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Revision as of 03:03, 4 January 2009

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Disambiguation

This disambiguation page is within the scope of WikiProject Disambiguation, an attempt to structure and organize all disambiguation pages on Misplaced Pages. If you wish to help, you can edit the page attached to this talk page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project or contribute to the discussion.DisambiguationWikipedia:WikiProject DisambiguationTemplate:WikiProject DisambiguationDisambiguation

Requested move

Tumbleweed (disambiguation) to Tumbleweed; a move over redirect. Of the current 34 incoming mainspace links to Tumbleweed, most are not related to Salsola. Also, the current redirect of Tumbleweed to Salsola needs to be changed because Salsola is not the only genus of plants that make tumbleweeds. Some other plants do it too (eg, Sisymbrium altissimum). --Una Smith (talk) 02:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Most of the things that are mentioned at Tumbleweed (disambiguation) are named after the plant. Sisymbrium altissimum, at least according to the article, is known as "tumble mustard" or "tumbleweed mustard", not plain "tumbleweed". Kingdon (talk) 03:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. The weed is the primary topic. Most of the items on the dab page, including Sisymbrium altissimum do not belong there at all; that page needs a clean up. The only other possible use of "Tumbleweed" as a title is the former Australian band. I did fix two bad incoming links to "Tumbleweed" but don't notice many more. Station1 (talk) 04:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

How is Salsola the primary topic? --Una Smith (talk) 15:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose It's not an article about the reproductive dispersal strategy of tumbling, but an article about the genus Salsola which includes a number of plants which are, in the vernacular, called "tumbleweeds," and not tumble mustards. However, the genus article should be about the genus and a separate article should be about tumbleweeds, a possibly paraphyletic group within the genus. I'll see if I can find time to write it, then it could be an article page with a link to the dab on top. If you have sources listing tumbleweed as a common name for tumble mustard, then it could be included in an article on tumbling weeds. I don't know if the seeds of tumble mustard are like those of the Salsola species with the tumbling habitats, though, and this may also mean leaving it out of an article on the habitat. --KP Botany (talk) 22:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Most people call a tumbleweed a tumbleweed, no matter what species makes it. So perhaps there should be a Misplaced Pages article about the tumbleweed habit. Some other plants that have this habit include:

• Salsola
• Sisymbrium altissimum
• Anastatica and several unrelated species of similar form

--Una Smith (talk) 15:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

By analogy with articles in Category:Plant morphology, the article title might be Tumbleweed (botany). --Una Smith (talk) 17:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about the same Anastatica that is? The latter says "Dispersal to a distance occurs only when runoff carries floating and sunken seeds downstream in the wadis and runnels" - nothing about dead plants being carried by the wind. I suspect I'm asking pretty basic questions here, but I'm really not aware of what plants have this habit (or variants thereof), whether "tumbleweed" is an accepted name for it, and therefore am somewhat limited in my ability to comment intelligently on what wikipedia articles should redirect to what. Kingdon (talk) 21:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Anastatica is a well-known tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a common name and also a common noun for any plant that disperses by tumbling in the wind. --Una Smith (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but "tumbleweed" in English actually has a meaning: it means a wind-blown weed. Although Anastatica is called tumbleweed, it is not a well known tumbleweed, because it is not water-blown. If you write the article about tumbleweeds you can include a sentence about this water blown plant, but it's not a tumbleweed by the majority of definitions for this term. That's another tricky issue with common names, some become part of the language with specific meaning but are still applied randomly to other plants outside of that meaning. This also may be a translation from another language. --KP Botany (talk) 01:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. Per Kingdon et al. Tumbleweed refers to the plant in common usage; the dab. page includes film, music and other derivative uses. Chrisieboy (talk) 02:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment about redirects being created to unrelated genus

Una, you said you were discuss this, so stop creating the wikilinks to the Salsola article, which says nothing about these unrelated genera. Creating wikilinks that take people to seemingly unrelated pages without any explanation is not helpful. Wikilink to pages that give MORE information directly about what is linked. That means linking to an article about tumbleweeds which includes a discussion of the common name, as I said before, as you agreed before, as you said you were discussing, here, but now are moving ahead without discussion. --KP Botany (talk) 02:40, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed the redirect from tumbleweed to Salsola to an article about tumbleweeds, as the common name is defined. I checked a dozen on-line dictionaries, the name is fairly standard for weeds that tumble about in the wind. The article can now be edited. --KP Botany (talk) 03:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

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