I'm new here, so forgive me for my ignorance but I couldn't really find guidelines or a "style guide" for the database entries. I was wondering what the guidelines should be for proposing merges and such are. From the few minor edits I have proposed, I've learned a little on what is and isn't accepted, but rather than try to learn by trial and error, I thought I'd ask first.

For example when I first found this interesting "weed" with spines, yellow milky sap, and a white flower growing in the bare ground of the neighborhood where our homes were being built, I decided to do some research and found that it was actually a wildflower called Prickly Poppy. Looking here, I found multiple entries--some with only a line or two of general info. Rather than just going by what I think I know to suggest merges, what should we use as supporting documentation? While I like sites like www.theplantlist.org, it's certainly not a de facto source. Even the USDA site can have some inconsistencies with other sources.

So without knowing what this database prefers, below would be my proposed changes and why. Please let me know whether these do or don't make sense:

Prickly Poppy (Argemone albiflora subsp. albiflora) - merge with/synonym of Plant ID: 80040

Prickly Poppy (Argemone squarrosa subsp. squarrosa) - merge with/synonym of Plant ID: 80049

Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) - so no recommendations, but I take a lot of exceptions of the common names, based on what I've learned since this is the type that we should have around here. I would say that the common names are either Crested Prickly Poppy or Prickly Proppy/Pricklypoppy. In my opinion, the other common names belong to other species of the plant. However, I suppose people will get the names confused easily between all the species, so technically it could commonly be called all these names...

Originally I had a lot more suggestions for merging subspecies, but I definitely don't know enough in this area to say what should and shouldn't be merged.

Any thoughts or guidance is greatly appreciated as I'd like to be able to contribute to the integrity of this resource, but am not quite sure how in some ways.

We primarily use the Catalogue of Life as our source.

http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

It shows Argemone albiflora subsp. albiflora and Argemone squarrosa subsp. squarrosa as accepted names, so we would not merge them with other entries.

The Plant List is not a credible source. It was last updated in 2012, whereas the Catalogue of Life is updated regularly.

The best course of action if you suspect an entry should be merged, edited, or deleted is to start a new thread in this forum, explaining the reasons, as you just did.

Warm welcome GoCart - way to jump right in. If you are actively researching a plant and find an entry with (as noted above) very little content - feel free to propose updates to the plant data. That is helpful for everyone, and adds to the database. If you have the actual plant in your yard (or access to it), uploading photos is quite easy and I encourage you to think beyond the bloom - there are several galleries for each plant - whole plant, foliage, stem, seed pod, emerging growth, etc. The more photos at different stages is quite helpful when folks are trying to ID a plant or simply researching whether it might be a good fit for their garden.

Thank you very much for the information and welcome. As I mentioned, I'd like to help with the little bit of knowledge that I have spent time researching, but definitely don't want to cause more trouble than it's worth for the admins.

This bit of guidance should help a lot for me being able to suggest meaningful edits and information instead of simply whatever I "feel" is correct :lol:

Eventually, I plan to submit plant performance reports, but that's assuming that I can keep them alive for a few years