Talk:Drosera regia

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Featured articleDrosera regia is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 10, 2012.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 20, 2010Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 27, 2009.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the carnivorous plant Drosera regia (pictured, with prey) is one of the most imperiled Drosera species, with a single small population estimated to consist of only 50 mature plants?

Assessment[edit]

Mid-importance for WP:CPS because it's both in cultivation and because of it's role as the out-group in most cladistic analysis studies of Drosera. --Rkitko (talk) 02:49, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

Taxobox
  • Maybe add status = [[#Conservation status|see text]]
Lead
  • what does "royal" have to do with size?
  • Finally got a hold of the original description. The only thing Stephens wrote about it was, "This plant owes its specific name to its striking appearance." The rest is speculation. Stephens never made it clear why regia should equate to its striking appearance. Some suggest it's because the leaves are arranged in a "crown", others say its a reference to the large size of the plant. But, none of those observations are in reliable sources, so I suppose we're stuck with the rather unsatisfactory "striking appearance" with no explanation. Rkitko (talk) 15:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "remnant"? An odd usage. Do you mean "relict"?
  • link or explain "operculate pollen"?
  • "The leaves are the largest in the genus Drosera" feels like information duplicated from the previous paragraph; and "Drosera" is redundant here.
  • "and tentacles" - it has tentacles?!!! like a sea monster? maybe need a link or explain this term. I see this is both explained and linked in the description section below; maybe move it to the lead?
Description
  • "retentive glands"? What does that mean? Is this another name for the tentacles?
  • "operculate pollen shed in tetrads"? Explain or link.
  • "chocking out". Do you mean "choking"?
  • Overall, the Description sections seems to cover anatomy and morphology, physiology and feeding behaviour, breeding system, a bit of phylogeny, a bit of phenology.... Could we sharpen up the scope of this section a bit?; e.g. resist the urge to identify certain characters as relict until we get to "evolutionary relationships". And could some of this info be moved to an "Ecology" section?; e.g. what it feeds on; its reliance on fire; its breeding system. Arguably you could include the phenology stuff there too (e.g. dormancy times, flowering times, etc) if you called it "Ecology and life cycle".
Distribution and habitat
  • map
  • Difficult to produce one. I haven't seen any with the exact position in the valley, no published location data beyond "Bains Kloof" or "Baineskloof" or "Bainskloof" valley exist. I'd worry about producing one that's inaccurate. --Rkitko (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe Africa with a dot somewhere towards the bottom? :-D Hesperian 05:17, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Evolutionary relationships
  • "revealed a clustering of D. regia with D. arcturi basally with respect to all other Drosera": I read this as saying that arcturi and regia form a clade that is sister to the clade of all other Drosera; this is not consistent with the cladogram.
  • Now reads "revealed a close relationship between D. regia and D. arcturi, both of which clustered basally with respect to all other Drosera..." Better? Rkitko (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hesperian 06:29, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! A very thorough review. I'll get right on this in the morning. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 08:55, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]


A couple more points to consider:

  • Any reason you haven't made use of Janssens, J. (1986) "In vitro propagation of sundew, Drosera regia Stephens"?
  • This might just be my personal obsession, but I like to know the circumstances (at least the where and when) of the type specimen collection; and, if this wasn't the first known collection, any earlier collections.
  • Regarding tetrads, you could link to Tetrad (genetics), but that article need to be made a bit more generic, since it currently asserts that the term applies only to yeasts and an alga. There's a long list of plants with tetrad pollen in Copenhaver (2005), "A compendium of plant species producing pollen tetrads".
  • Instead of linking and expanding that article, I just parenthetically explained tetrads as a group of four pollen grains. Is that ok? --Rkitko (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You should blue those red links before going to FAC
  • The alt text needs some work—alt text should describe what can be seen in the image, with no inferences or extra information; for example, if you cannot see an insect in the picture then the alt text should not say that the leaf is "wrapped around insect prey". You probably shouldn't even be identifying these plants as D. regia: all you can really say from looking at the picture is they are plants with long tapering leaves arising from a common point just above the soil; and each leaf is covered in... good luck providing a textual description of those tentacles.
  • I'm not sure about the reliability of that CPUK forum posting as a source.

Hesperian 13:19, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I couldn't get a copy of Janssens (1986). No lending library would send it.
  • I assume the type info would be in Stephens (1926), but I also couldn't get a copy of this publication through ILL.
  • I completely forgot about the redlinks. I'll work on that today.
  • This is my first time using alt text. I'll try to improve it, but the idea is foreign at first to a sighted person.
  • The CPUK posting is by Andreas Fleischmann, a known and published expert on the subject. Such forum postings, I thought, were usually acceptable as reliable sources. That kind of information on the population is published no where else except in several trip reports, Andreas' being the most reliable. --Rkitko (talk) 16:53, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • All but one red link nuked. All red links nuked. I removed a couple I don't intend on creating or aren't that notable. Thanks again for all your comments! I'm going to try to work on that Ecology section, if I can manage it. Rkitko (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re "I assume the type info would be in Stephens (1926), but I also couldn't get a copy of this publication through ILL.", that's a shame; but you shouldn't cite it if you haven't sighted it. Hesperian 05:56, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

POV

a reference to the regal position in the genus as the largest species

because bigger is better??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.145.82.117 (talk) 17:30, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I've struck some above that have clearly been addressed. I've left some unstruck because I'm not sure about their status; if you consider them addressed, go ahead and strike them.

Struck a few with comments. --Rkitko (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Missing info?[edit]

Great article but, perhaps it's just me but, I couldn't find any information on how the plant actually consumes the insects that it captures. The article describes how it captures them but, not what it does with them once captured. How does the plant ingest the captured insects? If this information is available, shouldn't it be in the article? Cla68 (talk) 05:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's information that is general to the genus Drosera and not specific to this species. I've always treated such information as best not being duplicated in each article on every species, else I'd just be copying and pasting 188+ times. And, as far as I know, there are no published studies of digestion in this species, so any information included here would be general. I doubt the process is any different from other Drosera, but since no one has collected that data, we don't know! Rkitko (talk) 12:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, okay. I guess one might not be able, then, to add a single sentence explanation such as, "Once trapped, the prey is then consumed in the same general manner as with all Drosera." Cla68 (talk) 19:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Images[edit]

Is there another way to display the images so that they are not all scrunched together on the right-hand side of the article? I made a suggestion but my edit was reverted. Just a suggestion. --Another Believer (Talk) 02:17, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm open to suggestions, but in this case I prefer them all on the right. Any solution that staggers them left and right should be mindful of MOS:IMAGES, specifically MOS:IMAGELOCATION where text isn't sandwiched between images and left-aligned images don't go immediately below headings. Staggering images left then right always seemed best to me in large blocks of prose not interrupted by prose, which we don't have here, but that's just my thought on the matter. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 02:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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