Talk:Tamus

Disputed

GRIN does not accept genus, nor do German and French Wikipedia. Article very spurious overall, lacks reliable sources (listed as links but not used) etc. Possibly best to merge. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've added an inline reference to a source (2010 edition of Stace's New Flora of the British Isles, definitive flora for the UK) which does maintain Tamus, but wouldn't object if someone wants to merge with Dioscorea, so long as the synonym Tamus is mentioned. The name Tamus communis gets many hits on Google. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:57, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be two relevant papers on this topic, from 2002 and 2005, but both are paywalled. Dioscorea seems to be one of those large genera which are paraphyletic with respect to their satellite genera (c.f. Carex, Hibiscus, Euphorbia, Senecio). There are two solutions; sink the satellite genera, or split the large genus, and we can't predict which way the consensus will go; until there is a new consensus it would be premature to junk Tamus, while the earlier circumscriptions remain in common use. There would be a better case for losing Lavatera, where there is an emerging consensus on sinking it in Malva. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:29, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually Dysmorodrepanis is not quite right to say that GRIN does not accept the genus: a search for genus = "Tamus" at [1] returns an entry with the statement "Probable synonym of: Dioscorea L." Since GRIN also returns straight "Synonym of" in other cases, this is not a full rejection.

I will removed the mergeto tags from Tamus and Dioscorea. The possible synonymy is covered in both articles. There are reasons noted above to keep them separate for the present. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:17, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]