Talk:Pinus sabiniana

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Hi there, anonymous user 82.39.129.86 - why not get yourself a username (it's free and it takes about 5 seconds) so it's easier to discuss pages? Thanks for the commentary about the name of sabiniana/sabineana - it hasn't caught on very well yet, though - sabiniana references outnumber sabineana over 100:1 on Google.

Got a username now - MPF

It seems a pity that "Gray Pine" rather than "Foothill Pine" is the dominant name (actually, "Digger Pine" is still the most often used, it appears) - since the tree is not obviously grey, but obviously does grow on the Foothills. However, usage statistics agree with the edits you made, except for the Pine-Oak community where there is a 6:1 majority in favour of calling it Foothill Pine.

Have to admit, it looks very grey to me, compared to other Californian pines! 'Gray pine' is also the oldest widely-used name (the oldest of all, 'Sabine's pine' from the Latin, is almost never used). - MPF 00:22, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anonymous edit commenting on use of names was from me - sorry, I didn't realise my login had timed out. seglea 04:58, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

er, I think it was me! - MPF 00:22, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

sabineana

Not having the protologue at hand, it's not clear to me whether sabiniana => sabineana is correction of a typographic or orthographic error. ICBN 60.1 Ex. 1 concerns intentional spellings; sabiniana could not be corrected as a typographic error if it were intentional. It makes more sense to correct it as an orthographic error (and I have modified the article to that end), but even so, latinizing Sabine to Sabinius would result in sabiniana (cf. 60.7, 60C.2). Does anyone have a reference for the first correction to sabineana?--Curtis Clark 03:21, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Farjon, A. (2001). World Checklist and Bibliography of Conifers, second edition. Kew; also (2005) Pines: Drawings and Descriptions of the Genus Pinus, second edition. Brill ISBN 9004139168 - MPF 09:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Not having these references at hand, is there an explanation, or is the change simply made? --Curtis Clark 13:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't have the 2nd ed Kew Checklist to hand (I've only got the 1998 1st ed., with the trad spelling); Pines says "the original misspelling "sabiniana" by David Douglas should be corrected under the rules of nomenclature". Farjon is a very highly respected author in matters of nomenclature, and I'd see no reason to dispute his analysis - MPF 17:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not disputing it either, absent an analysis of the protologue, but for years people spelled Eschscholzia "Eschscholtzia", thinking they were correcting a misspelling, but the rules are explicit: only typographic and orthographic errors may be corrected (the Examples include deliberate misspellings that must stand). Considering "sabiniana" to be a typographic error requires evidence that Douglas spelled it "sabineana" in other contexts. Considering it to be an orthographic error simply requires that "Sabinius" not be a latinization of Sabine's surname in common use, something much easier to substantiate.--Curtis Clark 17:43, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to dispute the name change. Here is the relevant rule book, article 60 of the ICBN: http://ibot.sav.sk/icbn/frameset/0065Ch7OaGoNSec1a60.htm Since people have been writing "sabiniana" for a rather long time, Article 60.1 is of key importance, stating "The original spelling of a name or epithet is to be retained," with certain exceptions. The text being cited in support of the epithet "sabineana" is not among those exceptions, and in fact, is not a rule but a recommendation (Recommendation 60C). So, you CAN change the spelling, but don't expect everyone else to play along. Changing the spelling of this epithet strikes me as a rather pointless gesture considering the thousands of citations that use the current spelling, and as a point of historic interest, the Latinizing of a scientist's name was commonly regarded as honorific when Douglas' new pine was named for Sabine. Thus the Latinized spelling is not only authorized under the Code, but is appropriate. For now I'll leave the text, but unless someone has a serious problem with this, I will further revise it in a week or two. -- --Conifers (talk) 23:17, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit to improve sort order in category Pinus

I edited this to change the sort order on the page for the Category:Pinus. It had been set to alphabetize under Pine. That might make sense for categories where there are a lot of trees and a few of them are pines; then all the pines group together. But on the page where everything is a pine, it made more sense to alphabetize under Gray. 140.147.236.194 (talk) 13:01, 13 April 2010 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved to Pinus sabiniana. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 22:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

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Gray Pine → Pinus sabineana — As noted in the article lede, multiple common names exist. Google Scholar finds twice as many occurrences of Pinus sabiniana than of "Gray Pine".[1][2] Relisted. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 15:44, 29 September 2010 (UTC) Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Per google test results... see #Google hits below. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose The use of Pinus sabineana appears to be limited to the field of botany. Gray Pine or Digger Pine is, IMO, more common and more appropriate.--Labattblueboy (talk) 18:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

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• To sabineana- Oppose
• To sabiniana - Support

Speaking from the reference point of living amongst this plant for half a century with digger pine embedded as a common name, I'm still slow to promptly recognize grey pine as P. sab. I believe all/most plant species articles are best internationally served by the botanical name, with all the common names set to redirect directly to the article, for any reader to find it.
With 2 species spellings, pasted in below is the results of much online research. In doing that at USDA & Jepson sites, Pinus sabineana came back with "no results." If two of the major authorities 'in its range' continue to use the original name the standard seems set for now to use P. sabiniana in this article and potential new title.

from article edit, with ext. links references:

The scientific botanical name with the standard spelling sabiniana commemorates Joseph Sabine, secretary of the Horticultural Society of London. In botanical nomenclature it is no longer customary to Latinize species names (such as Sabine to sabinius and sabiniana) before forming Neo-Latin terms, so a change was proposed to sabineana by some botanists. However the new spelling proposal has not been accepted by the United States Department of Agriculture -USDA National Plant Data Center or the University of California's "The Jepson Manual" . Nor has it been adopted into general use, with the spelling sabiniana used in the pine's endemic range by the University of California and state agencies , and in its home country's U.S. federal agencies . Pinus sabiniana is exclusively used for gaining searchengine results on the Jepson and USDA Plants online database systems, and in their printed documents. This can change in future classification decisions.

ext. links references

• UC Jepson Manual treatment - Pinus sabineana
• USDA PLANTS Treatment: Pinus sabineana
• - Pinus sabineana - Calflora Photos archive
• Calflora Database - Pinus sabiniana data and range map
• UC Jepson: Accepted names for taxon native to CA database - Pinus sabineana
• USDA: Data Source and References for Pinus sabiniana (California foothill pine

Thanks,---Look2See1 t a l k → 01:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

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• Support - this species has multiple ambiguous vernacular names. Pinus sabineana appears to be an orthographical correction of the original description Pinus sabiniana. The google test below, then, should lump both scientific names together to get an accurate representation of whether "Gray Pine" or the "accepted scientific name" is more commonly used. By that metric, I get more scholar hits for the scientific name. Rkitko ^(talk) 03:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

  ETA: See the discussion below. Per the USDA GRIN reference, Pinus sabiniana is the correct name and I support moving it to that title. Rkitko ^(talk) 18:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support sabiniana (oppose sabineana) Often reliable sources give both the scientific name and common name(s). In this case, a whole range of common names are offered. The only question on the scientific name is the spelling. As mentioned by others, GRIN provides a reasoning for retaining the original spelling in a March 2009 update. Melburnian (talk) 00:53, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support sabiniana Reliable sources (see Google Scholar) support using this name over the two main less common names. Digger Pine is actually more common than Gray Pine in Books and Scholar sources, though they are both less commonly used than Pinus sabiniana . First Light (talk) 00:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support sabiniana for the reasons given. I've never been convinced it was a correctable error.--Curtis Clark (talk) 13:28, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support sabiniana; please see my comments below. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Google hits

• Pinus+sabineana About 3,020 results
• Pinus+sabiniana About 43,500 results
• Gray+pine About 53,200 results

Google scholar:

• Pinus+sabineana Results 1 - 10 of about 14.
• Pinus+sabiniana Results 1 - 10 of about 1,300
• Gray+pine Results 1 - 10 of about 604

--Born2cycle (talk) 21:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Google:

• Digger+pine About 25,800 results. Seems to me to be a clear case of competing common names.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Rename summary

I see considerable support for renaming the article to its scientific name. Labattblueboy opposes, but may have overlooked the guidance of Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of life: "In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. birds), or when common names are well-known and reasonably unique (e.g. "Cuvier's dwarf caiman"), they should be used for article titles. Scientific names should be used otherwise." Labattblueboy's counterproposal of "Gray Pine or Digger Pine" seems to acknowledge that the common name is not reasonably unique.

The policy, WP:TITLE, states "Articles are normally titled using the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources." I think that Born2cycle and Rkitko are correct that the scholarly literature, i.e., reliable sources, uses the scientific name. This is by a margin of 2 to 1. Look2See1 has added content on names used in important sources for the article. Born2cycle Look2See1 and Rkitko and I support moving the article to its scientific name, whatever that may be; please see below. Labattblueboy opposes this move, but doesn't cite policy or guidance in support of his position. Born2cycle opposes the move to P. sabineana, but has not yet expressed an opinion on P. sabiniana. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Scientific name

Please see GRIN.[3] It uses P. sabiniana and says, "the spelling of the specific epithet agrees with Vienna ICBN Rec. 60C.2 (Sabine from "sabinus"), and thus is not correctible under Art. 60.11". This would seem to me to be a reliable source, when combined with the sources that Born2cycle Look2See1 has compiled. I discount USDA PLANTS somewhat; it lags other similar sources. But Jepson is usually reliable and more current, in my experience. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the link. I should have checked GRIN. If you read the full text of 60C.2, though, there is room for interpretation ("Personal names already in Greek or Latin, or possessing a well-established latinized form"), e.g. how do you determine whether a name has a well-established latinized form? What's well-established? Regardless, I think the GRIN info is recent within the last few years and the Vienna Code is pretty young itself (2006). The text for 60C.2 is the same in the St. Louis Code (2000). If I recall correctly, User:MPF was very involved in Pinus articles and often argued for corrected orthographies. In fact, it was MPF who changed the spelling from sabiniana to sabineana in the article (diff). I'm pretty sure this is a minority view, now, and in the interim he may have changed his mind. I think sabiniana is the best bet now, since we have the reliable source GRIN to back us up. I would be happier with a few more references that discuss that as explicitly as GRIN does, though. Rkitko ^(talk) 17:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Fine research work Walter Siegmund and Rkitko, thank you for knowing the resource to use and determining the best species nomenclature for current usage, and also explaining the relevant Codes.---best---Look2See1 t a l k → 02:51, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

MPF was an exceptionally knowledgeable contributor. He is greatly missed by many, I think. Unfortunately, he stopped editing on enwiki in January 2008 after another article title discussion that became somewhat acrimonious.[4] For what its worth, it was at his suggestion that I began consulting GRIN on such matters. Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:44, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Range includes Oregon

Winter 2011, Michael Taylor (co-discoverer of Hyperion) and I met a man, Frank Callahan (naturalist) in southern Oregon to look some Ponderosa Pines. On the way out of the National Forest, Frank showed us an indigenous Digger Pine about west of Merlin & Grants Pass, Oregon, a stone's throw from the Rogue River.