Talk:Aristolochia rotunda

Common names

It's not a coincidence that this plant shares so many common names with Blitum bonus-henricus. It looks to me like someone, somewhere, got this smearwort confused with the other smearwort, and combined the common names for both. Especially telling is "mercury goosefoot": "goosefoot" is very specific to the genus Chenopodium and its relatives. As for "mercury", it's explained at Mercurialis perennis (but not at Blitum bonus-henricus), that Blitum bonus-henricus is the original mercury, and Mercurialis perennis is called "dog's mercury" because it resembles Blitum bonus-henricus, but is poisonous. The only common names that belong here are "smearwort" and "round-leaved birthwort". The others should be removed, since they create the potential for this poisonous, carcinogenic plant to be confused with a harmless source of nutritious greens. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:30, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Here's a reference showing common names for Blitum bonus-henricus: Grieve's Modern Herbal.Chuck Entz (talk) 23:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

It's worse than I thought: from this edit, it's apparent that the article creator took their information from the html version of the reference I just cited at www.botanical.com, which means that any content remaining from the original edit is almost certainly wrong. This article has been incrementally edited to reflect the real Aristolochia rotunda, but there's still a great deal of the original material subtly intertwined with the new in ways that are going to be hard to tease out. Yikes! Chuck Entz (talk) 02:29, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Good catch. I've worked on cleaning the mess up. Plantdrew (talk) 16:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)