Dandelions - mistakes in the field

Dandelions are ubiquitous plants, common in fields and gardens, and also both beloved and hated.  We love their fluffy fruiting heads with their wind-blown small parachute seeds.  It is probably one of the most well-known plants in society (except for some common ones that we grow on purpose).

However, not only dandelions have these types of fruits, and some of the popular photos of dandelions are actually other species. The most common mix-up is with Tragopogon species, goat beards. Both are members of the sunflower family, the Asteraceae.  How do you tell them apart?

Dandelion (Taraxacum)
from Lindman's flora, public domain.

The common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) has:

• yellow flowers (each head have many tiny, tiny flowers)
• leaves that are lobed with large teeth
• leaves in a rosette near the ground, no leaves on the flower stalk
• fruiting heads about 3-5 cm in diameter (up to 2 inches)
• the green bracts under the flowering  head are relatively short, and they barely just reach the full radius of the fruiting head.
• there are more seeds in each head

Note the difference in the leaves and bracts to the leaves of goat's beard.

In the sunflower family, each seed is also a fruit.  So a sunflower seed is a little 1-seeded nut.



Goatbeards (Tragopogon sp. ) have:

Goatsbeard (Tragopogon),
from Thomé (1885), public domain

• yellow or purple flowers (each head have many tiny, tiny flowers)
• leaves that do not have lobes, and are very long and narrow ending in a long sharp point
• leaves are present on the flower stalk
• fruiting heads usually over 5 cm (over 2 inches)
• the green bracts under the flowering  head are long, reaching beyond the full radius of the expanded fruiting head
• you can blow these seeds away too
• Other names for these plants are salsify and goat's beard. 

Below are some examples of stock photos that are sold as dandelion photos but actually are other species. Most photos marked as dandelions are correct, but a few are not. If you spend $40 and upwards on stock photos, I think you should assume you get the right species, don't you?

istockphoto for sale by user sunnybeach, marked as dandelion but showing goatsbeard.
Note the two long bracts hanging down from the fruiting head near the stem.
(Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com, istockphoto image # 171660950.)

Another stockphoto, this time from Getty images, also showing goatsbeard (note long narrow and non-dented leaves). (Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com, gettyimages photo # 128072731)

More examples on this Pinterest board: 'Dandelions' that are not real dandelions.

The species names of citrus - a sweet, sour, and sticky mess

Everybody knows the great and tasty citrus fruits - lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, tangerine, and clementine, and maybe even the more rare bergamot, pomelo, tangelo, kumquat, yuzu, and tangelo.

Various slices of citrus fruits.  (Image from USDA, public domain.)

Since ancient times these plants have been cultivated, domesticated, and used by humans, and hybridization (on purpose or accidental) have created new hybrids. Citrus plants really do like to hybridize and since many of these hybridization and domestication events happened in the past it has been really hard to figure out these questions:
1) What is a species? (biological boundaries and evolution)
2) What is a hybrid? (= cross between two species, biology, evolution, and genetics)
3) What are the parent species of a hybrid? (genetics)
4) What is the correct scientific name for a species or a hybrid? (scientific nomenclature)

With the help of Dr. David Mabberley, an expert on the genus Citrus, I tried to sort this out since so many scientific names for citrus used on beauty and body products are inconsistent and sometimes flat out wrong and need to be updated. Please note that this is a work in progress for science, and that more research is needed to clarify relationships further.  Citrus relationships are a very messy business, indeed. So, here is the most up-to-date information, as far as I can discern.

This is a summary picture of the current hypotheses of the relationships of the most common species and hybrids of Citrus:

Origins and scientific names for the most commonly cultivated citrus fruits. 
Based on data from D.J. Mabberley's publications.

In botanical taxonomy a species (*) can only have one current and unique scientific name.  Other names are synonyms and their use should be phased out, and only be listed as synonyms in publications. This is to ease the communication and understanding in botany, horticulture, ethnobotany, and agriculture. We should all know what we talk about and we should talk about the same thing when we use a species name, right?
(* except for some fungi, but the mycologists are sorting that out now too, slowly. )

Hybrids either get their parents' names with an 'x' in between parent names (mother listed first), or a brand new species epithet preceded by a 'x'.  So, in the figure above, the name for orange can be listed as Citrus maxima x Citrus reticulata, or Citrus x aurantium.  You often see the name Citrus sinensis or Citrus x sinensis for oranges, but those are synonym names that should not be used anymore.

The group Citrus x aurantium includes a large array of different cultivars and varieties, such as orange, tangor, grapefruit, bitter orange, clementine and tangelo.  This is because the initial hybrids where then back-crossed to different parents, so Citrus x aurantium is really a large hybrid complex. 

So, what are then the most up to date names for cultivated and commercial citrus fruits? Here they are:

Common name	Current scientific name	Common inaccurate botanical and ingredient names
bergamot	Citrus × limon	Citrus aurantium var. bergamia, Citrus bergamia
bitter orange	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus amara, Citrus aurantium ssp. amara, Citrus iyo
cedrat	Citrus reticulata	Citrus x reticulata
citron	Citrus medica	Citrus medica var. acida
clementine	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus clementina
grapefruit	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus paradisi, Citrus × paradisi
kaffir lime (now called makrut lime)	Citrus hystrix
kumquat	Citrus japonica
lemon	Citrus × limon	Citrus limon, Citrus medica var. limon
lime	Citrus × aurantiifolia	Citrus aurantifolia
makrut lime	Citrus hystrix
mandarin	Citrus reticulata	Citrus x reticulata
orange	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus aurantium, Citrus aurantium var. sinensis, Citrus sinensis, Citrus × sinensis
pomelo	Citrus maxima	Citrus grandis
satsuma	Citrus reticulata	Citrus unshiu
Tahiti lime (seedless)	Citrus x latifolia
tangelo	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus tangelo
tangerine	Citrus reticulata	Citrus x reticulata,  Citrus × tangerina
tangor	Citrus × aurantium	Citrus nobilis, Citrus x nobilis
yuzu	Citrus × junos	Citrus junos

Many of the commercial, non-commercial, government or non-profit databases and publications do not use these updated names.  They are often lagging behind and changing names take time.

Want to read more about the delicious history and taxonomy of citrus plants?  Try these scientific papers if you want something more substantial than Wikipedia. 

Mabberley, D. J. 1997. A classification for edible Citrus (Rutaceae). Telopea 7: 167-172.

Mabberley, D. J. 2004. Citrus(Rutaceae): A review of recent advances in etymology, systematics, and medical applications. Blumea 49: 481-498 

 Zhang, D. & D. J. Mabberley.  Citrus in Flora of China. [Lots of interesting information here!]

Li, X., R. Xie, Z. Lu, & Z. Zhou. 2010. The origin of cultivated Citrus as inferred from internal transcribed spacer and chloroplast DNA sequence and Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism fingerprints. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 135: 341-350. [Note - some of their results do not agree with the parent hypotheses presented above.]

(Many thanks to Dr. David J. Mabberley for expert help and information for this post.)

Beware of the wronged coconuts

Coconut palms are the quintessential symbol of tropical paradise. Spindly, tall trees with large feathery leaves wisp in tropical breezes on tropical beaches of white sand, under blue sky and by turquoise water.

Beach in Hawaii with coconut palm tree.
(cc) anda (: on Flickr.

Up in the crown of the palm, a few coconuts are usually hanging, ready to fall down on you at any moment.  If they do, and they don't hit you, with some work you can get to the delicious inside of the coconut. (As a side note, when you consume the white parts inside, you eat or drink palm endosperm. In case you didn't know. )

This staple food plant is spread all over the tropics, and a well-known plant in many cultures, even urban cities of today far from tropical beaches.  It is a plant that is easy to identify, delicious, and quite symbolic for us.  Therefore, it is quite strange that in popular culture so many illustrators get this plant wrong.  Really wrong. OK, as an illustrator you can simplify a lot, that is fine, but that is not the same as changing the properties of a plant and create something that doesn't exist.

First, this is how a coconut plant looks like:

Coconut palm, Cocos nucifera (Arecaceae)
From Köhler's Medicinal-Pflanzen, public domain (Wikipedia)

• Note the tall, skinny stem of even thickness, with horizontal leaf scars on it.
• Note the big fruits (coconuts), aggregated close to the trunk at the top.
• Note the leaves, in a rosette at the top, 
• Note that each leaf is divided into tiny, tiny leaflets that are arranged like a feather along a midrib.  It it the midrib, the vein along the center, that holds together the leaf. Each leaf can be very long, up to 5 meters (15 feet) at least and all the little leaflets are loose from each other except at the midrib of the leaf.

Here is a closeup of a coconut leaf, showing many leaflets along a midrib:

Coconut leaf showing many leaflets connected along the midrib.

(cc) Azeem Azeez on Flickr.

So, how do some of  the clipart masters and popular illustrators show coconut palms?  

A quick Google search results in a variety of morphologies, most of them correct:

Screenshot of Google image search 'coconut palm clipart free',
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

 but a few hits that look like this:

"Palm Tree Clipart Image: Tropical Coconut Palm Tree Icon"
Image courtesy of pamsclipart.com

Coconut tree design
(cc) SweetClipArt.com

Screenshot from 123RF.com, a stockphoto website showing 'palm clip-art'.
(c) 123RF.com, fair use.

Screenshot of logos.co, showing clipart with 'double coconut palm tree island and sun'.
(c) Hit Toon, fair use.

Do you see the problems here?  Hint - stems and leaves.

Coconut leaves are finely divided into small thin and long segments arranged along a midrib, like a feather.  But, these ones above have whole, undivided leaves, which sometimes are slightly lobed.  In fact, some of these leaves look more like banana leaves.

The stems should be evenly thick, and they should have horizontal, evenly distributed leaf scars towards the top of the tree trunk.  These have a variety of stem patterns and shapes.

One thing they get right, the placement of the coconuts.  But you wonder why are there nearly always three coconuts in a tree, don't you?

So, shouldn't illustrators have the freedom to simplify, improvise, and design their own plants?  Sure.  But if you use one of these examples, then realize that the adults and kids that see these images will think that this is how a coconut palm looks like, when in reality, that is not true.  So, even if these images are fine and pretty as clip art and design pieces, they are still very botanically inaccurate.

Screenshot of Google image search 'dog clipart free',
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

Illustrators often simplify drawings of dogs, elephants and chickens too, but the characteristic features are always there, trunk, wagging tail, 4 legs, beak and feathers,. and so on.  To change the features that are characteristics for the coconut palm changes the species, it changes what you want to illustrate into an imaginary plant. It is like drawing a dog with a beak - we would complain that it no longer was a dog.  Many people don't realize that these palm drawings are incorrect, because we have lost a lot of botanical knowledge in our societies.  We all still know how a dog looks like though!

Aveda: The lipstick plant

The plant Bixa orellana (family Bixaceae) is commonly called 'lipstick plant' and it is the plant we get the red coloring annato and achiote from.  It is a tropical tree, and the red dye comes from the seeds.

It is included in Aveda's online ingredient list with a correct photo and description, but it listed with the wrong genus name: Bixz.

Annatto from Aveda's website, screenshot.