Thursday 12 May 2011
The formation in rapeseed at Hannington, near Cricklade is a
truly beautiful and delicate design in the unwieldy medium of
rape and we should be grateful to have such a fine symbol early
in the season. I went to see it yesterday. By the looks of it
and in particular the growth of the downed stems, in particular
of a weed caught up in the design, it looks as if it has been
there for well over a week. The farmer told us that since its
posting on the Net, many visitors had gone to see it, so it was
not in pristine condition. We would like to thank him for
allowing us to enter the field. I just have to point out that
over the years I have visited a great many crop circle designs
with not a few in rape.
Oilseed rape is a plant from the cabbage family that can snap
like cabbage stems do when fresh. In addition, unlike a wheat
field where the stems are quite soft and stand apart from one
another, oilseed plants have foliage which makes them bunch
together, making the field look more like a sheep’s coat than a
field of crops. In actual fact, although looking beautiful from
afar, fields of rape can be quite mangled. It is not easy to
walk into a field of rape and following the tramlines to access
the design is difficult enough as a rule, although in this
particular design the crop was more sparse. To do a design by
hand you would have to walk through the standing crop, and very
precisely at that, as the series of circles in this design which
are based on sacred geometry, demonstrate. Bearing in mind that
the design is over 220m in diameter, it would be a big and
tiresome job to tackle and for what purpose? To make fun at us?
Isn’t the joke running a bit thin?
Some plants were damaged but the majority of stems and flowers
were not. Markings on the bloom of standing stems, misleadingly
labelled as stump board marks, can occur just by lightly
touching them and could have been made by the neighbouring
plants brushing against their neighbours when falling down. In
this design the vast majority were unmarked.
The idea that a complex design such as this one could have been
made in rape by hand is not realistic and I wish that people
local to this area would refrain from attempting to discourage
those visiting your website who live abroad and rely on us for
their information.
Francine Blake www.wccsg.com
Images
Olivier Morel / WCCSG
Copyright 2011
