Talk:Plant

Lead

opening paragraph fix: there are plenty of plants that parasitise off fungi networks, and ive heard of some that parasitise off animals. 84.66.216.95 (talk) 02:07, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

"Hard cases make bad law" - the function of the opening paragraph of the lead is to give a clear, simple overview to build a general understanding. It is not to go into every imaginable exception, which would only build confusion. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

• I started reading the article today as it was good to see a vital topic getting attention at DYK. But I balked immediately at the lead sentence which read:

Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic.

There are some issues with this.

1. Words like eukaryote and kingdom will be confusing for the general reader. This is the sort of article that might be read by a young child and so should start with appropriate language per WP:JARGON and MOS:INTRO.
2. It doesn't clearly define what a plant is. It talks about photosynthesis but indicates that this is not essential. And the reference to Plantae just seems to be saying that plants are plants.

I looked at the OED, which is the first place I usually go to get a good general definition. It says

gen. and Biology. A living organism other than an animal, able to subsist wholly on inorganic substances, typically fixed to a substrate and moving chiefly by means of growth, and lacking specialized sensory and digestive organs; spec. (more fully green plant) such an organism belonging to a group (the kingdom Plantae) which comprises multicellular forms having cellulose cell walls and capable of photosynthesis by means of chlorophyll, including trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses, and ferns (the vascular or higher plants), and also mosses and liverworts (the bryophytes). Frequently spec.: a small (esp. herbaceous) organism of this kind, as distinguished from a tree or shrub; (in informal use) such an organism grown for or known by its foliage or fruit, as distinguished from a ‘flower’.

It then goes on to explain that bacteria, fungi and lichens were previously included so the definition is not set in stone.

Britannica has a definition with 6 elements. There's some overlap but it's different.

Plant, (kingdom Plantae), any multicellular eukaryotic life-form characterized by (1) photosynthetic nutrition (a characteristic possessed by all plants except some parasitic plants and underground orchids), in which chemical energy is produced from water, minerals, and carbon dioxide with the aid of pigments and the radiant energy of the Sun, (2) essentially unlimited growth at localized regions, (3) cells that contain cellulose in their walls and are therefore to some extent rigid, (4) the absence of organs of locomotion, resulting in a more or less stationary existence, (5) the absence of nervous systems, and (6) life histories that show an alteration of haploid and diploid generations, with the dominance of one over the other being taxonomically significant.

Andrew🐉(talk) 13:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew. "Alternative concepts" are discussed in the article text, and summarized in the second paragraph of the lead. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I read through the rest of the lead and found it quite confusing. In the first paragraph, we're told that plants are a kingdom. Then in the second paragraph, we're told that it's actually the clade Viridiplantae. But then it promptly says that they might be the clade Archaeplastida instead. And the infobox says that the clade is a third one – Diaphoretickes. These all have separate articles and so they are not synonyms; they are something else, right? I am reminded of Haddocks' Eyes!

An anomaly which was part of the puzzle was the number of species. Para 3 says that "There are about 380,000 known species of plants" while Viridiplantae gives the number as 450,000–500,000. Archaeplastida doesn't seem to give a number while Diaphoretickes says over 400,000. Are these differences due to differences of definition or uncertainty in the data?

As we seem to have a variety of definitions which are all detailed separately, this article is or should be a broad topic written in a more general way, I reckon.

The last paragraph of the lead is the only one which won't baffle the general reader because it doesn't get lost in such jargon and contradiction. But in addressing human uses of plants it seems to have some significant omissions such as fuel (firewood and biofuel) and fabric (cotton, linen, jute, &c.)

I'm going to keep working through this as it seems good to really understand something so fundamental but am jotting down these observations as they occur to me. More anon.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Definition

Why it was defined as Viridiplantae rather than Archaeplastida in the taxobox? And why not redirect Viridiplantae to this article? ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 07:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

And there are images of red algae and Glaucophyta, which are classified in Archaeplastida but not Viridiplantae. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 13:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Interaccoonale: as well explained at Plant#Alternative concepts, the term "plant" has multiple meanings. "Plant" = Viridiplantae is clearly stated to be the usage of the article. I think that "plants" = "green plants" is closest to most people's understanding of the term. Naturally there are images related to other usages, but they aren't shown as included in "plant" = Viridiplantae.

Note also that every single taxobox that shows "Kingdom: Plantae" (via Template:Taxonomy/Plantae which has almost 100,000 transclusions) uses the definition "plant" = Viridiplantae, so this is a very deeply embedded decision.

Whichever choice is made could be argued against. Why do you think that "plant" = Archaeplastida would have been a better choice? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Google scholar search results:

• "Plantae (Archaeplastida)" 106
• "Archaeplastida (Plantae)" 117
• "Archaeplastida or Plantae" 54
• "Plantae or Archaeplastida" 67
• "Plantae (Viridiplantae)" 61
• "Viridiplantae (Plantae)" 15
• "Viridiplantae or Plantae" 1
• "Plantae or Viridiplantae" 5

——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 07:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the very small numbers of hits show anything much. If a change were warranted, and I don't think it is, there are better arguments now for "plants" = Embryophyta. For example, the change of name for the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature to International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.

What does seem to me to be clear is that "Plantae" is much more widely used than any of the more specific terms, suggesting that it's generally used rather vaguely. Consider this Google Ngram result, or the Google hits I get:

Plantae 51,300,000

Embryophyta 962,000

Viridiplantae 761,000

Archaeplastida 580,000

So I conclude that any article corresponding to "Plantae" needs to cover all these definitions. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that all definitions should be covered, while I think that's beside the point. We are talking about the taxobox. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 08:10, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Interaccoonale: the taxobox has to reflect a single consistent taxonomy, consistent with the main choice made in the article, and this is Plantae = Viridiplantae. As I pointed out above, this view is embedded in a vast number of taxoboxes in articles, so even if we agreed on a change (which we don't), making it would be very, very disruptive. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Google scholar returns 145,000 results for "Plantae" alone, so less than 1% specify the definition. A standard Google search finds 761,000 results for Viridiplantae and 579,000 results for Archaeplastida, whereas there are 25 million for "Plantae" (this number is quite varied). I don't think these searches provide particularly useful information for which is the most common use. It's also worth noting that this article is at the vernacular "plant". Dictionary definitions tend to be more restrictive, which might suggest plant as the Wikipedia common name should use a narrower definition. I think the status quo is fine and reasonably representative of the traditional kingdom. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:56, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. If there is a viable alternative, based on common usage, I suspect it's "plants" = Embryophyta, as I noted above. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 February 2024

From the evolutionary history section, delete "However, evidence from carbon isotope ratios in Precambrian rocks suggests that complex plants developed over 1000 mya.[36]" This does not match with current scientific consensus of the evolution of plants. The source pointed to is a Nature article on "Earth's earliest non-marine eukaryotes", but there is no evidence in this article which supports the claim that complex plants developed over 1000 mya. The article does not make any claims about which eukaryotic kingdom these specimens come from (be they plant, fungus, or animal). Frunk10 (talk) 11:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)