Our entry for Ricinus communis is called Castor Beans, with no indication of the Latin name.

Castor Beans (Ricinus communis)

A member asks why something is identified only by the common name, especially in view of the international status of our database. The page does come up in a search for Ricinus communis, but the common name "Castor Beans" was not familiar to the member, so it seemed confusing. Shouldn't there be some Latin identification of the plant on the generic page for that custom database?

We can do that, but it will require some workarounds (which I am very happy to do, of course.)

Reason being: for some parent plants, there are multiple latin names. I can't think of any examples off hand but I know they are there. Due to this, I can't tell it to print the latin name since there may be more than one. The question arises: which one do you print? So we have the parent plant simply named what we want it (like "Castor Beans") and leave it at that.

What we did with some of them is put the latin name right in the actual name of the parent plant, for example:



and

Grape Hyacinths (Muscari)

and

Cape Lilies (Nerine)

If we want to do that with more, I can easily add them on a plant-by-plant basis to the ones we desire.

zuzu said:Shouldn't there be some Latin identification of the plant on the generic page for that custom database?

Yes.

Edited: How about parent plants of a single genus, add the genus name when it differs from the parent plant name.

Edited again:

dave said:If we want to do that with more, I can easily add them on a plant-by-plant basis to the ones we desire.

Sounds good

In this case, communis is the only accepted species name in the Ricinus genus, so I think the Latin name should be added to the name of the parent plant.

Well, maybe the right solution here is that,

1) if there's only one accepted latin name on a parent plant, then add it to its display name.

and

2) if there's more than one latin name, then just pick one?

I've made the change!

Thank you, Dave.