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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by UtherSRG (talk | contribs) at 23:25, 29 February 2004 (taxobox). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 02:34, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wanted to add my welcome, also. Thank you for all your effort on various pine species. You are obviously an expert.

Feel free to say as much or as little about yourself as you wish at User:MPF -- hike395 22:58, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi there. I just see you do a lot of work on the oaks, and apparently you a quite a bit more knowledgeable about it than me. Maybe you can help me to confirm the species of the acorn picture I oploaded - I am not sure if I gave it the correct species name with Q. kerrii. That one was just the only quercus species google gave me in relation to the location where I made the photo (see Image:Acrons.jpg). andy 22:30, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi Andy, Thanks! :-) Sorry, I can't help with the exact ident of your acorns (and doubt it can be done without seeing the acorns themselves and some leaves too); I could easily see it was one of the Cyclobalanopsis oaks, but not which; I was going to call it Q. acuta (from Japan; the most commonly cultivated of the species) until I saw your note behind the photo. I have no reason to doubt your ident as Q. kerrii though, the Flora of China lists it as occurring south to Thailand. Regards, Michael User:MPF 01:05, 21 Jan 2004 (GMT)

HI MPF- long ago on my user page I wrote;

I've decided that I'd like to start a wiki sub-project on Trees of Britain, maybe as a sub page of Trees of the world, I envisage this as being fairly long term, but to start with putting a frame work in place listing the names of the various tree species, with each species having sub-pages on say, uses of that tree, spiritual/traditional significance etc quercus robur 19:13 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)

but have never really gotten it together to do anything about it. My knowledge isnt very extensive, but part of the idea (for me) was to increase my own knowledge in these areas by working on this project- does this interest you? Cheers quercus robur 15:56, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi, it's me again :-) You just created Austrian pine, but it seems you did not notice it have redirect pages here which do exactly what you intended with that page. Just write #REDIRECT [[whatever]] inside the article, and it will automagically display the page "whatever". This is also useful to have the taxonomic names redirect to the article as well, then you will catch both the more technical links as well as the common language links - I already added a few for your new tree articles, but probably not all. andy 13:19, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Or easier: just copy-and-paste the contents of [1] :-) andy 13:28, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion, but Ahoerstemeier and Andy are the same :-) In my signature I sign with [[User:Ahoerstemeier|andy]]. andy 13:35, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm still on a steep learning curve with the wikipedia formatting codes (hence my huge number of minor edits), but getting there! MPF 13:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
You're welcome. Everyone of the oldtimers here was new one day, and helping to polish up good contents is much more fun than the one-sentence sub-stubs often showing up. BTW: you noticed the "Show preview" button already? :-) andy 13:47, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Hi Andy, yep, I tried the Show preview a couple of times, but I prefer to save frequently, less risk of losing a big edit if something goes down (I did lose one, when I clicked on 'save' I got a 'page not found' error message, and had to re-do the whole thing). Longer edits I try to remember to copy & paste into a .txt file to guard against this, but that can mess up the line breaks (inserting new ones at the end of each line on the .txt file) so I prefer not having to resort to it! MPF
Hi MPF- having learned the hard way myself as well, I tend to copy any lengthy or important major edits to notepad before clicking 'save', just in case that ol' 'page not found' page means I've just wasted half an hour or so... quercus robur
You are using IE? Because AFAIK this is an annoyance of IE, Mozilla keeps the content of the edit box, so it isn't lost when you have to click "Back". I only had to use the Notepad backup during the extremely slow periods of the last weeks, when I was never sure the edit was saved yet or not, but lost patience to wait. andy 14:48, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Yep, IE, I fear! MPF

Mountain Ash

Hi. Nice additions to Sorbus! But I have a comment on the mountain ash article. I know that rowan is a generally used term in Britain, but around here (Oregon) mountain ash is more usual for our native species, so I am not sure that "better known as Rowans" is correct. I wish it were true, since "mountain ash" is pretty useless as a common name. Cheers! WormRunner 17:19, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi Wormrunner, I was using 'better' in the sense of 'more advisedly to avoid confusion' rather than 'more frequently'; I've changed the wording a bit, let me know if that's OK. Regards, Michael MPF 22:53, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
That looks great! WormRunner 22:58, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Black Locust & Robinia

Hrm... This article is about the BL, but the taxobox is about the entire genus. Also, the link from the subfamily page is named Robinia which is the genus. I think this should be split so that Robinia truely gets its own page, and BL and any other species can have its own. - UtherSRG 13:29, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, I'll put it on my list of 'things to do', along with the same for Honey locust. MPF 13:45, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I've made sure all the Faboideae genera point to a genus page (if one exists) or are redirected to a species page. (Some were disambigs to species pages, some were redirects.) This makes things a bit more consistent. Items like Lotus and Lens and even worse Cyclopia were difficult. - UtherSRG 14:18, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Thanks; I've just created stub genus pages for Robinia and Gleditsia MPF 14:51, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Cupressus and relatives

Hi - Great expansion on the Cupressus article, that's much more precise and useful than the way I left it. I didn't realise that the Alaska cedar was now thought of as lying in this genus - you might want to change the Leyland cypress article to fit this view. Should its genus change if it is no longer to be thought of as intergeneric? I am not really expert enough in plant taxonomic conventions to be sure of getting this right. seglea 22:23, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks; will do! MPF 23:26, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC) . . . Done MPF 00:56, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Taxonomic stalking

I hope you don't mind my stalking you.. I'm not really doing it on purpose... One of the things I like doing is adding/correcting taxoboxes and other taxonomic references. And since I generally use Recent Changes to find my articles, and you've been doing a lot of edits.... Hope ya don't mind! - UtherSRG 17:44, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks - much appreciated! MPF 19:06, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC); a query - how can the txoboxes for Gleditsia and Robinia be made a bit wider, so the names fit in on one line? MPF 19:12, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
That can be done using the table's width parameter. I've modified Gleditsia that way as well as used the G. 'species' form of the bi-name. Go ahead and play with Robinia to get a feel for it. Width's parameter is pixels, I believe, so use nice large increments like 50. - UtherSRG 19:34, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I saw your changes with regard to hypenated forms, and I have to say I approve. Most of the are there because HBW, our standard source, uses them, but it has grated with me to write Storm-Petrel instead of Storm Petrel, even though I can see the logic. As for Rufous-tailed Rock-Thrush... Jim

Hi Jim, Thanks!, yes, I've always disliked these hyphenated capitals (tho' checking in HBW, I see it's 'Storm-petrel', not 'Storm-Petrel', that last is a 'Clementsism'. I've not seen that barbarity against the English language perpetrated by HBW.
But on the subject of 'petrel' - 'petrel' was originally first applied to Hydrobates pelagicus, so it should really be the Procellaridae petrels that have the qualifier, not the Hydrobatidae. But probably too late to change now, I fear! MPF 11:09, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
My take on the hyphen things is that I'm dammned if I understand the rules. Possibly this is because the rules vary from the US to Oz to the UK to wherever. Or possibly it's because I'm not very bright! So what I do is, for the 800-odd local species, take the HANZAB list as gospel and just do whatever they do. For non-Australian birds, I just try to do whatever people like you and Jim and Big Iron do. Saves skull-sweat. Cheers Tannin
PS: I bet that you are right about the Coots.
Ha! I should have guessed. Hi Michael! BTW, I haven't left BF - far from it - just totally overwhelmed timewise at present. Lord help me, it's 3AM here already - Bedtime!

Coot Identification

Thanks for the coot info on my talk page. I had been wondering if the coot pic on Eurasian Coot was something else. Thanks for the reassurance.
Adrian Pingstone 18:22, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Request for Comment

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Homegrown images - UtherSRG 19:54, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Spikemoss

Is Selaginellopsida monotypic down to the genus level? Or are there non-spikmoss Selaginellops? - UtherSRG 16:09, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Photos

Left a comment for you at Talk:Alder. I have a lot of plant photos in my files; many seem to be in your area of interest. I hope to be posting more of them in the future. There are quite a lot that are unidentified. Any particular ones that you would like, that I might have (from eastern North America)? Pollinator 20:34, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Moving the Goose pics

Yes, thats fine, you're welcome to move the Ruddy- and the Ashy- pics. It was thoughtful of you to check with me. I took them both about a week ago at a wildfowl reserve near Bristol, England where I live.
Adrian Pingstone 09:13, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Moving away "lost" pics

No problem on shifting pics off temporarily, it's a good idea. I sincerely hope they are recovered. I understand they're on a corrupted hard drive at the server farm.
Adrian Pingstone 20:50, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sequoia

Many thanks for your input to Talk:Giant sequoia. I felt sure that the Sequoia was found elsewhere than the USA, and Hike's replies were so US-centric. You have confirmed that the Westonbirt tree (I live about 10 miles from it) has a right to be on the article.
Adrian Pingstone 09:42, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Live oaks

Thanks for alerting me to your disambig move. I was already wondering whether something of the sort was needed. I have tweaked the new live oak page a bit, in the interests of what I believe is clarity - could you check I haven't introduced errors, please? Google searches strongly suggest that the Southern live oak has a near monopoly on "live oak" used as a common name without further qualification (as distinct from its use as a general descriptor), and I think this needs to be flagged. seglea 18:46, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Lindisfarne

Hi. I was wondering if there is a particular reason that you feel the nature reserve information should come first in this article? I am not sure that it is the primary point for which most readers would visit the article, though of course I am not claiming that it is unimportant. I don't feel very strongly about this but I do wonder if it makes the article read a bit oddly. Nevilley 08:32, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I apologise for the callous shunting! The importance of it - wildlife vs history - on the international stage is something we could probably discuss till the cows (or substitute wildlife metaphor of your choice) come home but if you can find a compromise of some sort I'll be delighted and will try not to mess around with it further! :) Nevilley 15:40, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Magnolia

You are welcome! Anything else you need that grows around here? I've got files (if I can find them...) Pollinator 19:00, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

taxobox

MPF - stop by Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life - we've modified the taxobox standards. - UtherSRG 23:25, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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