS only includes Nasturtium gambellii (S. Wats.) O. Schulz in this genus, and places the watercresses in Rorippa WormRunner | Talk 00:13, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, as you well know, these things change all the time. Rorippa is an old name, and maybe the species have been moved back into it. These things are always difficult to track down, as one never knows from one (or several) source(s), what is current or most accepted. My source is 1999, but a revised version (I can only assume the taxonomy was all revised up to 1999). I think we can only note what we find, and that allows others to modify conservatively towards the "correct" or most modern taxonomy. Do you want to add something from the ITIS? - Marshman 01:36, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) I went ahead and did the change per ITIS - Marshman 02:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My main point was to note somewhere that there was disagreement over the placement. I do not know whether the ITIS version is the best or not, but the fact that some references place the watercresses here and others place them in Rorippa should be available somehow in the article or its discussion page. -- WormRunner | Talk 03:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Rorippa or Nasturtium

• Discussion moved here from User talk:Marshman

Hi Marshman, I posed a question about the integration of Rorippa and Watercress at Talk:Watercress and I'd appreciate if you could voice your opinion on it. TeunSpaans 07:27, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Marshman,

I noticed you changed the genus of watercress back to Nasturtium. But according to APG II at http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/orders/brassicalesweb.htm#Brassicoideae, latest update 2005, Nasturtium is not mentioned as a genus in brassicaceae. TeunSpaans 04:55, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since not all Nasturtium were moved to Rorippia and not all Rorippia were moved back, I would be a little nervous about using the absence of Nasturtium from a website list as a basis for changing things either way. If you can cite a paper that solves the mystery, then that would work for me - Marshman 30 June 2005 04:41 (UTC)

As far as I know all Nasturtium were moved to Rorippa. I must admit I have been unable to locate any articles about a move back. I am interested in your sources - at the moment we have a very inconsistent situation. TeunSpaans 8 July 2005 21:37 (UTC)

Yes, well I do have the reference for the "move back" listed on the Nasturtium page, I believe. It involved only a selective move back from Rorippa based upon genetic studies. Of course, the APG, like any other botanists, are free to accept or not the authors' suggestion. We cannot resolve, only report the facts. At this point, it seems appropriate to mention that Nasturtium is no longer recognized or included by APG, but that would not be a reason to change the article. Taxonomy changes by (typically) slow acceptance of "expert" opinion, not by "official edict". The APG may represent expert opinion, but that is all it represents. - Marshman 9 July 2005 04:06 (UTC)

From a wiki point of view, I would like to see the following articles give a consistent view of the current situation: Rorippa - Watercress - Nasturtium (scientific name). (Also, checking ITIS I found they seem to have moved Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum (L.) Hayek back to Rorippa again, or perhaps they havent moved it to nasturtiuj back again.) At the moment, Rorippa lists both watercress species. But the taxonomy table lists them as Nasturtium. Nasturtium mentions them, but lists only 1 species, which is not one of the two watercress species. Also, we shouldnt refer to ITIS if it does not support the current view. I dont mind very much if it is in Rorippa (which I have a slight pref for) or Nasturtium, as long as it is consistent. As you seem more knowledgable than I am, could you please fix it? TeunSpaans 9 July 2005 04:48 (UTC)

Yes, I'll try and maked things consistent. That would be our responsibility. But I do not see anything wrong with listing ITIS because it does not comport with what we present. There is not necessarily one "current view" so it is better to include uuseful sources whatever view they present - Marshman 9 July 2005 16:47 (UTC)

I agree TeunSpaans 22:07, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Requested move 20 June 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Nasturtium (plant genus). There is broad agreement that the current title is imprecise and that "Nasturtium (crucifer)" is neither well recognizable nor consistent. Opinions are split as whether "(genus)" or "(plant genus)" is a better disambiguator. Since the majority somewhat prefers the latter, citing weak ambiguity with Tropaeolum, I'm picking that up as the target (notwithstanding AjaxSmack's well-reasoned last point. No such user (talk) 13:10, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

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Nasturtium (plant) → Nasturtium (crucifer) – This article is about the genus Nasturtium (common name: watercress), but the problem is that nasturtium is the common name for members of the unrelated genus Tropaeolum. This article isn't the primary topic (see e.g. Wikinav), so a disambiguator is needed. The current choice – "(plant)" – won't do because the other nasturtiums are plants too. For the 16 years until last week, the title used to have "(genus)", which may appear better as the term is the scientific name of only this genus, but the other topic, Tropaeolum, also constitutes a genus, so that's not precise enough. I'm proposing "(crucifer)", using what I hope is the still-not-obsolete common term for members of this family, but there's a second option: to go directly for the name of the family: Nasturtium (Brassicaceae). – Uanfala (talk) 11:11, 20 June 2022 (UTC)— Relisting. Spekkios (talk) 22:46, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Question Is this dab term used anywhere else? YorkshireExpat (talk) 20:04, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

In article titles? Not really. Except for this one redirect I created earlier. There's similarly a single redirect with "Brassicaceae". You can look at another family, one with more species: there are 71 redirects with "(orchid)" [1] vs. 3 with "(Orchidaceae)" [2] (though the situation isn't exactly comparable, as "orchid" is a more commonly known term than "crucifer"). – Uanfala (talk) 20:57, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

There's an analogous situation with the lotuses: Lotus (plant) redirects to what is effectively a dab page, the plants most commonly known as lotuses are at the scientific name Nelumbo, while the genus named Lotus is at Lotus (genus). Just like with Nasturtium, the last title seems ambiguous: Nelumbo is also a genus (even though lotus is the common, and not scientific, name for the plants). – Uanfala (talk) 13:31, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Geranium is another one where a genus name is used as a common name for a different genus. I think Geranium should be a disambiguation page, but some incoming links would be hard to resolve (although I suspect Pelargonium is mostly what's intended outside of strictly botanical contexts). Plantdrew (talk) 15:46, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Comment For technical reasons, it's better to have the disambiguation term starting with a lower case letter (it's then easy to automate the distinction between zoological subgenera, which have a capitalized second word in parentheses, and disambiguations), so I would prefer either "Nasturtium (plant genus)" or "Nasturtium (crucifer)" if it's agreed that "Nasturtium (plant)" isn't acceptable. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Comment (plant) is the most common dab term for plant genera with ambiguous names. There are a few articles using (genus), which I think is unavoidable in some cases; e.g. Asparagus/Asparagus (genus), Stevia/Stevia (genus) and Vanilla/Vanilla (genus) are articles about a plant product derived from a single species in a genus that shares a name with the plant product; (plant) is potentially ambiguous with the species that is the source of the product (Rhinoceros (genus) is also unavoidable; the article rhinoceros is about the family that includes the genus). The only plant genus articles that use a dab term other than (plant) or (genus) are: Mahua (moss) and Calamus (palm). Mahua is also a common name for plants in the genus Madhuca, and there is Mahua (plant) that existed as a redirect before the article on the moss genus was created (mahua is common enough that it is listed in dictionaries). Calamus is a common name for Acorus calamus, and is also the name of a genus of fishes (so Calamus (genus) is ambiguous).

I'm in favor of moving away from (genus) as a disambiguator. Too often, the source of ambiguity for a genus name is another genus published under a different nomenclatural code. However, I don't think aiming to completely eliminate (genus) as a dab term is feasible (what other dab term would work for Rhinoceros (genus))? I think Nasturtium (genus) is fine as it was (and Lotus (genus) is fine too); see Talk:Paw Paw for extended discussion about using (genus) as a disambiguator with a common name (Pawpaw (genus) in that case).

(plant genus) isn't currently used for the title of any articles, but there are some redirects with this form. I guess I'd be OK with "Nasturtium (plant genus)". (plant genus) could also be used for Calamus and Mahua and some other articles. E.g. Silphium (plant) is potentially ambiguous with Silphium (antiquity); and I think the primary plant related meaning of kumara is the New Zealand English word for sweet potatoes, not the genus at Kumara (plant). Plantdrew (talk) 15:24, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Clearly not the commonest plant called a nasturtium. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:42, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• Move to Nasturtium (genus) or Nasturtium (plant genus). Either of of these disambiguators is sufficient. No need to introduce a new disambiguator, "(crucifer)" that is only going to be used by one article.Plantdrew (talk) 15:57, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
• The nomination raises the concern that Tropaeolum is also a genus -- wouldn't the proposed disambiguator of genus therefore create some potential ambiguity? If that's the case, the proposed title seems preferable.--Yaksar (let's chat) 06:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, there is an issue with articles where a term is used as both scientific name of one genus and the English name of another, which, I agree, does make just "(plant)" somewhat problematic. However, I do think that consistency is very important (it's one of the WP:AT criteria) as it helps both editors creating articles and reader finding them. Using a one-off disambiguation like "(crucifer)" is therefore not a good idea. Perhaps we could agree that where the genus name alone is not sufficient to identify a genus article:

  • if there is no other plant-related use, we will continue to use "(plant)" as we do now
  • if there is another plant-related use, we will in future use "(plant genus)".

  Peter coxhead (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

• I agree consistency is very important, but the main purpose of a disambiguator is to disambiguate. Distinguishing between one genus and other by using the term "genus" fails the most basic purpose of disambiguation.--Yaksar (let's chat) 16:33, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

I've struck my suggestion of (genus) as a potential title. I still don't think it's really ambiguous enough to be a problem though. I suppose somebody who knows that nasturtiums/Tropaeolum are a genus but has forgotten the scientific name might try putting nasturtium+genus into a search engine to find it, but I don't think anybody would type "Nasturtium (genus)" for that purpose. However, the first page of search results for "nasturtium" on Google, Duckduckgo and Bing is entirely about Tropaeolum (although Bing does display a knowledge graph for the genus). If I want to find information about the genus with a search engine, nasturtium+genus seems like a reasonable search term (results for this search still pull up a lot of Tropaeolum pages, but do include the genus in some of the results on the first page). Plantdrew (talk) 16:12, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

• Support Nasturtium (genus) or Nasturtium (cress), but not the proposal. Srnec (talk) 13:33, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
• Support It seems we are all in agreement that the current name is not proper. But while having consistency across disambiguating terms is preferable, if doing so does not actually address the ambiguity the term is meant to resolve it would not be acceptable. Using (genus) would fail our requirements for a disambiguator, as it would not address the ambiguity of distinguishing the term from another genus. If there are two painters who are known as Bob Smith, Bob Smith (painter) would not be an acceptable title even if it is consistent with titles for other painters.--Yaksar (let's chat) 16:31, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

  Bob Smith (painter) could be an acceptable title if one of them is much better known than the other. I disagree with that, but see Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names for a list of articles where Wikipedia has decided to use a disambiguator that isn't unique to a single subject. Plantdrew (talk) 20:39, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

  That page explains that partially disambiguated titles are in principle possible, but that the standard is higher than for normal primary topics. But here we don't have such an overwhelming primary topic, and in fact, we don't have a primary topic at all. – Uanfala (talk) 21:38, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

• Commment; there's now a discussion at Talk:Silphium (plant) to move that to Silphium (plant genus) (Silphium (antiquity) is also a plant). Plantdrew (talk) 16:50, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
• Support a move for procedural reasons (to overturn an undiscussed controversial move——see WP:RMUM) and on the merits. Move it to something but "crucifer" is a little too abstruse. I prefer Nasturtium (genus). The Tropaeolum nasturtium is not a genus. It is the common name for plants in that genus. The genus is Tropaeolum. I don't get the point of "plant genus" since there are no animals to disambiguate from. —  AjaxSmack  04:02, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.