Talk:Hydnocarpus wightianus

Alternative Names & Coconut Beetles

Several works on Google Books mention other names for this tree, as well as its use to repel Asiatic rhinoceros beetles.

For instance, an extract from Botanical Pesticides in Agriculture, 1996:

Hydrocarpus [sic] laurifolia (Dennstr.) Slkeumer (Flacourtiaceae)

(Syn.-H wightiana Blume)
Common name: Morotti or Maravitti tree
This is a perennial tree found in tropical zones. Its fruit and seed extracts showed repellency to the coconut rhinoceros beetle, Xyloryctes jamaicensis (Jacobson, 1975; McIndoo, 1983).

Also in The Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 1920 and The Agricultural Journal of India, 1916–19:

It is reported that the use of the powdered cake of the fruit of the Maravitti tree (Hydnocarpus wightiana) checks this coconut beetle and is said to be used in parts of Travancore.

Should this be added to the article?
~ Nclm (talk) 19:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I found some more information on Mailerindia.com:

Ring Worm
(i)Mix the oil extracted from Chalmogra seeds (Hydnocarpus wightiana Blume.) with equal quantity of Bee Wax or Vaseline and apply externally on the skin to get relief from Ring-worm, itching and prevent formation of undesirable spots on the skin.
Hydnocarpus wightiana Blume

• English - Chalmogra
• Telugu - Neridi
• Tamil - Maravitti
• Kannada - Garudu Phala

There are some more common names for this plant, their source languages (for instance “chalmogra”, an alternative spelling of “chaulmoogra” as already mentioned in the article, is in English and “maravitti”, seen earlier, is in Tamil) and an explanation about how to use it against dermatophytosis.

~ Nclm (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

more commonly

Hydnocarpus wightianus (or more commonly Hydnocarpus wightiana) …

So, er, why isn't the more common name given first? —Tamfang (talk) 03:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

There are rules governing the formation of scientific names, and Hydnocarpus wightiana is (apparently) incorrectly formed. Correct version comes first followed by the more common incorrect form. It's not unheard of for outdated or misspelled names for medicinal plants to become entrenched in the herbal products industry. Plantdrew (talk) 21:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Move

@Shyamal:, you mentioned The Plant List when moving this from Hydnocarpus wightianus to Hydnocarpus wightiana. It has the masculine us ending at TPL. Do you know something I don't? Looking at various other taxonomic databases, I see a preponderance of masculine forms for Hydnocarpus species. However, TPL itself leans feminine, many unresolved feminine species coming from WCSP in review, and with this species as the only accepted species attributed to WCSP in review. Tropicos has the type genus with a feminine ending. At IPNI, everything is masculine. There's clearly a mess with the grammatical gender for the genus. Absent a definitive ruling (i.e. at the Shenzen botanical congress), masculine us seems more consistent with most taxonomic databases. Plantdrew (talk) 03:20, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, my bad. I see http://www.tropicos.org/Name/100347824 but I went by http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl/record/kew-249414 (missing the note that it was an unresolved name) and had not seen the 1.1 list at http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/search?id=kew-249414&q=Hydnocarpus wightiana&ref=tpl1 with the approved name. Shyamal (talk) 03:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)