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cortejo
resumaderos
Dec 22, 2016 19:36
7 yrs ago
Spanish term

lechugones

Spanish to English Science Botany Text from the Canary Islands
En las zonas más elevadas pasteles de risco y bejeques, Greenovia aurea, Aeonium simsii, A. percarneum, o lechugones como Babcockia platylepis, y especies de otras familias como Limonium o Globularia.
Proposed translations (English)
3 +5 dandelion varieties
4 +4 sow thistles
5 dandelion-flowered Composites
3 chichories
Change log

Dec 22, 2016 19:36: changed "Kudoz queue" from "In queue" to "Public"

Discussion

Charles Davis Dec 26, 2016:
If "dandelion-flowered" means plants whose flowers look like dandelions, then it would include the sow thistles that Canarians call lechugones, but it would also include not only true dandelions, which they call diente de león or dienteleón, but also, for example, Canarian members of the genus Hypochoeris, which are called lechuguillas; they include cat's ear, Hypochoeris radicata, which is found in the Canaries, where it's called lechuguilla de halcón, and is notoriously easy to mistake for a dandelion. Therefore it's broader than the ST term.
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
I see nothing to suggest that the author's thinking in terms of taxonomic levels here. When they say "lechugones como Babcockia platylepis", they simply mean "lechugones such as, for example, Babcockia platylepis". To me there is nothing there to suggest that "lechugones" is seen here as the name of even a genus, let along a subtribe or tribe. It's simply a group of plants that have the common name "lechugones" in the Canaries: in taxonomic terms, as far as we know from the evidence available, a group of similar species all belonging to the same genus. As for "familia", it seems obvious to me that it's not being used in its formal taxonomic sense, but simply means "groups of related plants".

The idea that this author, or indeed just about any author I could imagine, would be using "lechugones" in its "etymological" sense to mean Lactuceae seems to me exceedingly implausible. I don't think it's even worth considering. And I don't understand why you are suggesting "dandelion-flowered Composites". That term would include all sorts of things, including, of course, dandelions, that are not "lechugones". There's nothing to justify such a broad term.
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
@Donal As I read it, the only species mentioned here that is regarded as a lechugón is Babcockia platylepis. The mish-mash simply reflects the variety of plants one finds in the same area. Personally I don't feel the need to consider a higher taxonomic level than the genus here, but certainly more information about what the author means by lechugones would be helpful, if available.
DLyons Dec 25, 2016:
@Charles Yes, I think it's clear that the author isn't a professional (or isn't writing as one). So it's always a bit hard to double-guess what they might mean. I'm not saying this should be translated at the tribe level, just that that's the narrowest level where I can find a name I'm confortable with. You might well be right re genus but, if it mattered, I'd pass some test cases above that level to the author. They have after all given a mish-mash of species, mabe genera, and a family. So who knows what they really mean (perhaps they don't themselves).
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
Part 4 (end) Even confining it to Sonchus may be spreading our net too wide. First, there are plenty of sow thistles that are not found in the Canaries at all. And more to the point, there are Canarian sow thistles (e.g. the famous and misnamed “Canarian tree dandelion" Sonchus canariensis) that do not seem to be called lechugones. But I don't think there is a narrower English term available that includes all the plants involved.
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
Part 3 I did my best to do so, given the limitations of Internet resources, and found four species that have or can have that common name, though only one of them, Sonchus bupleuroides (formerly Sventenia bupleuroides), the plant that the Canarian regional government presents as the lechugón, is always and only called that. There may be others, but we haven't got any evidence that there are. What these four plants have in common, taxonomically, is that they all belong to the genus Sonchus, the sow thistles.

There is no evidence, and no reason at all to suppose, that "lechugones" refers to any plant outside that genus. Your suggestion that it refers to the Hyoseridinae subtribe is entirely unsupported, and actually easily refuted, since the Canarian species that belong to that subtribe but to genera other than Sonchus have other common names: e.g. Hyoseris radiata (estrella) or Helminthotheca echioides (raspasaya de Canarias).

(Continued in next post)
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
Part 2 I think it's important to mention, first, that this is a description of Canarian flora, not any other flora, and that the author is not a professional taxonomist, or at least is not writing like one. This is clear, for example, from the use of the obsolete generic name Babcockia, which was placed within Sonchus as long ago as the 1970s, a conclusion confirmed by all recent molecular studies, and above all by the reference to "otras familias como Limonium o Globularia", which are of course genera, not families. It is inconceivable that a professional taxonomist would have written this. Indeed, this phrase, which you use (I hope in jest) to suggest that lechugones might be a family such as Compositae, can actually be taken as evidence that it’s a genus, as I suggest, equivalent to Limonium or Globularia.

But actually there is no reason to suppose, a priori, that lechugones refers to a taxon: to all and only the members of a particular genus, subtribe, tribe, etc. The only way of discovering what it does refer to is to investigate which plants are called lechugones in the Canaries.

(Continued in next post)
Charles Davis Dec 25, 2016:
@Donal Happy Christmas to you too!

Our task here is simple, though not easy. We must try to determine what the author is referring to in using the term lechugones, and then try to find an English equivalent. If possible, we want a term of a similar kind, a common name, not a technical scientific name, and it should be a term that includes all lechugones and doesn't include anything else. If we ignore the latter requirement, it's quite easy. We might as well just put "flowers" and have done with it. But of course we can't ignore it. So we are going to need to set the generic level as low as possible without leaving out anything that the author regards as a lechugón. And I think it's obvious that the author doesn’t have big "lechugas" in mind in this context.

(Continued in next post)

Proposed translations

+5
1 hr
Selected

dandelion varieties

This page provides the synonym for "Babcockia platylepis", which is "Sonchus platylepis Webb"
http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/gcc-5435

And if you look up "Sonchus", you find:
Sonchus is a genus of flowering plants in the dandelion tribe within the sunflower family.

Not sure how accurate the term "varieties" is here, but I didn't want to go for "species" as taxonomy is a minefield for laymen like me (meaning I don't understand it). From what I can tell, particularly from looking at pictures, "dandelion" is a safe bet.


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Note added at 1 hr (2016-12-22 20:47:23 GMT)
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Sorry, forgot the link for the above reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus
Peer comment(s):
agree Helena Chavarria : I also found dandelions but I wasn't sure enough to suggest it as an answer. First of all I found lettuces, but it didn't convince me, mainly because the photos of Lactuca tenerrima (lechugón) didn't look like lettuces.
3 mins
Thanks, Helena. We have plants called "lechugilla" out here, but they're a kind of smallish agave-type cactuses, nothing much like a lettuce at all, as far as I can tell.
agree neilmac : Apparently you can eat dandelion leaves from some varieties, but I've never tried it...
12 mins
Thanks, Neil. Someone showed me that rocket grows wild around my in-laws' house the other day, and all this time I'd been paying through the nose for it from Costco!
agree Marie Wilson
27 mins
Thanks, Marie.
agree Elizabeth Joy Pitt de Morales : AKA "Canarian tree dandelion"
58 mins
Thanks, Elizabeth, good to know.
neutral Charles Davis : You've understandably been misled by the term "dandelion tribe", a very broad category, which includes many things that are not dandelions. / Indigenous Canarian species, mostly no EN common names, but in principle Sonchus = generically sow thistle.
3 hrs
Nearly all you've said in your entry sounds perfectly good, only I looked at "sow thistles" too, but couldn't tell if the particular species mentioned is actually a sow thistle, so I went for a more generic term (not to say that it's correct of course).
agree Nedra Rivera Huntington
3 hrs
Thanks, Nedra.
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
+4
4 hrs

sow thistles

I agree with some of what Robert has said. All the plants in the Canaries that are referred to as "lechugones" belong to the genus Sonchus. As he has said, Babcockia platylepis, referred to as a "lechugón" in the extract you've quoted, is also known as Sonchus playlepsis. The same goes for the "lechugón" par excellence, the plant that is always called by that name, Sventenia bupleuroides, the "lechugón de Sventenius" or "cerraja de Don Enrique":
http://www3.gobiernodecanarias.org/medusa/wiki/index.php?tit...

It's the same thing as Sonchus bupleuroides:
http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/gcc-89293

Other plants I find called "lechugón" include Sonchus hierrensis, here in this official guide to the Caldera de Taburiente National Park, in the illustration on p. 49; it also says on the previous page: "Otras especies de los roquedos se desprenden de sus hojas en la época seca reduciendo así la superficie transpirante. Es el caso de los llamativos lechugones o cerrajones"
http://www.mapama.gob.es/imagenes/es/Guia Caldera_tcm7-29216...

So "lechugón" is a name in the Canaries for at least some species of Sonchus (there are others apart from the ones I've mentioned). They are also often called cerraja o cerrajón. In this list of common names for Canarian flora and fauna, the only "lechugón" is the emblematic "lechugón de Sventenius" I've already mentioned; the Sonchus species are mostly called cerrajón.
http://www.antoniomachado.net/wp-content/uploads/pdf/informa...

Now, the Wikipedia page on Sonchus, which Robert has already cited, says that the generic name for these plants in English is sow thistles, and many other sources confirm that this is right. It's definitely as close as we can get to an English equivalent of "lechugón" as the name is used in the Canaries.

None of them are dandelions. Some of them look like dandelions to the untrained eye (such as mine), and they're cousins, as it were, but they aren't the same thing. True dandelions are members of the genus Taraxacum, and in the Canaries, as elsewhere, their common name is "diente de león".

Now, sow thistles are members of the so-called "dandelion tribe", as the Wikipedia page on Sonchus says. This is a misleading term. It is a traditional name for what are nowadays called the Cichorieae, but have in the past had other names, notably Lactuceae.

"The dandelion tribe Cichorieae (Lactuceae) of Asteraceae is cosmopolitan and has its basal clades and also its sister group (Gundelieae) [...]"
https://books.google.es/books?id=xHGljMH_RLYC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA...

This so-called "dandelion tribe" includes 93 genera and over 1600 species, including, yes, dandelions, as well as lettuces, chicory, salsify and many others. So to call sow thistles "varieties of dandelion" is equivalent to calling lettuces "varieties of dandelion". The latter only seems more ridiculous because lettuces don't look anything like dandelions whereas sow thistles do, but scientifically it would be just as accurate (or inaccurate). It is misleading, to say the least.

The other attraction of calling them dandelions is that everyone has heard of dandelions whereas few people have heard of sow thistles, but that's not an argument at all. If that's what they are, that's what they are. And it is.

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Note added at 4 hrs (2016-12-23 00:14:44 GMT)
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And the fact that Sonchus canariensis, the tree sonchus or tree sow thistle or giant sow thistle, which Elizabeth has mentioned, is popularly called the "tree dandelion" doesn't mean that it's really a dandelion.

Needless to say, sow thistles are not really thistles, any more than they are dandelions.

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Note added at 7 hrs (2016-12-23 03:02:31 GMT)
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On Robert's point that we don't know for sure that these particular plants in the genus Sonchus, called lechugones, are called sow thistles in English: the problem is that they are Canarian plants and don't have English common names. But "sow thistle" is a name that applies to the whole genus: that is to say it is the recognised English name for the genus itself:
http://www.globalspecies.org/ntaxa/2089864
http://eol.org/pages/60801/names

So by definition these particular species of Sonchus are sow thistles. And as I say, there are others called lechugón, including:

Sonchus congestus
http://www3.gobiernodecanarias.org/medusa/mediateca/ecoescue...

Sonchus acaulis
http://www.cepalaspalmas.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...
Peer comment(s):
agree Muriel Vasconcellos
4 hrs
Many thanks, Muriel!
agree Andy Watkinson : The "Sventenia bupleuroides" clinched it for me. As me mum used to say "where there's a Sventenia bupleuroides, there's a sow thistle". Never a truer word....
4 hrs
Clearly a wise and discerning woman, your mum. I wish I'd had someone to steer me right on this when I was a nipper. Happy Christmas, Andy :)
agree neilmac : .... but try not to sit on them... :-)
9 hrs
No, but maybe you can feed them to donkeys. Apparently rabbits like them, and they're called sow thistles because they used to be fed to lactating sows. Thanks a lot, Neil :)
agree Michele Fauble
19 hrs
Many thanks, Michele, and Happy Christmas :)
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3 days 1 hr

dandelion-flowered Composites

Bye :-)
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4 days

chichories

Green leafy vegetables, useful for preparing tasty leaf salads with a more or less bitter touch (which can be soothed by bathing them in hot water for about 10-15 seconds)... Yummy :-)

The following reference, although from German authors, confirms that Babcockia/Sonchus platylepsis belongs to the chicories:
www.bgbm.org/sites/default/files/documents/Cichorieae_Chapt...


Reference:

http://www.bgbm.org/sites/default/files/documents/Cichorieae_Chapter24.pdf

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