Talk:Grass

From Academic Kids

This page was just moved from grass to Family Poaceae last week. I am trying to establish some professional consistency in the botanical treatments by not relying on sometimes out-dated and generally always inprecise common names. Please do not move things around to a lower level of organization. - Marshman 06:16, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

What's the difference between a grass and a member of the Poaceae family? The article seems to imply that they are the same. If they are the same, then our naming convention (specifically Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)) is that the title should be grass. The convention is well accepted, and there is a large number of pages which use common names instead of technically correct names. -- Tim Starling 06:27, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There are many plants that are "grasses" that are not Poaceae (see seagrass). Poaceae is the correct botanical term for true grasses about which the article purports to discuss. The problem with common names will always be that they are inherently imprecise. I do not think all levels of taxonomy treated in Wikipedia need be titled by botanical terms, and common names are especially useful at the genus-species level. But down to that point we have pages that are an unorganized mess of botanical and common names as titles. I thought it would be more professional to discuss each family under its correct botanical designation. That provides more learning experience for the user than the "well we call that grass in my neck of the woods" approach that you have now. - Marshman 06:36, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

To make a point (but actally proved an interesting addition, I think), I listed grasses in Hawaii that are NOT true grasses on this disambiguation page. It should be easy to double or triple this list if more places in the world chime in. Hopefully, this will justify having true grasses in their own article. - Marshman 17:50, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I think that answers my question. The current article is more or less fine with me. Perhaps a bit too prescriptive -- if botanists use one definition and everyone else uses another, that doesn't mean everyone else is wrong, it means there are two definitions. But that can be fixed over time.

The incoming links (http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Grass) need lots of work. -- Tim Starling 04:43, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I am working on it. I fixed all of the links to grass that should be to Poaceae - those that clearly need to go to true grasses. I'll recheck the others, but many are so general that a link to the disambiguation page actually makes sense to me (i.e., link to lawn or pasture would be a meaningful). From your comment about definitions of "grass" I believe you are not a biologist. In botany, as in most of the sciences, there is always a more exact definition than that used by the public at large. Scientists do not want to impose these definitions on others, but cannot work with the more general "public" definitions -- too ambiguous to permit work to proceed among scientists all over the world. Every discipline defines its terms in the way that works best for those participating in the discipline. For this reason I think the disambiguation page in Wikipedia deserves a lot more respect. It is where all of those disciplines branch out. Great place for clarifying different perspectives in language. Poaceae is the Botany "grass", but obviously not the only "grass" in the language. I predict disambiguation will make Wikipedia stand out from all the other knowledge sources on the net - Marshman 06:03, 28 Aug 2003