Talk:Banksia grossa

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Banksia grossa/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Choess (talk · contribs) 15:14, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Will begin review shortly. Choess (talk) 15:14, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts from a first reading:

• In the first paragraph of the lead, link banksia. The naive (read: non-Australian) reader may not be sure what a banksia is.
• "inflorescence" should be linked.
• "fourteen species with predominantly round or oval inflorescences of the series Abietinae" is unclear. Do all Abietinae have "predominantly round or oval inflorescences"? Or do those fourteen species constitute Abietinae, with the inflorescence size more or less constituting a synapomorphy? If the latter, perhaps "fourteen species of the series Abietinae, all of which share predominantly..." or something like that might be more clear.

good point/done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Move "in 1981" after "as a distinct species".

good point/done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• "Found in sand among heath..." Link "heath" so it's clear that this is the ecological community and not a plant species.

good point/done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• The fire and disturbance sentence needs a little recasting. Let me think about this.
• "older stems flaky pale brown bark". Emend to "while older stems are covered in flaky pale brown bark." Current style is a bit too telegraphic.

good point/done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Sentence about the leaves needs breaking up; a little too much going on. More later.
• Change "margins" to "margins of the leaves" to make it clear what they are, and then "surface is" to "surfaces are" to agree.

good point/done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Link "styles" and "terminal", assuming we have a definition for the latter in a botanical context.
• "indeed some flowers produce so much": comma after "indeed"?

done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• "revealed an average 8 follicles for each": perhaps "revealed, on average, 8 follicles per"?

done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• In the sentence about the cotyledons, I would end it after the dimensions and start a new sentence with "These arise from".

split sentence Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Link "auricle".
• "The stem remains reddish". Under what conditions? After the cotelydons develop?

as the plant grows with succeeding pairs of leaves Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• In Taxonomy, "and so retained" to "and so was retained"; a little too telegraphic.

added verblet Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• "They foreshadowed": I think of "foreshadowed" as something of a literary term. Perhaps "anticipated" as a verb instead? Or rather, "they anticipate"?
• Link "ladybirds". (They're "ladybugs" in en-US, so readers here may not immediately make the connection with insects.)
• "No pollinators": add "of this species".

added Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• "one of five closely related species": obviously we don't want to go on too much of a tangent here, but what are these species? It may be too lengthy to name them all explicitly (or perhaps in a footnote?) but are they members of sect. Abietinae? Mast's clade? "Closely related" is a bit ambiguous in light of the Taxonomy section.

good point/added as footnote Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:22, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Consider linking "loamy"?
• Alex George should be linked at first occurrence in the references (currently the Nuytsia ref, #2). So also Mast, now linked at #10 (Aust. Syst. Bot. 18:75–88) rather than #8 (Aust. Syst. Bot. 11:321–342), Stephen Hopper (ref. #3, The Banksia Atlas), Byron Lamont (at ref. #5, from International Symposium on the Biology of Proteaceae) and Kevin Thiele (ref #9, Aust. Syst. Bot. 9:661–733.
• In the title of ref. #9 (Aust. Syst. Bot. 9:661–733), "Banksia" is used in the taxonomic sense and should be italicized.

done Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• In ref. #11 (Aust. Syst. Bot. 20:63–71), an issue number should be given, consistent with other citations of the journal.

added Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• An ISSN is given for Am. J. Bot.; should one be provided for any other journals?

issns added Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:25, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• "Other than B. grossa, these species": "The species other than B. grossa".

rejigged Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

That's what I get from my first careful top-to-bottom read; I'll come back later and see if there are more points to be addressed specific to the Good Article criteria. Choess (talk) 16:16, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Fixed the linking and made the markup of author names in citation templates consistent, as I figured this was uncontroversial. Choess (talk) 18:36, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, criterion assessment. The prose (1a) has been pretty well picked over above; I still want to do spotchecks (as a matter of form). Compliance with the relevant MOS sections looks fine (1b). Referencing looks good (2a–c); I'll do spotchecks on a few of the refs. Broadness of coverage is fine (3a), and the article uses the form recommended by WikiProject Plants. The details seem generally useful and informative to me, and not tangential (3b). Neutrality and stability are not a big issue with plant articles, in my experience (4 & 5). Image copyrights OK and well-captioned (6a–b). Let me just do my checks and deal with the few small prose issues I left hanging, and we should be good to go. Choess (talk) 05:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

ok Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:57, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Spotchecks look fine (big surprise). I've made the two changes to the prose I left unspecified above; feel free to fiddle with them again if I've committed an inaccuracy. This is good to go as a GA.

A few thoughts against FA:

• Add image alt texts.
• That review about nectar mentions scat having been found on the inflorescences of species of sect. Abietinae. That has to find its way into Wikipedia somewhere.

good point - realistically the evidence for related species suggests they are likely pollinators, so text tweaked accordingly. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• Hill's "History of the Australian Vegetation: Cretaceous to Recent" has an interesting drawing of the stomatal pits of B. grossa and several other species, suggesting that they have extremely well-developed structures for resisting desiccation.

good point/added - combines well with cladistic work by Mast. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:34, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• Sedgley et al., Aust. J. Bot. 41(5):439-464 may describe pollen morphology—dull but perhaps useful.

aargh - my initial response is to leave it out as it is so specialised as to be meaningless to the lay reader - can be discussed at FAC methinks... Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:34, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• This contains a reference to a known bee pollinator of B. grossa; may be hard to track down elsewhere.

Damn, it's mentioned on several development reports, but there was a bee pollinator directory that was online that has now vanished (grr) - hard to reference appropriately...I'll keep looking... Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

A hit, a palpable hit—for Hylaeus globuliferus. Is this what you wanted? Choess (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Great! added.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

And now as I come to the end of the review, it occurs to me that we should have insisted that Sminthopsis84 do this review. Then we could discover...whether dunnarts make productive visits to B. grossa! *raucous laughter* Choess (talk) 04:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

chuckle. will get onto the above points...no prizes for guessing where this is going.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:01, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Joseph Banks and Banksia

The genus Banksia was named for the naturalist and botanist Sir Joseph Banks (See the article on him). He should be mentioned in this article, but I am uncertain where in the text. Would someone involved with this featured article care to add him? --DThomsen8 (talk) 03:02, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't that go on the article for the genus? Brutannica (talk) 17:23, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Road verges

"Around 40% of plants occur on road verges." Not every reader will make the connectuion to increased precipitation run-off at the edges of hard paving. Shouldn't it be explicitly mentioned? Or would that be "original research"?--Wetman (talk) 19:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)