Crops · 17 recorded · two of the three sites record one

What the fields were growing

A crop is what a source printed beside a formation, folded to one of these names. It dates a season as surely as a calendar — rape is flattened in April and May, barley in June, wheat in July and August, maize into the autumn — and it is the one thing about a formation a photograph shows without anyone's say-so.

A colour is a label, never a measurement

Each crop has one hue on this site, used for the disc on a record plate and the swatch beside a name. It is a key, like a map legend; it says nothing about the field. Where the crop is written two ways by two sources, the page prints both spellings and folds them to one.

The year, crop by crop

reports by month · the 4 crops that carry most of the archive

Each row is one crop; each cell is how many formations were reported in that crop in that month, every year of the archive together. The shape is the farming year seen through the reports.

JFMAMJJASONDtotal oilseed rape 230 barley 623 grass 398 wheat 3,016

A cell's tint is that crop's own hue at the month's share of that crop's reports, so a small crop still shows its season. The row total is every formation in the crop, including the 84 across these 4 crops that no source gives a month to and that therefore appear in no cell.

The 17 crops, and the formations with none

most formations first · names as folded, spellings as printed

Read the gap, not just the counts

crop is recorded by cropcirclecenter.com and temporarytemples.co.uk only; cropcircleconnector.com records none, so a formation known from that site alone is listed under “not recorded” rather than under a crop it may well have had.

wheat3,016 wheat · crop: wheat · long-eared wheat · wheat & barley (?) · wheat and barley · wheat? · wild flowers & wheat · winter wheat #C9A24A · 20,745 images barley623 barley · barley or triticale · barley & long-earred wheat (possibly standard wheat too). · barley and oats · barley? this crop appeared to be over-ripe barley. · malting barley · young wheat #B8A46A · 4,816 images grass398 grass · reed grass · pasture grass · sump grass · soghum grass · hay · sea-grass · grass and marigold · and 4 more #6F9A5C · 709 images oilseed rape230 oilseed rape · oilseed rape (canola) · oilsee rape · oilseed rpae (canola) #D8C400 · 1,236 images maize76 maize · corn · sugar corn #8FA84E · 186 images oats71 oats #C7B58E · 94 images rye53 rye #A98E62 · 61 images ice31 ice #A79E90 · 34 images rice18 rice #9FB79A · 23 images snow17 snow #A79E90 · 27 images soy16 soy beans #8FA359 · 24 images sand14 sand · desert sand #A79E90 · 14 images mustard11 mustard · mustard seed? · mustard seeds #D4B23A · 93 images beans8 beans #6E8B57 · 10 images facelia5 facelia #A79E90 · 5 images linseed5 flax · linseed #6C7FB0 · 6 images peas3 peas #7DA96B · 3 images not recorded2,956 no source gives a crop for these no hue · dashed · 4,912 images

The disc in each card is the record-plate disc at that crop's hue: solid where a crop is recorded, dashed grey for the formations no source gave one for. The spellings are the ones the sources printed on the records this build read.

How a crop is shown on a record

Three states, one component. The disc's size is the formation's own recorded diameter against a 60 m field; its colour is the crop. Where the archive may show no picture of a formation, this is what its plate draws — never a guess at the design.

Crop and size recorded. The disc is drawn to the formation’s own diameter, in the hue for its crop.

Crop recorded, size not. A dashed disc at a fixed size, with the crop named in its hue: the plate says “size not recorded” rather than drawing a guess.

Neither recorded. The dashed disc again, and “crop not recorded” in the neutral grey.