Pinellia, weedy plants, and the wiki

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sat, 17 Jul 2004 07:16:26 PDT
Dear Paul and all,

It's a good point that you and Jim Waddick made in defense of Pinellia that 
what is a weedy plant one place may not be a weedy plant some place else. I 
remember a number of years ago complaining about some of my weeds and 
someone from Arizona wrote me to send my weeds to her as she doubted they'd 
be weeds in the desert.

It also seemed a bit strange that after the USDA learned that some species 
of Homeria (now Moraea) had become weeds in Australia that they were not 
allowing Jim Duggan in California to send any of the species he was selling 
out of state. He couldn't send them to places where they couldn't possibly 
grow, much less be a weed, but could sell them in California where in some 
places they could naturalize.

Although our pbs wiki started out as a place people on our list could post 
pictures of plants they were growing to illustrate points they were making 
on the list so we could ban attachments and avoid the down load/virus 
problems for everybody, it has become much more as it evolved. Each genus 
page on the Photographs and Information page provides both when our members 
are kind enough to include both. The wiki is easy to edit and improve by 
adding more information. I encourage people to do so if they see something 
is misspelled, wrongly named, or little information is provided about it 
and it is a plant they know and grow and could tell people about. There 
doesn't have to be a picture to write about a species even. The picture can 
be added later when someone has it to add. If the name is wrong, you should 
write me, Jay Yourch, Mark Wilcox, or Mark McDonough so we can rename any 
jpg files too, but anyone can change the name in the text. I routinely 
monitor the recent changes as I am sure some of the administrators do too 
just to make sure there isn't anything added that shouldn't be so don't 
worry about making a mistake.

It was good of Jim McKenney to start a page for Pinellia. I have already 
edited it adding links to the Photographs And Information page. Paul, you 
can edit it too and add a few sentences about your experiences in 
Australia. Wikis were created so everyone could participate easily.

Mary Sue


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