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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Josh Grosse (talk | contribs) at 19:04, 20 March 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Some discussion material removed to Talk:Plantae if relevant to Plant Classification

Can someone answer this basic question: what do most plants eat.

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind... No really. Plants don't eat, per se, but the bulk of their mass is created from carbon extracted from carbon dioxide via the process of photosynthesis. So I guess you can simplify that and say that plants 'eat' air and sunlight. :-) --mav

Does the classification by growth actually apply to anything other than seed plants, and flowering plants in particular?

Moved to flowering plant. -Menchi 05:30 26 May 2003 (UTC)
Sorry, I moved it back, but now I agree (after reading these comments) it does not belong here. I'll fix. I see there has been a fair bit of discussion about what to include and what not to include on this page. I'm looking things over and I'm inclined to move the taxonomy stuff back to the Redirect Plantae where it was originally developed as that makes perfect sense botanically. This is a constant problem in natural sciences. There is a "public" perception of what something (like "plant") is, and we tend to want to match that with the article name. But the truth is, these things have been worked out by botanists in ways not necessarily compatible with the common perceptions and we get into trouble trying to satisfy conflicting POVs. I'm sure whoever moved the stuff into Plant was not aware of the conflict that creates because we all think we know what a plant is — how hard can it be to define? But as someone points out and Menchi fixes, the classification of growth does not apply to all plants, and cannot be represented as such. Leaving it here just reinforces the narrow perception that plants are really things like ferns and flowers. I'll work on this problem for awhile. I am cognizant of a need to keep the "public" or common POV right up front. - Marshman 05:42, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)


Some stuff moved from botany.

Material to be moved out

This is all covered better elsewhere and is confusing here (this is not a textbook but an article on the Science of Botany

The Kingdom Plantae is divided into divisions (the term "division" was traditionally used instead of "phylum" as in the animals, but either term is now accepted).


I have pictures

I have hundreds and can take thousands of various troopical plants that grow in Belize. Only problem is I take them because the plants intrest me not for scientific purposes and have no way of identifying there scicetific name so can't post them in any useable way. How can I contributate them properly? Also I am more than willing to take pictures on request by anyone and can use them here on wikipedia Belizian 07:49, 2004 Feb 5 (UTC)

To be useful, most (but not all) should have a clear image of the flower. Ecceptions might be those with very distinctive foliage or pictures of individual trees. However, even in the latter cases, an image of the flower would usually be required to begin identification. Assuming you have pictures of flowers, you could post them at Flower_album and see if others can identify. That gets them on Wikipedia with your name and notes for others to place in articles as appropriate -- Marshman 17:34, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Okay I can do that but what name to give pic1 pic2 etc? Can the names be changed once uploaded and Identified? -- Belizian
No, they are permanent. But the names of the files are the least of our problem. Do not worry. We will just re-upload with the correct names once we find them out. The image is the important part, because they are not easy to get. So, in the mean time, just say "Star-leaved plant 27.JPG" or something descriptive is ok. --Menchi 01:43, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Be sure to fill in info about the picture on the photo document page. Include photographer credit, date taken, location, etc. info that you can. Then if we move the pictures to new names, we will be able to retain all the important source information at the new name place (so the name itself is really unimportant) - Marshman 01:56, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I know this was more or less settled, but this page as it stands is simply untenable. The goal of the present revision was to allow for all definitions of plant, both phylogenetic and popular, and this is a good thing. But the way it's done presently, there's essentially no information on most plants until the second page! And it's hardly useful for a popular audience to talk about photoautotrophs before they know that things like roses and pine trees are photoautotrophic, so I think the treatment backfires. Plus it suggests the only vascular plants are universally considered plants, which leaves out mosses, and that there is a unique circumscription for the kingdom Plantae, when it practice it varies and at different points in time has included all these organisms.

What I would suggest is splitting this article into two sections, with a brief introduction to explain them. The first would be embryophytes, which are universally considered plants and include most of the plants we run into every day. The second would be other plants, and talk about algae and fungi, including most of the current first paragraph. Note that the second includes green algae, so this isn't a split into "real plants" and "fake plants"; rather, it's the traditional split into "higher plants" and "lower plants". It would let us give some information right up front without forcing a particular definition. Would this be ok with everyone? I could right an alt page before hand, if you're simply not sure.

If not, somebody should propose something else, because as I said they article is currently far more intimidating than informative. -- Josh

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