Solution
The problem with this case has always been the significance of the glyphs themselves rather than the damaged stems found within them. I've seen several references that have attempted to ascribe a religious significance to them. One, for example, claimed that the Cherhill glyph represented the elephant-headed Hindu god 'Ganesa'. I thought it far more likely that they were simply the signatures of those who had created the formations and that they were combinations of the initials J and F. Furthermore, as this has happened before - DD for Doug and Dave - we could safely assume that both the glyphs and the formations were man-made.

Cherhill
Glyph

As has been said, chemical attack could be ruled out. Also, although the chlorophylls could resist temperatures up to the boiling point of water, this assumed immersion in boiling water which helps to preserve cellular integrity. However, rapid excess heating would cause the chloroplast envelopes to fail due to the explosive evaporation of their contents. It therefore seemed very likely that the stems had been subjected to excess localized heating in dry conditions. The main questions were, how much heat had been used and how was it applied? A hot air blower or flame could be ruled out as such techniques were difficult to control and failed to provide the clear delineation found in the samples but applying some hot object to the stems could possibly be the answer.

In order to test this theory, I modified a soldering iron by adding a short length of copper water pipe adapter as can be seen in Fig 4. Normally, the soldering iron would be too hot so its temperature was reduced by limiting the supply voltage. The temperature of the copper adapter was also measured by means of a thermocouple. The tests were carried out on wheat at various stages of maturity.
The first observation was that the adapter did not have to be particularly hot. At about 120° to 130°C, the stems rapidly lost their bloom and became quite malleable, allowing them to be easily bent around the pipe. After holding the plants in that position for about three seconds, it was found that the stems could be partially straightened by elevating the seed heads as the stems cooled. In most cases, the stems could be treated in this way without causing them to crease or buckle.

Curiously, the appearance of the stems did not change significantly in the first 10 to 12 hours, as can be seen in Fig 5. At least two days had to elapse before the stems began to resemble the samples found in the crop formations but, when the transformation was complete, there was little doubt that this was, basically, the method used. For example, in Fig 6, note the way the lower boundary was angled downwards and the uniform lack of chlorophyll to the boundary marked by a narrow dark green line. This line was, in fact, a crucial piece of evidence. It was the narrow region of stem that had reached a temperature sufficient to melt the cuticle wax (see below) yet not sufficient to disrupt the chloroplast envelopes. Above it, the cell function had been destroyed by the heat.
As to the instrument used; a portable gas powered soldering iron could have been employed and modified in the same way as mine. A portable hair curling wand could also have been used. Both are Isobutane gas heated but the latter are generally under-powered and barely reach the required temperature.

There can be little doubt that this was the way the hoax was perpetrated. The only remaining question in my mind concerns the timing. I obtained the samples from the Cherhill formation on what was generally agreed to be the day following its creation, at which time, the degradation of the chlorophyll was all but complete. However, the tests I carried out indicated that a period of at least two days was required for this to occur. Further tests on plants of greater maturity failed to reduce this period. Elevated ultraviolet levels will reduce this period but not sufficiently to account for the fact that chlorophyll decomposition was almost complete by noon, when I observed the plants. It could be that other varieties of wheat may give different results, though this is unlikely. So, why did the chlorophyll degrade so quickly? The only possibility that occurs to me is that the formation remained undiscovered for a day but this too seems unlikely as it could be easily seen from a busy road and it was below a prominent landmark during a crop-circle celebration weekend.

Postscript
Before concluding, there is an important observation that is worth making at this point. It concerns the bloom on the stems to which I have referred. The outer layers of the epidermal cells of the stems are covered by a cuticle. This is a thin continuous layer which reduces transpiration and protects against fungi, some plant pathogens and insect attack. The surface of the cuticle is covered by a thin layer of wax. It is the structure of this wax, which can take the form of tiny rodlets or platelets, that produces the bloom. When the wax is heated to its melting point, it flows into a continuous layer on the surface of the cuticle. The bloom disappears and, as with a glazing layer, the effect is to bring out the colours in the underlying Chlorophyll bearing cells, as can be seen in Fig 5.

Now, the claim is often made that genuine formations are subject to a heating process that can cause, amongst other things, blown or extended nodes. If this were the case, the heat required to produce these effects would certainly cause the cuticle wax to melt turning large areas on the stems a deeper shade of green. As can be seen in Fig 5, it is not likely that such a transformation would go unnoticed - yet, to the best of my knowledge - this has never been observed.

R. Ashby
25^th September, 2001