Talk:Hypericum barbatum

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Links to subspecies[edit]

Plantdrew, hello! I have a question about the links to the subspecies. It looks like you are more knowledgeable than me when it comes to that, so I'd like to discuss it rather than just undo your unlinks. Those links were going to be to subspecies or variants of Hypericum barbatum, rather than synonyms. Is it okay to link to subspecies and variants if there is sufficient information on them? I did this for the 3 subspecies of Hypericum annulatum. Thank you, Fritzmann2002 16:30, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fritzmann2002:. The 5 names in this article are treated as synonym by hypericum.myspecies.info. If you click on each there, you'll see that it says "Usage: not accepted Unacceptability Reason: synonym". As synonyms we won't have articles for them, so links are not needed. Note that there is Hypericum macedonicum and Hypericum barbatum subsp. macedonicum listed at myspecies. What this indicates is that somebody thought there was a different species and the named it H. macedonicum. Somebody else came along and thought that it wasn't sufficiently different from H. barbatum to merit being treated as a separate species but did think it represented a distinct subspecies; H. barbatum subsp. macedonicum. Finally, the person behind myspecies came along and effectively said "no, there's no point in recognizing macedonicum as distinct from barbatum at any level". This kind of thing happens all the time in taxonomy, and could be argued back and forth ad nauseum. There nothing to stop a different taxonomist from coming along tomorrow and declaring that macedonicum is a distinct species, and ultimately there's no single correct answer. All we can do at Wikipedia is report what authoritative sources say (and hope that these sources are based on consensus shared by the majority of taxonomists).

In the case of Hypericum annulatum, myspecies.info does support recognizing three distinct subspecies, so you've done well with the links in that article. Synonyms listed on myspecies appear to always be preceded with an = in the listing, while accepted subspecies lack the = sign. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any further questions, and thanks for creating this article. Plantdrew (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Plantdrew:, thank you for clearing that up. I will definitely check that whenever I use myspecies as a reference. Also, I noticed that you are really active in patrolling or editing whenever I make Hypericum articles and would like to thank you for that. Fritzmann2002 18:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]