Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions

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See Category:Flora by distribution categories that follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. The following proposals and scheme are the result of a project to have our flora geographic categories follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions.

Using the categorization hierarchy

See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Plants/Template#Categories for advice: "Try to limit the number of categories with common sense and judicious use of regional categories: a species found across the continental U.S. and Canada except for two or three states/provinces is still accurately put simply in Category:Flora of Canada and Category:Flora of the United States."

If a species has a wide distribution that approximately matches the boundary of the largest scale geographic categories (e.g. continent or larger countries), then place it only in those top level geography categories and exclude it from child categories of those.
If a species has a more limited distribution but is still best described by regional boundaries (e.g. "Flora of Northern Europe" or "Flora of the Southeastern United States"), then place it only in those regional geography categories and exclude it from child categories of those. However, if the distribution extends just beyond the regional category's demarcation, a few additional categories may be required (e.g. some species occur in the Southeastern United States but also occur in Texas, so it would be categorized in both the regional Southeastern United States category and the Flora of Texas category).
If a species' distribution doesn't sufficiently match a regional category's boundary either because it is in too few of its subdivisions (states or small countries) or it straddles the boundary between two regional categories (e.g. a species present in a few countries in southern Northern Europe and northern Southwestern Europe and cannot accurately be described as being a member of either without breaking it down into just the countries it is found in), then choose the categories that are among the finest scale (states, provinces, and smaller countries. Species endemic to a state, province, or smaller country (those not subdivided) should only be categorized in these but the finest scale of categories is not restricted to endemic species.

What taxa do I include in these categories?

Each category should describe its circumscription and also note that it only includes flora that are native (not naturalized, introduced, or invasive) in that region. Taxa of the lowest rank are always included (species, subspecies, varieties). Higher taxa are included only if endemic (for example, a genus endemic to Western Australia could have the genus article itself included in that category).

Proposals

Europe

Category:Flora of Greenland and Category:Flora of the Faroe Islands will not be subcategories of Category:Flora of Denmark (political associations, not geographic) Done
Category:Flora of Subarctic Europe will be deleted as it doesn't fit the WGSRPD.
Category:Flora of islands of the Atlantic Ocean will be deleted as it doesn't fit the WGSRPD.
Category:Flora of the Isles of Scilly, Category:Flora of Cornwall will be upmerged to Category:Flora of Great Britain -- perhaps we can deviate from the WGSRPD here and allow the subcategories Category:Flora of England, Category:Flora of Scotland, and Category:Flora of Wales.
Category:Flora of the British Isles would be deleted. Or retained? I can see arguments for both, although the WGSRPD doesn't use it.
Category:Flora of Svalbard will not be a subcategory of Category:Flora of Norway (political association rather than geographic) Done
Category:Flora of the Alps would be deleted.
The WGSRPD uses a parent category (Czechoslovakia) for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which we don't need to use.
Category:Flora of the Mediterranean would be deleted as it doesn't fit with the WGSRPD. Same goes for Category:Plants of Mediterranean climate and Category:Matorral shrubland.
Category:Flora of the Pyrenees would be deleted.
The WGSRPD uses Category:Flora of Yugoslavia as a parent category for the region and then subcategories for all the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Done
What do we do about Category:Plants by climate? And Category:Floristic regions?
Category:Flora of the Iberian Peninsula would be deleted. Done
Category:Flora of Macaronesia would be shifted to the Flora of Africa instead of the Flora of Europe. Done

Africa

Upmerge Category:Flora of Maghreb to Category:Flora of North Africa
Upmerge Category:Flora of the Zanzibar Archipelago to Category:Flora of Tanzania -- WGSRPD recognizes Zanzibar as a subordinate of Tanzania but doesn't recognize it as an appropriate subcategory.
Disassemble Category:Flora of the Sahara
Disassemble Category:Flora of Tropical Africa
Disassemble Category:Flora of West Africa
Disassemble Category:Flora of East Africa
Disassemble Category:Flora of Congo as vague and sort species to Republic of the Congo or Democratic Republic of the Congo. Upmerge to region if warranted. Done
Disassemble Category:Flora of the islands of the Atlantic Ocean Done
Remove species from Category:Afromontane
Not sure what to do with Category:Afrotropic ecozone flora -- is this redundant to the flora categories?
Delete Category:Creepers of South Africa -- seems to be a category intersection that's unnecessary.

Temperate Asia

Upmerge Category:Flora of the Levant to Category:Flora of Western Asia
Disassemble Category:Flora of the Middle East into Category:Flora of Western Asia and Category:Flora of the Arabian Peninsula

Tropical Asia

Disassemble Category:Flora of the Himalayas into appropriate categories as we already have Category:Flora of East Himalaya and Category:Flora of West Himalaya
Disassemble Category:Flora of Indonesia and Category:Flora of Malaysia -- these are based on political alliances instead of geography; realign them to flora of Papuasia and Malesia.
Upmerge Category:Flora of New Britain to Category:Flora of the Bismarck Archipelago as even though the island is politically affiliated with Papua New Guinea, it is biogeographically allied with the Bismarck Archipelago. Done