Talk:Nepeta

Smoking catnip

I tried smoking some cat nip and experienced arousal towards my cat. Therefore, this statement is true.

Can someone fix the page to include a "[citation needed]" rather than the metacomment that exists now? I apologize, but I don't know how to place a [citation needed] stamp (having trouble in the sandbox), and it bothers me that someone thought it acceptable to argue with the author within the article.68.101.70.151 09:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Britt

WP:NOR, No Original Reseach.

"I tried smoking some cat nip and experienced arousal towards my cat. Therefore, this statement is true."

THat was original research, against wikipedia policy. -Oxinabox (talk) 00:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Stop being such a rule nazi. hybrid.evolution 18:30, 11 April 2008

It has nothing to do with being a "rule nazi" and has everything to do with ensuring the accuracy and value of the article. Simply because one person claims to have smoked it and felt said effect is hardly sufficient to merit inclusion. Stories like that are what Erowid is for. 206.194.127.112 (talk) 21:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

No apparently you feel a mild buzz similar to pot, and that makes no sense that you have some cat-directed emotions just because you smoked catnip. LarsendeSLO (talk) 23:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

this is a no brainer, it won't make you attracted to cats, there is no evidence of this anywhere! however, the cat may become atracted to your catnip smelling jacket. Smoking catnip won't get you anymore high than smoking cloves or chilli powder.

"Smoking catnip won't get you anymore high than smoking cloves or chilli powder."...Um...yes it will, and it does. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.243.143 (talk) 22:01, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

"....Um...yes it will, and it does." NO, it won't ,and it doesn't. Stop talking bullshit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.124.84.10 (talk) 09:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Wether or not it gets you high is irrelevant. The small (likely placebo) effect in humans has never been backed up in any reaserch. Considering the fact that smoking anything will proably produce simmilar effects (esspecially if you're reeeeeally hoping for one) it don't need to be mentioned here. If you enjoy taking it, great, if you want to tell people about it, find a more apropriet forum.

Wow. Somebody can't spell. P.S. I am smoking catnip right now and it is a very, very, mild effect, yet present nonetheless...going to smoke more and limit my normal breaths between "hits"...yep. that did the trick. still not anywhere close to weed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.197.65.183 (talk) 21:50, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Why is this article called Nepeta?

Why is this article called Nepeta? It's about CATNIP! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.253.147.34 (talk) 15:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Nepeta is the proper name for it. --Melon247 ^talk 17:27, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

That may be true, but lots of folks are coming here to look for catnip which is a member of Nepeta. Should there be a separate catnip article? --98.70.43.154 (talk) 15:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

There is already a redirect in place from catnip to this article (that's how I found it). It's true that Wikipedia is supposed to use the most frequently used name as the page name but as the plant is not in fact called catnip at all it'd be inaccurate to use it as the page name. No one typing 'catnip' into Wikipedia will have a hard time finding the page as it is and the situation is clearly explained in the first paragraph so there should be no need to change anything. Danikat (talk) 22:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

It's rather misleading to say that "the plant is not in fact called catnip at all". Of course it is; catnip and catmint are both commonly used names for plants in the genus nepeta. That's what it means for something to be called something! It's also rather meaningless to say that nepeta is the "proper name" for it. It may be the name that's usually used in technical discourse, but that doesn't mean that "catnip" is in any sense improper, or less correct. "Homo sapiens" is a more technical term than "human", but that doesn't make the latter less proper, and it's the former, not the latter, that's the redirect on Wikipedia.

However, it would also be ridiculous to have separate articles for "catnip" and "nepeta". We have to choose one or the other. Now, as noted above, it's Wikipedia policy to prefer common names for article titles (see WP:NCCN). Under normal circumstances, I think this would be a very strong argument for calling this article "catnip". It doesn't really matter that catnip redirects here; it should still be the less common name that redirects to the more common one. William Jefferson Clinton, after all, redirects to Bill Clinton, not the other way round. The only argument I can see for having "nepeta" as the title for this article is that it's clearly the name for the genus, while "catnip" is probably taken by most people to refer to a single species, the scientific name for which is Nepeta cataria. But this seems to me to be a slightly tenuous argument. So, on the balance of evidence so far, I'd be in favour of renaming this article "catnip" and having "nepeta" redirect to that, unless someone can present a good argument in favour of maintaining the status quo.

On a different note: it seems a reasonable hypothesis that catmint is derived by folk etymology from kalamintha, but I see no sources that support the claim (and have checked two particularly reliable sources that make no mention of it), so I've removed it. garik (talk) 15:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with garik. "Catnip" is the plant's common name, and there is nothing "inaccurate" about calling it that, any more than it would be inaccurate to refer to Coffea or Coffea arabica plants by their common name, coffee.

As far as the article name, here's the relevant guideline from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora):

"Scientific names are to be used as article titles in all cases except when a plant has an agricultural, horticultural, economic or cultural use that makes it more prominent in some other field than in botany; e.g. Rose, Coffee, Rice. These exceptions are determined on a case-by-case basis through discussion towards consensus."

I would say catnip clearly falls into the category of a plant that has a familiar cultural use that is prominent enough to put it in the category of exceptions described above.

Most telling is that most dictionaries and encyclopedias appear to list it under "catnip".

The most problematic thing about the status quo, in my eyes, is that Nepeta cataria (the current target of Catnip's redirect page) gives less information on catnip than Nepeta does. AtticusX (talk) 07:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Physiological effects of catnip on cats

This article is full of unverified claims about the mode of action of nepetalactone on cats. Nowhere in the scientific literature does it say that this chemical binds to pheromone receptors and causes euphoria, and a connection between "feline facial pheromone" or male cat urine is completely hypothetical, also with no literature to back it up. Lionesschan (talk) 04:12, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Disparity in some facts

Uses:

Roughly 50% of cats will be affected by the plant,

Effects on Cats:

About two thirds of cats are susceptible to catnip.

Note: The section from uses seems to have been copied to/from Nepeta_cataria

Major_Small (talk) 05:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Nepeta cataria article "dumped" into this one

This article had the nepeta cataria article "dump merged" into this one. The text need to be re-written to fix its flow and style. Jason Quinn (talk) 06:21, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Merging

See tags on this and Nepeta cataria. it makes no sense to merge a species with its parent genus, rather Wikipedia encourages development of separate species pages, if only stubs. The N cataria material needs dumping out of this genus page. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 03:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

okay so me and my husband are in a debate over whether or not catnip gets you high or not?