Talk:digitalis

RFV discussion: September 2014–March 2015
Rfv-sense: genus of herbaceous plants. --Shouldn't the name of a genus be capitalized? --Hekaheka (talk) 22:44, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Quite often the lower-cased version is used as a countable noun (fuchsia(s), pelargonium(s), etc.) but yes, in this case I think it's a mistake. Equinox ◑ 22:51, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * People often use the lower-case English form as if it were a genus name, but it seems silly to have definitions both as an individual specimen and as the genus. Moreover, it could refer to one or more of the subgeneric groupings (eg, subgenus, section, species, subspecies, variety, form). People also sometimes use the italicized taxonomic name (eg, Digitalis) to refer to an individual specimen, rather than to the species or genus. If some would like to insert and attest these, they can, but it won't help users much. I suppose such phenomena belong in Taxonomic names. DCDuring TALK 01:16, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I just came across another entry illustrating non-rule-following use of such terms: [[Homines neanderthalenses]]. DCDuring TALK 01:41, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I hope I'm not the only person in the world who uses the plural [[Tyrannosauri reges]]. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * As professional systematicists would have it, Tyrannosaurus rex is a proper name of an individual, the individual being the group of individual specimens of common lineage that can mate. I offer this not as definitive, but to point out that a taxon is something like a Roman gens or the House of Windsor. One would not refer to Prince William as one of the HouseS of Windsor! Phylogeneticists refer to clades, which are lineages, which also have proper names, but are not defined in the same way as the classical taxa.
 * But you are certainly not alone in not respecting the niceties of taxonomyspeak. I think most zoologists and botanists don't either unless they are being very careful. DCDuring TALK 21:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * However, Tyrannosaurus rex is not only a taxonomic name; it's also the vernacular name, as shown by the fact that our entry has an English section in addition to the Translingual section. And as the vernacular name it's a common noun for any individual of the species, like or . And as such, it needs a plural, which I suppose is actually Tyrannosaurus rexes most of the time, but I still prefer the more Latinate form. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:03, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure, but we all have polymathic intellectual pretensions that we need to indulge, as I tried to. I happen to enjoy the peculiar intersection of linguistics, taxonomy (classical and phylogenetic), and (ordinary language) philosophy. DCDuring TALK 23:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Cited. I propose that we change the definition to something like “Any plant of the genus Digitalis ”, because genus names themselves are listed as translingual. — Ungoliant (falai) 16:47, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The cites support the new sense Ungoliant proposes, not the challenged 'genus' sense. I suspect that cites might be available for the 'genus' sense as well. I am reluctant to actually seek out such cites, because I don't believe that we add value to more than a tiny number of users by laboriously adding to every English name of a natural kind, descent group, or any other grouping of living things the extra senses, let alone citing them in each case. DCDuring TALK 17:20, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I've changed the challenged sense to the one Ungoliant suggests, in line with the citations. - -sche (discuss) 22:55, 7 March 2015 (UTC)