Talk:Dacrycarpus dacrydioides/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 20:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Will take a stab at this one! (After you reviewed two of mine, probably time for me to review one of yours...) Be aware that I am very much not a botanist, so I will ask some naive questions. —Kusma (talk) 20:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, I sort of rushed this one. Dracophyllum 02:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Progress box and general comments

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Image licenses look mostly OK, but File:Palmerston Cooperage and Box Factory.jpg could use {{PD-New Zealand}} and {{PD-1996}} tags or something?

added pd nz

• No concerns with stability or neutrality.

More soon! —Kusma (talk) 22:11, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

• Caption of factory photo could explain better why it is relevant for the article. Other image captions are OK.

Changed to The Palmerston Cooperage and Box Factory was one of many factories used to produce boxes from kahikatea wood. The caption on manawatu heritage specifically says it used kahikatea wood.

• No OR or copyvio concerns.
• Broad in its coverage, not excessively detailed.
• Ref layout could be slightly improved, see below.
• Almost all sources are reliable (one MSc thesis needs checking, and the Maori culture sources are all a bit of colonial age).

An interesting and mostly well sourced article, but perhaps not fully polished yet. Will put on hold, but I don't think there is anything insurmountable in the comments below. —Kusma (talk) 22:41, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Content and prose review

• General question: How common is the name "white pine" for this tree? white pine is a redirect to a North American species, the white pine of the White Pine Treaty, something I came across while writing about a white pine disaster.

Not very, but unfortunately I can't find any sources on it other than that it exists.

OK, I was just wondering whether we need more hatnotes/disambiguation for the "white pine" name elsewhere.

• Lead: In traditional Māori culture it is an important source comma after culture?

done

• They also can support many smaller plants Here "they" seems to be "the seeds", called "them" just a sentence and a bit earlier.

Changed to it and its

• Description: you use both "50 to 65 m" and "1–2 m". Better to consistently spell it out or consistently use the dash?

– used

• The first sentence could be split into one talking about lifespan / maturity and one talking about dimensions.

split

• I would prefer "a diameter of 1–2 m" to "1–2 m through" but then, I am a mathematician and you may ignore me.
• Near the base of the tree the roots are comma? "Near the base of the tree, the roots are"

done

• three quarters (3/4) I think you can do without the number here, the text is enough.

rmved

• This change from opposite pairs to scales was isolated in one study not to the deficit of water higher up, but to low phosphorus levels. I don't quite understand what you are saying here. Why would low phosphorus levels lead to a difference between young and old trees, assuming both occur in the same place with the same low phosphorus level? And are there other studies that come to different conclusions?

This conclusion isn't really explained very well in the paper, I've removed this sentence.

• rectangle shaped rectangular?

done

• The fruit is highly modified with a yellow-orange fleshy receptacle, that is 2.5 to 6.5 mm long Is "highly modified" a technical term here and what does it mean? (Is it "the fruit is highly modified. it also has a yellow-orange receptacle" or "the fruit is modified. the modification is with a receptacle") Also, I would drop the comma.

The modification part is the fact that it has this receptacle structure.

• covered with a thin wax I would expect "a thin layer of wax" or "thinly covered with wax". the source has "glaucous bloom", which may be more precise but a lot harder to understand.

your phrasing is better, added. I have avoided using too many words which you have to look up just to read the text.

• The ß should be a β I think.

fixed

• which it was hypothesised make the fruit more striking and increased dispersal This is a bit convoluted and the grammar seems off. "It was hypothesised that this makes the fruit more striking [what does that mean?] and increases dispersal [of what?]" is what it seems like to me, but I don't quite understand.

reworded to The receptacles and seeds have been found to contain anthocyanins, rare in gymnosperms, which one 1988 paper suggested make the fruit as a whole more attractive to prospective animal dispersers.

I could also just leave out the evolutionary cause of the anthocyanins here.

(Striking: Arresting the attention and producing a vivid impression on the sight or the mind.)

• After reading the Banks quote, I thought Solander must have described it at some point. They did collect specimens and from this it seems Solander did describe it but never published (as usual with Banks/Solander...) This seems to claim that Solander called it Dacrydium cupressinum, which is a different species altogether now ... (feel free to ignore this comment, it is mostly here to satisfy my own curiosity and because I wanted to check whether my book on the botany of Cook's second voyage has anything useful to say about this tree; not much other than the catalogue above). The synonyms list in the infobox has "podocarpus thuioides" as a name associated with Solander, so there is probably more to be said about the history. Is there any name associated with the 1825 earlier record?

Will have a look Dracophyllum 05:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

• Common names: how common are these in everyday use, especially "white pine"? The red pine article says it is no longer commonly called "red pine".

None except kahikatea are used today. I can't get citations for either red pine or white pine being uncommon, though I've never heard them used except in old books.

• to which kahikatea is sister Is this botanist-speak or is "a sister species" better?

My reading of the cladogram is actually incorrect anyway. I could use the more in depth one here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2011.00381.x if you would like.

• Distribution and habitat: link the islands? Certainly link Stewart Island,

done

• Link montane? (Not in Cambridge dictionary: [1] so perhaps worth linking)

linked to montane habitats.

• It used to dominate a swamp forest type ... found this difficult to parse. You're kind of saying two things at once: there used to be lots of swamp forests but hardly any are left, and this tree was the dominant tree in those forests (and I can see that you are making sure not to paraphrase too closely). Can you disentangle this?

What you got out of it was what I was trying to say, does it need clarifying? I could include more detail of the composition but it differs a lot depending on where the forest occurs. Dracophyllum 06:15, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• Dispersal: Can you cut down the number of "also" in this section?

done

• Epiphytes: is there a reason why the Prumnopitys exigua makes a good tree to compare with? (I didn't quite understand why it is mentioned here).

Bolivian cloud forest is/has a reputation for being far more diverse than nz forests. Nothing in particular makes it a good example, just I can't say in general it's comparable really per WP:OR.

• Competition: the kahikatea has been found to require an open canopy in order to re-establish Can you say that in simpler terms? Do you mean young kahikatea only grow when there is enough sunlight? In any case, consider linking Canopy (biology).

Linked, paper doesn't mention light but that would be my inference.

• Because of the consistency of these events in South Westland however, many forested areas don't progress beyond regaining kahikatea and rimu, as other species, such as kāmahi, need the environment to improve before they can return. This seems more a general comment about the difficulty of re-establishing certain things than "competition"?

The difficulty of re-establishment has a lot to do with competition, no?

• Conservation: the first half of the section is about the opposite, and about uses for the tree as well as unsustainable deforestation. It is more "decimation and conservation".

I'm not sure what to call the section otherwise

ok

• Can you accelerate a prospect?
• Together this decimated much of the remaining forests in the North and South Islands and today it is confined As the tree is everywhere in NZ, I assume you are talking about the forests, so they are confined?

Well it could be either the tree or the forest, but I've changed it to they are.

• There are more grammar issues like that: protecting and fencing kahikatea forest forests? Reservation of stands does not protect it totally who is "it"? because the alluvial plains that they favour and who is "they"?

I have fixed the forest/forests things, but the ambiguity of it/they that I switch between is because kahikatea is both one species of tree and kahikatea trees in general is plural. There is no plural form. Dracophyllum 06:15, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• Is the box factory shown in the photograph one that used kahikatea wood?

Yes, the caption on manawatu heritage specifically said it did.

• Maori culture: it was far inferior to those made from tōtara shouldn't it be "they were far inferior"?

done

• Is the Maori proverb here to illustrate that the tree was known to Maori and that they used it as an example of a mighty tree?

I've changed it to a more illustrative proverb but yes.

• Is any of the Maori culture use still ongoing or is all of that 100 years ago? Ot is it "In traditional Maori culture"?

I'm sure some of these practises are still ongoing, the question is whether I can find sources confirming that. I could remove traditional from the lede because the distinction doesn't matter too much.

• Forgot the external links: only the first two work for me, the third says "not found" and the fourth isn't a PDF. The Gymnosperm database seems great in its coverage; is this not a RS or why don't you use this as a source (it does seem a bit personal)? The second one is your source number 2; does it need to be repeated as xlink?

The gymnosperm database is a bit iffy for RS I think. rmved the rest (they were on the article before I started working on it).

First reading done! —Kusma (talk) 22:04, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

A notable urban remnant is Riccarton Bush. It’s there because its original owner, John Deans, asked his wife to protect the forest while he was on his death bed. Formal protection came decades later. It’s worth mentioning this in the conservation section as kahikatea are otherwise gone from the Canterbury Plains. Schwede66 19:22, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Added @Schwede66. Dracophyllum 01:54, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Source checks and formatting

Numbering as in Special:Permalink/1097066258.

• One use of 2 checks out.
• 4 is an MSc thesis, usually not considered a reliable source. (I would suggest not to cite some of the MSc theses I had to mark over the last couple of years).

I use it only to make basically common sense statements. Dracophyllum 08:07, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

You should still try to see whether you can cite something less rule-breaking. Wilcox herself cites another MSc thesis that I didn't try to track down (which may have better sources), this and the predecessor of this for the stuff near "grazing", the only time you rely on her as your only source. If everything you need is also elsewhere but you'd like to recommend this thesis, perhaps put it as further reading. —Kusma (talk) 14:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• 9 checks out
• 11: give full name of the author and use |authorlink=Joseph Banks. Bibliographic data is incomplete (publisher?) you could use OCLC, which is [2] for print and [3] for online.

done, used the info on website

• 16 gives a "URL status" CS1 maintenance message and the URL seems to be a redirect. Content checks out.

very old website that has just been redone I think

Why not use the bibliographic data for the new website at [4]?

• 20 and possibly others: Link New Zealand Journal of Ecology. (Check other journals for link opportunities)

done

• 27: Use checks out. Link Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand and use the author's name (Maggy Wassilieff).

done

• 32 and 33: Link William Colenso and fix last and first name order.

done

• 18 has an Internet Archive via, but 34 doesn't. Could be more consistent.

done

• Maori culture stuff is all from the 19th century; is there no newer scholarship?

I've added an intro para using some more modern scholarship, but even then the sources it uses and references are the same ones I do in the section. It just makes it more transparent to have exactly who recorded what. Dracophyllum 06:17, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• 33, 37: please provide page numbers for the specific claims.

done

Responded

@Kusma: Pretty sure I've covered everything, if you want to take another look. Dracophyllum 06:19, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I want to take another look. I will need to read through everything again. I may have a few more stylistic comments and I am still not happy with the MSc thesis (shouldn't be all that hard to replace by RS). On the plus side, I found Richard's original description; his Essai is not a separate publication, but part of a massive collection about Jules Dumont d'Urville's voyage with the Astrolabe. (The Essai is a bit hard to find because I've seen it cited as if it were a separate book). Probably will manage to read again within 24 hours. —Kusma (talk) 21:26, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I think I've managed to replace it with this: https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/2278.pdf Dracophyllum 04:27, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Second reading

Looks much better, I found almost nothing to complain about!

• I've linked de Laubenfels, who was only linked through his author abbreviation so far.
• Lead: it is an important source of timber for the building of waka and tools "building of ... tools" doesn't sound good to me, "building of waka and making of tools"? or "timber for tools and for building waka"?

done

• Description: Turned more "to"s into dashes, please check.

checked

• Taxonomy: I would suggest to cite also the original description that I linked to above, but it is optional.

done

• New source 3 should have proper bibliographic data (published 23 Jan, 2014 01:01 AM, author Nigel Benson).

done

• I've made a few other edits, please double check. Could you fix the new reference, then we'll be done?

Ping Dracophyllum. —Kusma (talk) 16:24, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Done @Kusma: Dracophyllum 22:41, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Nice work, promoting. —Kusma (talk) 06:06, 21 July 2022 (UTC)