User talk:S Molteno

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Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, S Molteno!

question about plant ID[edit]

Hi there. I saw you tagged this image for renaming. I'm wondering how you know it's not C. edulis? It's not an area I know much about, but that was the id recommended to me when I uploaded it. — Rhododendrites talk19:52, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
With pleasure. I've recently managed to source some taxonomic literature on the genus. According to the only real taxonomic treatment of the South African Caprobrotus species (Wisura & Glen, 1993), the flowers of C. edulis are always yellow. There is no pink/viola form - those are all C. acinaciformis, deliciosus or chilensis, misidentified as edulis.
In fairness, the very old/spent/dying flowers of C. edulis can sometimes get a very faint pinkish-yellow tinge, but that's only briefly apparent, at the point when the old flower is dying.
Another useful diagnostic character is the two very long calyx-lobes that C. edulis has. None of the other South African species have this, although I believe chilensis and perhaps some of the Australian species do. I don't yet know the non-South African species very well.
In short, ALL of the photos of pink-flowered "edulis" should be removed from the Carpobrotus edulis category, and in some cases will need to be renamed. I would be grateful for your assistance with this!
I would recommend we give the files generic "Carpobrotus species" names, and put them in the "Unidentified Carpobrotus" category, for the time being. Later on hopefully someone knowledgeable on the Australian & Chilean species can put them in their correct species categories.
It's actually nice to see that, although so many images are incorrectly IDed, the South African species at least are relatively easy to distinguish from each other. S Molteno (talk) 09:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Btw., I've also started adding some taxonomic info on the South African species, to their pages on the English wikipedia. I'm getting this directly from the 1993 revision. Hopefully this will also help with IDs in the future. S Molteno (talk) 09:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]