Hi, new here. I would like to help with the plant database but I am not sure how to deal with this situation. Help? Thanks a lot.

There are 3 different Euphorbias that are being confused in two entries (see below). I don't know how to sort this out. It looks like the best solution would be to rename the second one to remove the word "rosea", since most of the pictures there are of the much more common orange tipped "Firesticks". And then create a new entry for "rosea" where only the red tipped plants can then be moved. The size and other data points will be identical between the red and orange forms, but they are NOT interchangeable. "Rosea" is most definitely a different plant from Firesticks. Also, the colored forms are extremely different from the normal green form in terms of eventual size (colored forms stay bushy, green form is a large tree).

Finally some of the orange tipped plants that are currently being shown under the wild type tirucalli will have to be moved to the listing for the orange "Firesticks". The color distinctions below are hard and plants do not normally convert between forms.

E. tirucalli (all green)
Pencil Tree (Euphorbia tirucalli)

E. tirucalli "rosea" (red tips) -> ? rename as "Firesticks" and lose the "rosea" as the plants pictured are mostly Firesticks (orange tips)
Pencil Cactus (Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks')

E. tirucalli "Sticks on Fire" (orange tips) aka "Firesticks" (no current entry)
????

Let's see, @zuzu, do you moderate the euphorbias?

We have different folks moderating different plant classifications. Zuzu will know who helps with euphorbias.

Karen

Hi, Karen and Baja. There is no moderator for the Euphorbias, but I'll look into this mess and report back as soon as I''ve set it in order.

Thank you! I can take a look when the dust has settled, if that helps.

Thank you Baja.

@dave, is there a list somewhere of plant database moderators and which areas they moderate?

Karen

These are our moderators:

http://garden.org/special/badg...

You can click each name to see what area they moderate, but there's no specific area where you can browse the database by moderator.

Well, this is a bigger mess than I had anticipated, but I'll start by welcoming Baja to ATP. Thank you for finding this ball of confusion and bringing it to our attention.

From a cursory scan of the online descriptions of these three (or two?) plants, I can find that Logee's is selling a cultivar called 'Firesticks,' but its description states that "The red stems often show shades of pink, orange or yellow," so it would seem that designations by color could be guesswork at best.

http://www.logees.com/pencil-c...

In most other cases on the Web, the three are treated as one plant, just as they are in our database. The most common treatment is to call the cultivar 'Rosea' and to list Firesticks and Sticks on Fire as alternative names for the 'Rosea' cultivar. This agrees with our database, where the cultivar is 'Rosea,' but Firesticks is listed as one of its common names, and Sticks on Fire is listed as an also-sold-as name.

Pencil Cactus (Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks')

Here's one of the sources that probably was used as a basis for our database listing.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~cam...

I'm quite frankly stumped because I find no source showing more than one plant, although each source might show it under a different name. Baja, can you find me a source acknowledging the existence of more than one plant?

Also, Baja, I should clear up a misconception. The photos in our dataspace species entries are not meant to be confined to the "wild" type. People add their photos to the species entry when they don't know the name of the cultivar. In that sense, all of the photos currently in the E. tirucalli entry do belong there. Any member who recognizes one of these photos as a specific cultivar can propose that the image be moved to the cultivar entry. This is easily done. Click on the photo to enlarge it, scroll down to the "Actions" block, click on "Move this image to another plant," type the name of the other plant in the box provided, and submit the proposal. When the proposal has been approved by an admin or a moderator, the image will be moved.

I will look but for the record, I have seen both plants side by side with my own eyes (and currently grow a pair of Firesticks). Now that I look around on the net I see the names are treated as interchangeable all across the web. What a nightmare. Compare these two pictures and you'll see there is a difference. They are representative of the two different plants. There is another picture of the first plant in the database so you can see what the rest of it looks like.




"Rosea" is red, fading to pink. "Firesticks" is orange, fading to yellow. My understanding of plant terms is that "Rosea" refers to a reddish color. There's no red in the Firesticks that I've seen. Maybe you can get red if you really stress them, or turn your camera up to 11, but normally they are orange, yellow, and green depending on how much light the plant is getting, and even within the same plant (center stems tend to be shaded more and thus more green), Firesticks is a very popular landscape plant in Southern California, readily available, easy to keep looking nice, does well with little water, does not get huge. Rosea is in contrast rather uncommon (I've only seen it once).

Thank you for the tip on how to move images, I did not know it was that easy. I have made some changes to the (mostly) wild type tirucalli listing and hopefully those will be helpful once they are approved. (For example, the plant is a tree not a groundcover.) Still learning the ropes here. Thank you for your patience.

Thanks, Baja, for checking. I'm also finding that they're treated as interchangeable. A reliable Website listing more than one cultivar is what we need, but I'm not finding one. I'm mostly finding this type of listing:

http://worldofsucculents.com/e...

Just as in our database, it lists 'Rosea' as the main cultivar name and includes the other two names as alternatives. It also provides a description allowing for no color distinctions for different cultivars: "Branch tips are orange, red, or pink. The color tends to fade closer to yellow in the summer, and becomes redder in the winter."

Please don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have. We all had to learn the ropes here (and are still learning the ropes here).

Thank you very much. It appears the concensus is that rosea is the same as Firesticks. Two different plants under the same name but I'm fine with that. Thank you for the quick response. I guess the best thing for me to do would be to leave a comment about my experience so that people are aware of the situation. If I had to title that page I would use "Firesticks" not "rosea" as the tag (just because most plants are not red under normal growing conditions) but I guess a scientific variety is preferable to the common name.

Onward!

Yes, please contribute a comment. We love plant comments! We sometimes have to resort to comment contests to encourage members to write more of them.

I'm sure glad that you folks are so good at this stuff. I just accept that I'm not but appreciate it in our most helpful members.

Karen

Baja_Costero said:Thank you very much. It appears the concensus is that rosea is the same as Firesticks. Two different plants under the same name but I'm fine with that. Thank you for the quick response. I guess the best thing for me to do would be to leave a comment about my experience so that people are aware of the situation. If I had to title that page I would use "Firesticks" not "rosea" as the tag (just because most plants are not red under normal growing conditions) but I guess a scientific variety is preferable to the common name.

Onward!

Sorry, Baja. I neglected to respond to this post. It's not a matter of the "scientific" nature of the name 'Rosea.' It's just that it's the cultivar name most often used by the different nurseries selling the plant and the informational sites listing the plant. As far as I know, the cultivar was never registered or patented, so we don't really know the official name. If everyone suddenly started calling it 'Firesticks' or 'Sticks on Fire,' we would do the same, and we'd include 'Rosea' only as an also-sold-as name. As long as all the names are listed in the entry, however, anyone searching for the plant by any of those names will be able to find it.

Incidentally, roses with "rosea" in their botanical names usually are pink, not red, so I guess the interpretation of the Latin word depends on the genus.

No, you're right, rosea is definitely pink (whether or not the plant is....).