Talk:Hordeum murinum

"Wall barley" is a mistranslation

The epithet murinum means "mousy", "pertaining to mice" (several Latin dictionaries agree), and this species has been called mouse barley. I suspect that "wall barley" is a result of someone thinking of murus, wall (which has the adjective form muralis), rahter than realizing it's from mus, mouse. I'm not making any changes because I don't have my references lined up, and I'm hoping to track down the first use of "wall barley". I'm mentioning it here in case anyone else has any information. Curtis Clark (talk) 23:10, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

@Curtis Clark:, it goes back at least as far as 1896 (in Grasses of North America by William James Beal). Britton & Brown also promulgated it a little later. I got this information from this excellent resource for common names (in spite of the title, it covers many plants from all over North America). I highly recommend downloading the PDF if you are doing any work with common names.

"Wall barley" may be based on a mistranslation, but it sees enough use that it should be considered a real common name in spite of its dubious origin. Plantdrew (talk) 20:38, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: I guess that people have been mistranslating Latin for a long time. 😉 Thanks for the reference! It also shows that "mouse barley" has been used for that species. —Curtis Clark (talk) 04:18, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

@Curtis Clark: Glad you appreciate the reference. I should've mentioned the companion volume (indexed by common name) as well. If you haven't found it yet, it's here. Plantdrew (talk) 04:45, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Yeah, when I saw Vol 2, I figured there had to be a Vol 1 somewhere, and the "previous" link took me right to it. —Curtis Clark (talk) 06:32, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

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This plant is dangerous to pets

Content warning for necessarily somewhat graphic descriptions of harm to animals

It's so odd, I feel like in discussions of this plant (which is often also referred to as foxtail grass) people are either speaking strictly botanically or in reference to this plant's demonstrable danger to animals, particularly pets like dogs and cats. There are a lot of stories from citizens and veterinarians about the danger that foxtails can pose due to the nature of the barbed ends of the individual seeds. Foxtails are most commonly pulled out of dogs' airways, noses, and paws. If it goes unnoticed, as the animal moves it will slowly burrow deeper into their skin. There are cases of Dogs and cats will hide pain, as it makes them vulnerable. They cannot advocate for themselves in ways people necessarily understand. I'm still in the initial investigation stages of what actual numbers or figures for this looks like (I'm investigating all this for a community-focused project) but it's a well-documented phenomenon.

I'd like to add a section on this. Part of the information cited here is about how widespread this plant is, so I feel like including a section on its risks to animals is fitting.

EDIT: Whoops! I didn't realize this genus is so large, and found some coverage of risk to livestock in the article for Hordeum jubatum. I'll move this over there!

Val907 (talk) 08:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)