Thursday, May 14, 2015

Improving the sundew pages on Wikipedia

It's been an occasion project of mine to edit and create pages for various sundew species on Wikipedia. Today, in a fit of industriousness, I started new pages for the following species:

Drosera barbigera

Drosera barbigera.
I love the shape of this species.
Drosera paleacea

Drosera paleacea.
Tiny gems!
Drosera sargentii

Drosera sargentii.
This species has a very particular character that I enjoy.
Drosera silvicola

Drosera silvicola.
This one was easier to see when I cropped it for Wikipedia.

We're fortunate that some Germans have put a lot of work into their Australian sundew pages, and have generated distribution maps (such as this one for D. barbigera) for all of the pygmies and many of the tuberous species. Really, the German Wikipedia puts the English Wikipedia to shame when it comes to sundews. While they don't have pages for all the species, they have a lot more than we do (including every pygmy). And while our pages are often little stubs (including those I just made today), theirs are filled out with information. It makes me wish I knew German.

I intend to put more work into these as my pygmies get larger and I'm able to take better photos. Maybe someday I'll get Allan Lowrie's 3-volume Carnivorous Plants of Australia and be able to fill in more information too.

If you've never tried out working with Wikipedia it's not too hard – they've introduced a number of wizards that make it easier to upload files and create pages, which is cool. We've got to catch up to those Germans.

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