Crop Circles:

My findings:

What follows is not the proof of anything else than what is indicated in conclusion. Any other point of strangeness is or will be approached elsewhere, that is, here.

The 14 evidence of weirdness reported by W.C. Levengood - point 1) Elongated nodes on plant stems:

W.C. Levengood and Marilyn J. Ruben wrote in 2003 that there were fourteen unusual features in crop circles [1]. The first feature is given as:

"1) Significantly elongated or expanded, apical nodes (pulvini) on plant stems."

In an article published on the Internet in 2002, by Eltjo Haselhoff, PhD, a commonplace cause of node expansion is indicated as:

"The stems of corn-type plants are characterized by little 'knuckles', at several positions along the stems (see Figure 1). These nodes act as a kind of ligament. They allow the plants to bend towards the light, even after they have grown to their full length."

He adds:

"Although there are known biological effects which can create this extension of the nodes, these known effects were easily eliminated."

But he says nothing on the reasons of this easy elimination neither which of these known biological effects are eliminated nor if they are all eliminated.

He also adds:

"The effect of extension of the nodes can be caused by the action of the heat, probably caused by microwave radiation."

This sentence was almost systematically interpreted as meaning that it is a proven fact that microwaves cause the crop circles. It is not what it means.

Outside a crop circle, plants grow undisturbed. Within the crop circles, plants have been flattened. In this situation, plants start to recover and try to stand vertical again, which gives the commonplace explanation of the nodes expansion feature of crop circles rigid stems plants. Node expansion is how rigid stem plants re-orient their stems to the sun after flattening.

W.C. Levengood's strangeness feature 1 for crop circle is therefore not strange. It signals for no mystery, since any flattening of the crop, whether by pranksters, aliens, balls of lights, paranormal forces etc., would result in the same node expansion. Hence the proof that crop circles are not made by prankster must be found elsewhere.

The picture below shows four stems of rigid-stem grass from my own garden and illustrates a point everyone can verify for his/her own enlightment: the more the stem must bend to reach the sun, the more the node expands.

(The stems on my photograph are ordinary stems that were not within a crop circle).

Reactions to the above:

Before publication I submitted this article for comment to a French Internet ufology discussion group. Three responses were given, that are unfortunately unusable to me. No positive feedback was given, the reactions were:

One ufologist joked around without showing approval or criticism.
One ufologist said that the elongation of the nodes decreases from the center to the edge of the crop circles so that it proves micro-wave action. However, while the point is interesting, whether true or untrue, the point is nevertheless out of the scope of this article, which deals only with Levengood's point 1, i.e., the elongated or expanded nodes are a feature indicating strangeness. The answer is here.
One ufologist claimed that wheat does not turn towards the sun by node expansion but by curvature of the part of the stems that hold the grains at the end. This is untrue; rigid stems plants have rigid stems and cannot curve, the end of the stems does not matter because the elongation both in crop circles or outside crop circles are on any node, as seen on my photograph, which can be verified by anyone. Dr. Haselhoff, no less, quoted in my article, correctly wrote: "The stems of corn-type plants are characterized by little "knuckles," at several positions along the stems (see Figure 1). These nodes act as a kind of ligament. They allow the plants to bend towards the light, even after they have grown to their full length. As I verified this, as no evidence of the contrary was shown by the critic, this remains true to me.
The same ufologist indicates that "the nodes are not visible when animals trample or lie down in the cereals." On the contrary I noted that the lengthening of these nodes is visible with any plant with rigid stem which was laid down, on a statistically very significant proportion of the stems showing an angle. This disagreement however inspired an hypothesis to me to be explored, which is the subject of the second part of this article.

The same ufologist indicates that in tests he performed, by giving for example ammonia accompanied by urea to the plants, he managed to obtain this phenomenon of lengthening of the nodes, "whose explanation is the traumatism that the plan undergoes. Rather than get exhausted in bending, the node grows and curves to facilitate the transit of nutriments in the stem towards the head of the plant." However, I do not see the relationship with the topic, since it is by no means a matter of denying that the lengthening of the nodes can be caused by ammonia or urea given to the plant. Same manner, it is not a matter of claiming that that microwaves cannot change the nodes of a plant, it is a matter of saying that the nodes of the plants naturally grow longer because the plants are trying to stand up after having been flattened. Finally, expressing on other forums that I must be a disinformation agent, and that he would hit me if he meets me, and that even Canadian ufologists were shocked of my malevolent actions when he told them about it.

Checking relating to the explanation of the lengthening of the nodes on plants coming from crop circles.

In the first part of this article, I show that the nodes of the plants with rigid stems are longer when a plant was laid down and tries to stand up again than the length they have when the plant was not disturbed. The mechanism is known and described by Dr. Haselhoff:

In result, I must expect that samples of plants with rigid stem taken in the crop circles and compared with control samples taken outside of the same crop circles also shows that the plants taken in the crop circles tried to stand up and thus have nodes longer than those undisturbed outside of the crop circles.

All that is left to do is to check the hypothesis, for that purpose I explored images of such compared samples shown on the Internet to validate or invalidate this point. By examining such images which are presented by proponents of an exotic cause of the crop circles, I also make sure that I cannot be charged of using biased data. What follows is what I found.

The photograph on the top shows plants taken in the crop circle, and that of the bottom shows plants taken out of the crop circle, the author presenting these photographs as evidence of the strangeness of the lengthening of the nodes in a crop circle case at Edmonton in 1999.

I do see that the plants which tried to stand up and have angled stems at the nodes, do have nodes longer than the plants which were not disturbed and are still straight.

Source: http://www.cropcirclequest.com/edmonton99/edmontonnodes.html

The plants in the crop circle tried to stand straight again, this is why their nodes expanded.

In this other example, two plants are shown, that on left is taken outside of a crop circle, the one on the right is taken inside the same crop circle, the author presenting the photograph as "non-falsifiable proof" of the strangeness of the crop circles.

Source: http://www.greatdreams.com/anover.htm

I do see that the plant which tried to stand up has a longer node than the plant which is straight.

Conclusion:

Correctly documented images of that are rather rare. Very often, the stems coming from the crop circle are shown without control stems being shown. Almost always, nothing indicates that the shown stems would not be samples chosen precisely for what they show, nothing indicates that sampling was done either at random or complete as it should be. I found however in these images the clear demonstration of what I suggested, which is nothing other than the say of Dr. Haselhoff defending the thesis that the crop circles are produced by "balls of lights":

And thus, W.C. Levengood's point 1...

"1) apical nodes (pulvini) significantly prolonged or inflated, on the stems of the plants."

... is not valid.

And consequently, the proof that the crop circles are not all made by very human land-artists or pranksters must be found elsewhere.

This page was last updated on July 20, 2007.