Talk:Solanum brevicaule

I mostly copied the text from French wikipedia. - Tallasse (talk) 15:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Normative syntax of the combination of taxonomic rank plus formal taxon name

The normative syntax of this combination is "rank" followed by "formal name". Examples of this usage are illustrated by the statistics from the following Google Ngrams: kingdom Animalia, Animalia kingdom, phylum Chordata, Chordata phylum, class Mammalia, Mammalia class, order Primates, Primates order, family Hominidae, Hominidae family, genus Homo, Homo genus, species Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens species. This is the opposite of the normative syntax of the combination of a taxonomic rank plus an informal taxon name, e.g.: kingdom animal, animal kingdom, phylum chordate, chordate phylum, class mammal, mammal class, order primate, primate order, family hominid, hominid family, species human, human species. None of this reflects any special rule or rules of syntax for taxonomic terms; it simple reflects the differences in the way English handles noun combinations that are, or are not, compound nouns, e.g. element mercury, mercury element vs. thermometer mercury, mercury thermometer, or planet Mars, Mars planet vs. rover Mars, Mars rover. Basically, "Solanaceae family" is equivalent to "Mars planet" or "mercury element", and it is wrong.

That said, at the taxonomic level of family, and in botanical usage, the syntax statistics are not as consistent. I think the reasons for this are obvious. A lot of nonspecialists don't understand that "family" has a formal taxonomic meaning, and there are lots of less educated people using taxonomic terms from botany by virtue of their involvement in horticulture. Let me know if any of this is not clear. Thanks, WolfmanSF (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Phew! Actually, I rolled back to undo some earlier unconstructive edits by Special:Contributions/151.181.90.195. I just overlooked your change. Sorry! PepperBeast (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]