Dear New York Times, when will you start to care about taxonomic accuracy?

As a subscriber and frequent reader of The New York Times, it surprises and depresses me greatly that not more care is taken in checking facts and accuracy when it comes to scientific names of organisms and how these are formatted and presented.  Many of the problems and inaccuracies that we see in publications, media, and in web content are perpetuated by The New York Times, a publication that prides themselves in correcting any factual error, however how small.  But for taxonomic errors, they do not.  There are exceptions of course, such as Carl Zimmer's writing, but overall a general taxonomic fact checking is lacking, especially outside the Science section.

The main problems within biological taxonomy are:

1. Non-capitalizations of scientific family names
2. Capitalization of  species names
3. Choosing to not format species and genus names in italics
4. Wrong names for parts of organisms
5. Images of the wrong species or other inaccurate image data

Lets dig into the details:

1. Non-capitalizations of scientific names of rank above species (orders, families, genera, etc.)

A the recent article in the Travel Section about the island of Runmarö in the Baltic archipelago featured entomologist Fredrik Sjöberg (NYT Sept 4, by Stephen Heyman). In the article, his study group, the hoverfly family Syrphidae, is consistently and erroneously written as syrphidae.

"Fredrik is exclusively interested in this family of insects, syrphidae, which is distinguished by an uncommon flair for disguise."

Oh, in case you wonder how a wonderful Syrphidae looks like (since the article doesn't show one), here is one:

Unknown species of a hoverfly of the insect family Syrphidae, from New Jersey, USA. 
(PS. E-mail me if you know the species, I'd love to know. UPDATE: This is probably Eristalis transversa)
Creative Commons photo by Lena Struwe. (source)

Spelling Syrphidae as syrphidae is like spelling the entomologist's name as fredrik sjöberg, writing Oprah as oprah, or New York City as new york city.  There are a few exceptions of people that choose to spell their names without capitalizations, like bell hooks. But in the science world, nobody ever spells this without capitalization. Capitalization is not optional for the scientific names for families, orders, and other higher ranks of larger groups of organisms.  Why would NYT choose not to follow the scientific set standard?

The International Code for Zoological Nomenclature has very good, clear advice for how taxonomic names should appear in popular media, see this link.

(Of course, NYT refuses to put in the umlauts from foreign languages as well, but that is a separate matter. It is Sjöberg, not Sjoberg, and Runmarö, not Runmaro.  The meaning of the words change in Swedish if you remove the umlauts, so good luck googling some of these names :) . Wikipedia, on the other hand, correctly presents the words with umlauts, see for example Tomas Tranströmer, which NYT links to in the article above.)

2. Capitalization of species names
Just a few days ago a new hominid species was published, an astonishing and exciting find.  New York Times featured this prominently (Sept 10, 2015, in an article by John Noble Wilford): 

Headline of Homo naledi story in The New York Times.
Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com.(link)

The new species of the genus Homo (our own genus), is called Homo naledi, but The New York Times capitalizes the word naledi in the title (presumably due to their editorial style using Title Case capitalization in headings). In the text of the article, the name is written as "Homo naledi" (with correct capitalization) throughout. The problem here is of course that the readers will think that the new species is called Homo Naledi, not Homo naledi (its true name), if they just see the title.

PBS' NOVA series does it better: " Homo naledi, Superhenge, and Humankind: NOVA Next Week in Review", so of course the species epithet can be in lower case letters even when using Title Case, but that means that you need to know something about taxonomic names.

For genus names, and for a species (which has a genus name and a species epithet, like Homo naledi) there is also really no choice in capitalization. According to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature:

"Following the principle of binominal names (i.e. composed of two names) a species name is a combination of genus name and species name. The genus name comes first, and must start with a capital letter, the species name second, with a lower case letter (Art. 28; Appendix B6). This shows the hierarchy between genus and species; a genus may include a number of different species." (link) (my bolding)

3. Choosing to not format species and genus names in italics
It is recommended to put at least genus and species names in italics, and in scientific literature this is nearly always done and for a good reason.  This is a lot easier today when books, magazines and newspapers are no longer typeset, but run on digital presses or completely provided as online documents.

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature justifies this:

"In order to denote a clear distinction between scientific names of organisms and designations in common language, scientific names of all ranks should appear in the same distinctive, and preferably italic, type." (link)

New York Times article about a new snail species, Rissoella morrocoyensis, showing the name without italics. Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com. (link)

As far as I can tell The New York Times never put any species names in italics. However, they do use italics for other items in the papers, such as identification lines on published letters to the editor (see question and explanation here), so it is not a technical decision but an editorial one. To highlight the value of taxonomy and science, and to clarify the proper use of taxonomic names for organisms, it is highly recommended to put all species names in italics when you can.

4. Wrong names for parts of organisms

Article about opium poppy harvest in Mexico in The New York Times.
Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com. (link)

"Though shy, she perks up when describing her craft: the delicate slits to the bulb, the patient scraping of the gum, earning in one day more than her parents do in a week." (link)

Bulbs grow in the ground (usually), they formed by fleshy leaves on a very short stem at the base of a plant (Wikipedia has a good description). What is harvested on the opium poppies is the gummy sap that is oozing out of the fruits, the capsules, when cut.  In the printed version, one photo caption by New York Times also used the word 'pods', which has no precise botanical meaning. Would you call the tail of an elephant its trunk?  This is the same kind of mistake, and it is a ridiculous one to botanists and gardeners and generally educated people.

5. Images of the wrong species or other inaccurate image data
An earlier post on this blog featured the mistakes published in the review of the world-class foraging restaurant NOMA in Copenhagen (July 6, 2010, article by Franz Bruni).  The New York Times was notified that one of their photos of pine cones was incorrectly described as 'thuja cone', and with thuja being a toxic species, this was a mistake that certainly should have been corrected.  It was not.  It still features a pine cone listed as a thuja cone (see screenshot from today below). Not only are these two different species, they are also different genera and in different families.  I doubt that Rene Redzepi serves his guests potentially toxic thuja cones. 

The slide show accompanying the article about the NOMA restaurant features a pine cone in the photo, but it is described as a Thuja cone. Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com  (link)

Why does taxonomic accuracy matter?
It is pretty simple. 

"In all cultures, taxonomic classification means survival. 'The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right name.' " E. O. Wilson

And that right name is the name of the species, the family, the organism's part, and so on.  We are 100% dependent on other species for our survival and future, and the taxonomic sciences make it possible to study these, be it microbes, parasitic diseases, edible plants, or pollinating insects.

The essay by Helen MacDonald in The New York Times (June 19, 2015) fantastically describes what happens when you can put words to the world around you, in this case using field guides.  You start to see things, remember things, care about things, and love things, and these things, be it forests, flowers, bugs or birds, are things that matters to humanity on large as well as personal scales. Names matter a lot.

The New York Times has a great opportunity to be a model and leader in public education about biodiversity and taxonomy among newspaper media.  It is not that hard, and it is something that is desperately needed in the US. Spell and format the scientific names correctly, actually describe what a hoverfly is in an travel article, do not publish an image saying a toxic plant is edible confusing foragers and foodies, know what plant part you talk about, and so on... Start being the standard for other media in the field, please.

I think that the sloppiness shown in The New York Times when it comes to morphology and species taxonomy would never be accepted when it comes to historical facts and names related to people.  For scientific facts this doesn't seem to matter to the editors, since fact-checking is lacking and pointed out errors persist and are not even corrected.

It would be very easy for The New York Times to contact a couple of biologists well-versed in taxonomy and systematics within their fields, hire them to be on call, and have them fact check all articles mentioning or showing species and organisms, regardless of newspaper section.  Scientific accuracy is of course needed in areas like travel, food, agriculture, and political news too; species do not stop to exist outside of the Science section.

References:
"What’s in a name? Scientific names for animals in popular writing" (ICZN)
International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN)
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)

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!

Celery - stems, stalks, or sticks?

Celery is a vegetable and plant that is prominent in American cooking, and infuses both cooked and raw dishes with its very special flavor.  When I arrived in America I couldn't believe how much celery was added to tuna salads, soups, stews, and on plates with peanut butter.  Back in Sweden I don't think we ever had celery in our fridge, and I can't think of one Swedish traditional recipe that has celery in it.  So, it is a very common plant and food ingredient here in the US and many, many other cuisines, but it is not totally omnipresent.

You would think people might like to  know what part of the plant they eat, right? Well, that becomes a problem for celery.  Many, many times there is big confusion about what those crunchy green celery sticks (also called 'ribs') are.

 First, here is the species in question, a celery plant.

Celery plant (Apium graveolens, Apiaceae)
Illustration (public domain) from Thomé (1885), Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (link)

And here, celery from a store.

Celery ribs from a supermarket.
(cc) Daniel James on Flickr (link)

And here, the celery 'stick', the part that we eat, cut up into small, crunchy pieces. 

Cut up celery sticks.
(cc) Dey on Flickr (link)

So, what part of the plant is this celery 'stick' really?  What are our options?  Well, plants have leaves, flowers, fruits, stems (branches, shoots, stalks), petiole (leaf stalk), pedicel (flower stalk), roots, tubers, and so on.  These are the botanical names we use for plant parts. All of these can be green, but mostly leaves, stalks, and stems are green.

On the internet you can find answers to everything. So, lets begin:

Yahoo Answers: 
"Both the stem and the leaves of a celery plant are eaten, but the long crunch part many people put peanut butter on is the stem" [this was voted the best answer on "Is celery a stem or leaves?"] 

Teacher's guide from New York Agriculture in the Classroom.com:
"Celery we eat is the stem of the plant."

Wikipedia:
"Celery is used around the world as a vegetable for the crisp petiole (leaf stalk)."

Wiki.answers.com:
"Is a celery stalk a stem?"
Answer: "yes so is rubarb"

Ask.com:
"Is celery a stem?"
Answer: "No celery is a vegetable. Celery has a stem. A single celery plant has lots of stems actually. Most plants and trees have stems which are sometimes referred to as stalks."

Are you confused yet?  Here are some more variations:

GoodFood on BBC:
"A collection of long, thick, juicy stalks around a central, tender heart"

The Cook's Thesaurus lists celery as a 'Stalk Vegetable'. 

Seattle Times, Food & Wine section:
"By most definitions, a whole head of celery is a stalk and a single "stick" from the stalk is a rib. Some dictionaries use the accurate but clunky term "leafstalk" for a single rib."

Well, the confusion is total.  The 'celery rib' that we cut off the plant and chop up or put peanut butter on is, based on internet facts, a stem, stalk, leafstalk, and petiole, all at the same time.  This is not possible. It is one thing and one thing only.

Look at the plant.  At the top of your rib or stick are some leaves (unless you have cut them off, they were there before).  Only leaves.  There are no flowers, no growing part (with buds) that can lead to a stem that grows taller and taller, no fruits, no roots.  At the bottom of the rib is a white area and then a broadened base. You can easily break of a rib from the rest of the plant in your hand. 

Celery, as you buy it in the stores.
(cc) Popolon on Wikimedia (link)

Leaves are attached to stems and branches.  Where is the stem on the celery?  It is that small, disk-shaped woody part in the center of the plant.  The roots have been cut off, so you no longer see them.  But how does celery grow bigger and taller?  When the plant is old enough it will shoot up one stem in the center of the leaves, and that stem will then grow taller than the leaves around it, have smaller leaves on it, and eventually flower and set seed high above the leaves at the base. Look at the first picture on this blogpost to see a flowering celery.

The parts of a plant. Note stem, leaf, and petiole.
(c) Pearson Biocoach (link)

So, celery sticks and ribs are not stems.  They are part of the leaf, in fact, they are the leaf stalk, which is also called petiole. There are other ways to determine this too.  If you cut the celery rib across you can see many veins in it, and they are arranged as a U.  In most flowering plant stems, the veins are arranged in a circle, unless if it is a monocot, then the veins are arranged in a random scattered pattern.

So, when you eat celery you eat the bottom part of the leaf, a fleshy petiole. Even if it doesn't look like a leaf, it is part of the leaf.

One of the big problems here is that the word 'stalk' can be used for so many parts of a plant, including stem, leaf stalk, flower stalk, etc. No wonder people get confused.  In rhubarb you also eat the petioles (contrary to the answer on Wiki.Answers.com above). So who got it right in the quotes above?  Well, strictly speaking, only Wikipedia provided a completely correct answer.

What is maybe most dismaying is that there are many biology lesson plans out there where teachers are told to cut celery ribs and put them in water with food coloring to show how water moves through stems (example). (Some lesson plans get it right too, of course).  Sorry teachers, you are showing how water and nutrients are moving in a leaf, not in a stem.  And that makes a difference both to the plant and to scientific understanding among children and college students.

Canola oil flowers - four or five petals? Ask Trader Joe...

Canola oil is made from the rape seed plant's (several Brassica species) oil rich seeds, a member of the mustard family, the Brassicaceae.  Members of this family can easily be identified by their very typical flowers.  They have 4 petals, often white, yellow, or pink, situated in a cross-wise fashion, which gave them the old family name Cruciferae.  Yes, that is the same word beginning as in crucifix, a cross.

Brassicaceae flowers also have 6 stamens, and a central pistil that will develop into a fruit when/if pollinated.  All mustard plants have the same types of flowers, be it broccoli, garlic mustard, cabbage, arugula, or kohlrabi.  But there is one place, where the rule doesn't hold up...

Canola Oil Spray at Trader Joe's.
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

On the Trader Joe's Canola Oil Spray bottle, sold only at the Trader Joe's supermarket, they have nicely added some flowers from the canola oil plant to the label. Only the flowers look like this:

Close up of Canola Oil Spray cans at Trader Joe's.
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

So, what do we have here?  One flower with four petals (good!), and one flower with five petals (oops!).  And inside each flower, there are three 'things'.   I assume these might be stamens or pistils, but neither makes sense based on the numbers or shapes. The flowers are also never arranged in this particular fashion, but that is a minor point.

So, who cares? Well, if you make a piece of art you certainly can and should have artistic freedom. But, if you illustrate a product, the illustration should provide some knowledge (or excitement) or identification value about the product. It should be the real thing and not introduce errors or misunderstandings into the public's knowledge of plants and the product source.

The number of petals on mustard flowers are strictly determined by that group's bauplan, just like the 4 legs of a dog is based on a strict bauplan among allmammals. You don't go around and see a 5-legged dogs, do you? (5-legged dogs do exist, but are mutants, and they are even rarer in art.)

Here is the real canola:

Flowering canola plant. 
(cc)  Melanie_B (Flying Snow) on Flickr.

So, in this case, the flowers on the label are used to illustrated the origin of a product, canola oil from the canola plant. There are no canola oil flowers with 5 petals. There are no canola oil flowers with 3 non-descript things in the center of the flowers.  If this drawing had been made with 4 petals it would have been equally pretty, and also accurate. So you start to wonder where things went wrong, with the illustrator, with the description to the illustrator, or to the designer of the label?

Royal Copenhagen: Flora Danica (example 2)

In this earlier post I explained the background of the Flora Danica series produced by Royal Copenhagen.  Here is another new design from 2012, listed as 'Stedmoderblomst' in the Danish catalog, and as 'Pansy' in the English version of the catalog.

 

 Source: Royal Copenhagen.

 
Stedmoderblomst is one of several species of violets (genus Viola, family Violaceae) that are common in Denmark, and the most common species of these are Viola arvensis and Viola tricolor.  None of the violets look the species depicted on this pattern, however.

Source: Royal Copenhagen.

This is how the violets look like:

Viola arvensis.

Source: Bernd Haynold via Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

Viola tricolor

Source: Incola via Wikimedia, Public Domain.

A detailed look at the plant depicted on this china shows that it is likely a monkshood (Aconitum, family Ranunculaceae). A search through the illustrations of Flora Danica provided by the Royal Library in Copenhagen yields this plate, Aconitum napellus, plate number 1698.

Aconitum napellus. Source: The Royal Library, Flora Danica.

So, from a dainty little violet, to one of the most toxic plants in Europe. 

The Aconitum illustration shows a stem with flowers and also a flower that is removed from the stem, and then pressed open and flattened.   Now, compare this illustration to the pattern painted onto the Royal Copenhagen plates and cups. 

 

 Source: Royal Copenhagen.

Not only is the species wrong, but the parts of the plant has been removed and then reassembled.  An opened, slightly destroyed flower has been reattached to a partial stem with flowers, The plant morphology has completely changed, and a new plant mutant has been created.  Of course this is perfectly fine in the creation of art, but not if you say that all the imagery is from historic Flora Danica and depict the plants of Denmark.