This page describes Wikipedia's guidelines on choosing article titles for articles about plants.
Principles
The guiding principle of this guideline is to follow usage in reliable sources. In the vast majority of cases, this will be the current scientific name. This is because the vast majority of plants are of academic interest only to botanists, and botanists almost invariably use scientific names in their published works. On the other hand, when a plant is of interest outside botany – for example because it has agricultural, horticultural or cultural significance – then a vernacular name may be more common.
Other principles in play here include precision and consistency. Both of these lend further support to the use of scientific names, and the latter leads to standardisation on certain orthographic points.
Secondary, practical aspects include dispute sidestepping[1] and category sorting.[2]
Guidelines
Based on the above principles, the following guidelines have been adopted:
Scientific versus vernacular names
Scientific names are to be used as article titles in all cases except when a plant has an agricultural, horticultural, economic or cultural role or use that makes it more prominent in some other field than in botany; e.g. apple, flax, rose. These exceptions are determined on a case-by-case basis through discussion towards consensus.
Note that it is often possible to distinguish between plant taxon and plant product, and in those cases it is not necessary to treat both in a single article. For example, there are separate articles on grape (an edible fruit) and Vitis vinifera (the plant species that most commonly yields grapes). When a decision is made to treat them separately, the taxon article should use the scientific name.
Such splitting is very highly recommended when there is not a one-to-one correspondence between plant taxon and plant product. For example, brussels sprouts, cabbage and broccoli all come from the species Brassica oleracea; and several species of Oryza yield rice.
All vernacular names and synonymous scientific names referred to in an article should be entered in one of the following page types:
- Redirect (e.g. English sundew → Drosera anglica, Lambertia barbata → Lambertia formosa)
- Set index article (in cases where ambiguous vernacular names are applied to multiple taxa) (e.g. common bladderwort)
- Disambiguation page (e.g. Yucca (disambiguation), Crataegus pubescens).
Alternatively, a hatnote may need to be created where a primary topic for the name has already been established (e.g. geranium, Myroxylon).
The Manual of Style says that English vernacular ("common") names are given in lower case, except where proper names appear. Examples are mountain maple, common sundew, but English sundew, Low's pitcher-plant. Personal names should be capitalized only when they refer to specific individuals; thus for Arum maculatum, English names include Adam and Eve and jack in the pulpit – "jack" here does not refer to a particular individual. English names should be sourced in the same way as all other information in the article. Create redirects from alternative capitalizations of English names used as article titles.
Don't confuse WP:COMMONNAME with common name
Our WP:Article titles policy contains a section entitled "Use commonly recognizable names", more often referred to by the short-cut: WP:COMMONNAME. It is important not to confuse Wikipedia's concept of COMMONNAME with a plant's common (or vernacular) name. The policy uses the word "common" in the context of "what name is most frequently used", and not in the context of "what name do common folk use".
It is typical for a plant's scientific name to be the COMMONNAME (i.e., the most frequently used in reliable sources). For example: the same type of plant may be called two different vernacular names in different regions. However, since both regions also refer to the plant by its Latin scientific name, that scientific name is actually more commonly recognizable than either of the vernacular names.
Monotypic taxa
When a taxon contains only a single member, both taxon and member are usually treated in a single article. In such cases, the article title is chosen from among the "principal ranks" specified by the Code of Nomenclature. The relevant ranks are:
Thus:
- Suborders that contain one family are treated at the article of that family.
- Divisions of families (subfamilies, tribes and subtribes) that contain one genus are treated at the article of that genus.
- Divisions of a genus (subgenus, section, subsection, series, subseries) with a single species are treated at the article of that species.
However, because genera are better known than the other ranks (and families are better known than orders):
- A family or order with a single genus is treated at the article for that genus.
- A genus with a single species is treated at the article for the genus. (See Template:Speciesbox#Monospecific genera for the taxobox for monotypic genera at the genus name.)
- An order with a single family is treated at the article for that family.
In all these cases, create redirects from the missing ranks (i.e. those without their own article), and include them in bold text in the lead section.
However, if the name of a monotypic taxon is shared with another topic, it is usually more appropriate to use a binomial as a natural disambiguation rather than creating an article with a parenthetical disambiguating term for the taxon. E.g., Alberta magna is a more natural search term than Alberta (plant).
Ranks requiring connecting terms
Articles on infrageneric or infraspecific ranks should be named with the abbreviation for the rank in the title as follows in the table below:
| Rank | Abbreviation | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Subgenus | subg. | Banksia subg. Isostylis |
| Section | sect. | Drosera sect. Stolonifera |
| Subsection | subsect. | Epidendrum subsect. Carinata |
| Series | ser. | Banksia ser. Spicigerae |
| Subseries | subser. | Banksia subser. Longistyles |
| Subspecies | subsp. | Acacia coriacea subsp. sericophylla |
| Variety | var. | Anadenanthera colubrina var. cebil |
| Subvariety | subvar. | |
| Form | f. | |
| Subform | subf. |
Subspecies is sometimes abbreviated as ssp., but this can easily be confounded with the abbreviation for plural species, spp.. The abbreviation subsp. is therefore used here.