I noticed today that there is the tag: plant.
There's currently no tag wiki for it, and from the questions that use the tag I'm not really sure what the tag is supposed to be used for.
I would kind of assume that any question would be about a plant, unless it was otherwise stated, so maybe we don't even need the tag at all?
What's up with plant?
There is no longer a plant tag. I edited it out from all the questions it was on, and it has since disappeared. See Do we need to specify what identification is being requested using tags?
It wasn't really a very useful tag anyway.
As you stated, a very high percentage of questions could be tagged with plant. The tag is far too general to be useful and should be burninated. Perhaps even blacklisted.
As it is, practically all of the 18 questions are identification questions. A number of these questions are also closed.
If the tag is unavailable new users will simply not be able to use the tag, which is a good thing. I recommend cleaning up the 18 plant questions.
It's usually used by newer users in identification questions, to clarify what's being identified. New users also don't necessarily know how to properly use tags, so they often use it where a more specific tag would do (they don't know to be as specific as possible). In the Help Center, it is posted that the identification scope covers diseases and pests, as well as plants:
- identification, diagnosis or management of plant diseases, pests, or weeds
So if you aren't sure of anything specific (like if it's a trees, shrubs, perennials, flowers question, etc.), this tag would specify that the identification question posted is asking about plants, rather than diseases or pests.
Now, once the question has an answer, it could be retagged, and the plant tag could be replaced by something more specific.
