Crops
Fields are among the safest clues, provided you know the season. Rice in terraces or flooded paddies for Asia, sugar cane for the tropics, yellow rapeseed in European spring, tea in tight rows on hillsides. A field also tells the latitude: not everything is grown everywhere.
Rice
Oryza sativa · Field grass
The grass of the paddies, in water and in a checkerboard.
- ADULT SIZE
- An erect, smooth stem 80–120 cm tall.
- LEAVES
- Lanceolate, 15–30 cm long, on a ligule 10–20 mm long.
- IN PLAY
- What reads is not the plant but the PLOT: flat basins separated by low bunds, flooded or muddy, often terraced. Monsoon Asia first, but also the Camargue, the Po, Andalusia, the Mississippi delta and Senegal.
Corn (maize)
Zea mays · Field grass
The corn: two-metre green walls flanking summer roads.
- ADULT SIZE
- 2–3 m, in tight ranks of deep green.
- FRUIT
- Ears below a tasselled top, silks at the leaf joints.
- IN PLAY
- The US Corn Belt (Iowa, Illinois), the plains of south-west France, the Argentine pampa — and hand-grown small plots in East Africa and rural Mexico. Fresh green in June, dry ochre in October: the season speaks.
- NATIVE
- Guatemala · Mexico
Sugar cane
Saccharum officinarum · Field grass
The green wall of tropical fields, taller than a car.
- ADULT SIZE
- Stems up to 5 m tall.
- LEAVES
- Linear, 30–60 cm long and 5 cm wide, with a thick midrib and saw-toothed edges.
- BARK
- Clumps of jointed stems, green, pinkish or purple.
- FRUIT
- A pinkish plume up to 60 cm — rare in the field: harvest usually comes before flowering.
- IN PLAY
- It tells you tropics or subtropics, grown wherever it is warm enough: the field matters, not the country. A wall of tall, dense stalks by the road, often with harvest tracks, is this one.
- NATIVE
- Indonesia
Grapevine
Vitis vinifera · Pruned hedge row
The grapevine: string-straight rows on every wine slope.
- ADULT SIZE
- Trained to 1–2 m on wires, or free bush vines in old vineyards.
- LEAVES
- Lobed palmate leaves, turning russet then purple in autumn.
- IN PLAY
- The grid on the slopes: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Tuscany, Rioja, Chile’s Central Valley, Stellenbosch, the Barossa — the TRAINING style (bush, pergola, trellis) narrows the country.
- NATIVE
- Albania · Austria · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Czech Republic · France · Georgia · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Israel · Italy · Jordan · Kazakhstan · Kosovo · Kyrgyzstan · Lebanon · Montenegro · North Macedonia · Poland · Romania · Russia · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Switzerland · Turkey · Ukraine
Rapeseed (canola)
Brassica napus · Field grass
The rapeseed: the fluorescent yellow fields of April–May.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1–1.5 m, in sheets of saturated yellow in spring.
- IN PLAY
- The yellow checkerboard of the temperate spring: Beauce and Champagne, Germany, Poland, the Danube plain — and India’s winter in Rajasthan (mustard, its in-game twin). Out of bloom it is an anonymous green field: the season is EVERYTHING.
- NATIVE
- France
Tea plant
Camellia sinensis · Pruned hedge row
The tea plant, pruned to hand height over contoured hills.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1–5 m unpruned, up to 20 m; on plantations it is trimmed to about 1 m with a flat top.
- LEAVES
- Evergreen, leathery, serrated, 4–22 cm long by 2–7.7 cm wide.
- BARK
- A smooth grey trunk with a yellow or brown cast, up to 40 cm across; new twigs are red-purple with white hairs.
- FRUIT
- White flowers 2.5–3.5 cm across with six to eight petals; a capsule 1–1.5 cm tall, and seeds 1–2 cm long, brown to almost black.
- IN PLAY
- The texture is the clue: a continuous bumpy green carpet, cut level, following the contour lines, with picking paths. Assam and Darjeeling, Sri Lanka, southern China, Kenya, Black Sea Turkey, Rwanda.
- NATIVE
- Bhutan · India · Laos · Thailand · Vietnam
Coffee
Coffea arabica · Pruned hedge row
The coffee: glossy rows of the tropical mountains.
- ADULT SIZE
- 2–4 m, kept as a dense bush in plantation.
- LEAVES
- Very GLOSSY dark oval leaves, opposite and puckered.
- FRUIT
- Green-then-red cherries strung along the twigs.
- IN PLAY
- Whole slopes in dark rows at 1,000–2,000 m: Colombia’s eje cafetero, Minas Gerais, Ethiopia, Vietnam’s highlands (robusta) — often under shade trees or interplanted bananas.
- NATIVE
- Egypt · Kenya
Taro
Colocasia esculenta
The taro: elephant ears of ditches and paddies.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1–2 m, big heart-shaped peltate leaves on upright stalks.
- IN PLAY
- Flooded taro terraces say the Pacific (Hawai‘i, Fiji, Samoa) and monsoon Asia; as ditch clumps it follows the whole wet tropics.
- NATIVE
- Bangladesh · Bhutan · India · Indonesia · Laos · Malaysia · Nepal · Taiwan · Thailand · Vietnam
Common sunflower
Helianthus annuus · Field grass
The sunflower: fields of suns all facing one way.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1.5–3 m, giant heads all aligned.
- IN PLAY
- July–August: south-west France, Spain, and above all the yellow sea of Ukraine and southern Russia — first farm clue of the Slavic summer. Bowed black heads = late summer.
- NATIVE
- Mexico · United States of America
Cassava
Manihot esculenta · Pruned hedge row
The cassava: green hands of tropical smallholder fields.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1–3 m, pale knobbly stems, sparse foliage.
- LEAVES
- Palmate leaves of slim fingers (5–9 lobes), held like small parasols.
- IN PLAY
- THE food crop of small plots: Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania, Brazil’s Nordeste, rural South-East Asia — ragged rows of green hands by the houses, never agro-industry.
- NATIVE
- Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Colombia · Ecuador · Peru
Pineapple
Ananas comosus
The pineapple: blue-grey rosettes ranked at ground level.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.5–1 m — the fruit grows from the rosette’s heart, one per plant.
- IN PLAY
- Whole fields of low grey-blue rosettes, often on plastic mulch: Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand, Ghana — a crop like no other seen from the road.
- NATIVE
- Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Colombia · Costa Rica · Ecuador · France · Panama · Paraguay · Peru
Hops
Humulus lupulus
The hop: green bines on seven-metre poles.
- ADULT SIZE
- Climbs 6–8 m up strings and poles in one season.
- FRUIT
- Papery green cones in clusters, late summer.
- IN PLAY
- The cathedrals of poles and wires are unique in farming: Bavaria’s Hallertau, Bohemia’s Žatec, Alsace, Kent, Yakima — a hop garden places you at first sight.
- NATIVE
- Albania · Austria · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · Georgia · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Israel · Italy · Jordan · Kazakhstan · Kosovo · Latvia · Lebanon · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Mongolia · Montenegro · Netherlands · North Macedonia · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey · Ukraine · United Kingdom
Cotton
Gossypium hirsutum · Pruned hedge row
The cotton: fields that snow in autumn.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.6–1.5 m, a low bush whose bolls burst white.
- IN PLAY
- The white fields of September–November: the US South (Texas, Mississippi), Gujarat, Uzbekistan, the cotton Sahel (Mali, Burkina) — plus the yellow-wrapped round bales at field edge.
- NATIVE
- American Samoa · Brazil · Colombia · Costa Rica · Curaçao · Ecuador · France · Guam · Guatemala · Mexico · Netherlands · Northern Mariana Islands · Panama · Peru
Soybean
Glycine max · Field grass
The soybean: the low green carpet of the American plains.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.5–1 m, in low dense rows, golden at maturity.
- IN PLAY
- The other half of the corn checkerboard: the US Midwest, Mato Grosso, the Argentine pampa — a low scrubby field between two cornfields is soy.
- NATIVE
- India · Japan · Russia · South Korea · Taiwan
Dragon fruit (pitahaya)
Selenicereus undatus
The dragon fruit: a climbing cactus staked on capped posts.
- ADULT SIZE
- Three-ribbed fleshy stems cascading from the top of a post.
- FRUIT
- The dragon fruit, bright pink and scaly.
- IN PLAY
- Orchards of posts wearing cascading cacti — and by night, fields of lightbulbs forcing bloom: southern Vietnam at a glance.
- NATIVE
- Guatemala · Mexico
Turmeric
Curcuma longa
The turmeric: canna-like leaves in small monsoon plots.
- ADULT SIZE
- Around 1 m, big entire lance leaves in upright tufts.
- IN PLAY
- The bright-green smallholdings of monsoon India (Andhra, Tamil Nadu) — and the orange harvest drying by the road in winter.
- NATIVE
- India
Pistachio
Pistacia vera · Rounded broadleaf
The pistachio: small grey orchards of the hot steppes.
- ADULT SIZE
- 5–8 m, a small crooked tree with a spreading crown.
- FRUIT
- Clusters of pinkish drupes that split with a snap when ripe.
- IN PLAY
- Low spaced rows on pale ground round Gaziantep and Urfa (Turkey), in Iran, and California’s Central Valley — the almond is its look-alike, whiter in bloom.
- NATIVE
- Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Russia
Sweet potato
Ipomoea batatas
The sweet potato: the morning-glory carpet over ridged beds.
- ADULT SIZE
- Trailing — heart-leaved vines over earthed-up ridges.
- IN PLAY
- Green-carpeted ridges of small plots: East Africa, South-East Asia, the Pacific (New Zealand’s kumara) — a hoe crop, not a tractor one.
- NATIVE
- Brazil · Colombia · Costa Rica · Ecuador · Guatemala · Mexico · Panama · Peru
Cabbage
Brassica oleracea
The cabbages: blue-green rows of the market-garden belts.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.3–0.8 m — heads, broccoli and kales, all the same waxy blue.
- IN PLAY
- Even blue-green rows near temperate towns: Brittany, Flanders, Korea (kimchi cabbage), highland Kenya — a leaf colour you spot from afar.
- NATIVE
- France · Spain · United Kingdom
Tobacco
Nicotiana tabacum
The tobacco: big floppy leaves in the field, slatted curing barns beside.
- ADULT SIZE
- 1–2.5 m, large drooping oval leaves on a single stalk.
- IN PLAY
- The CURING BARN is the real clue: slatted barns of Kentucky and Carolina, Cuban sheds of Viñales, brick kilns of Malawi and Indonesia — the field alone stays ambiguous.
- NATIVE
- Bolivia
Onion
Allium cepa
The onion: rows of upright blue-green tubes.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.3–0.6 m, tubular leaves in even tufts.
- IN PLAY
- A worldwide market crop with little placing power — except the red net sacks stacked by Indian and African fields, and harvests drying in windrows.
Potato
Solanum tuberosum · Field grass
The potato: even ridged rows of the cool plains.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.4–0.8 m, dark billowing foliage over earthed ridges.
- IN PLAY
- The ridges give it away: Flanders and Picardy, the Netherlands, Poland, Prince Edward Island, and the Andean terraces of its Peruvian cradle — white or violet flowers in summer.
- NATIVE
- Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Peru
Pepper
Piper nigrum
The pepper vine: green columns climbing their posts.
- ADULT SIZE
- A vine trained on 3–4 m posts — rows of leafy pillars.
- FRUIT
- Hanging strings of green-then-red berries — the peppercorns.
- IN PLAY
- Orchards of green pillars: Kampot in Cambodia, Kerala, Phú Quốc and Vietnam’s highlands — the column architecture looks like nothing else.
- NATIVE
- Sri Lanka
Hazel
Corylus avellana · Pruned hedge row
The hazel: the clumped orchards of the Black Sea.
- ADULT SIZE
- 3–8 m, in multi-stemmed stools — a bush-tree.
- FRUIT
- Hazelnuts in small clustered husks; yellow catkins from February.
- IN PLAY
- Slopes of even clumps above the sea: Turkey’s Ordu–Giresun coast grows most of the world’s hazelnuts — with Rize tea, THE Pontic-coast marker. Also Piedmont and Oregon.
- NATIVE
- Albania · Austria · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Faroe Islands · Finland · France · Georgia · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Ireland · Italy · Kazakhstan · Kosovo · Latvia · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Montenegro · Netherlands · North Macedonia · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey · Ukraine · United Kingdom
Giant taro
Alocasia macrorrhizos
The giant taro: elephant ears held skyward.
- ADULT SIZE
- 2–4 m — among the largest leaves in the plant world, pointing UP.
- IN PLAY
- Giant clumps in ditches and gardens of South-East Asia and the Pacific — leaves up = Alocasia, leaves drooping = true taro; in game both say the same: wet tropics.
- NATIVE
- Australia · Indonesia · Malaysia · Philippines
Almond tree
Prunus dulcis · Rounded broadleaf
The almond: the first tree in bloom, while all else sleeps.
- ADULT SIZE
- 4–10 m, a small tree of irregular habit.
- FRUIT
- Pale pink-white flowers from February, BEFORE the leaves; a velvety green hull splitting over the shell.
- IN PLAY
- February-blooming orchards on pale ground: Andalusia, Sicily, Morocco — and the endless industrial rows of California’s Central Valley, which grows most of the world’s crop.
- NATIVE
- Georgia · Russia
Banana
Musa
The banana: flag-leaves shredded by the wind.
- ADULT SIZE
- 2–8 m — a giant herb with a false trunk of sheaths.
- LEAVES
- Huge entire leaves that tear into ribbons.
- FRUIT
- Hanging bunches, often BAGGED in blue or grey on plantations.
- IN PLAY
- In yard clumps across the tropics; in blue-bagged plantations it says Ecuador, Costa Rica or the Philippines — the bags are the industrial tell.
- NATIVE
- American Samoa · Australia · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Cambodia · India · Indonesia · Japan · Laos · Malaysia · Nepal · Philippines · Sri Lanka · Taiwan · Thailand · Vietnam
Wheat
Triticum · Field grass
The wheat: plain-gold to the horizon.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.6–1 m, bearded or beardless ears, blue-green then blond.
- IN PLAY
- The Beauce, the Kansas Great Plains, the Ukrainian and Russian Black-Sea belt, Punjab, wheat Australia — June to August up north, the gold says summer; combines and silos make the country.
- NATIVE
- Albania · Austria · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Egypt · Georgia · Greece · India · Israel · Jordan · Kazakhstan · Kosovo · Kyrgyzstan · Lebanon · Montenegro · North Macedonia · Romania · Russia · Serbia · Slovenia · Turkey · Ukraine
Lavender
Lavandula · Pruned hedge row
The lavender: Provence’s string-straight purple waves.
- ADULT SIZE
- 0.3–1 m, clipped cushions in aligned rows.
- IN PLAY
- Purple rows on pale soil (June–July): the Valensole plateau, Drôme, Luberon — copied in Bulgaria (top producer), England and Tasmania; out of bloom, grey balls in rows.
- NATIVE
- Bangladesh · Bulgaria · Egypt · France · Greece · India · Israel · Italy · Jordan · Lebanon · Oman · Portugal · Qatar · Spain · Thailand · Tunisia · Turkey · United Arab Emirates
Citrus
Citrus · Rounded broadleaf
The citrus: orchards of dark-green balls studded with gold.
- ADULT SIZE
- 3–8 m, trees in dense even balls, ranked in rows.
- LEAVES
- Glossy evergreen oval leaves, strongly aromatic.
- FRUIT
- Oranges, lemons, mandarins — visible from afar in winter.
- IN PLAY
- Valencia and Andalusia, Sicily, Morocco, Florida, São Paulo, Turkey’s Mersin coast — a citrus orchard = mild winters guaranteed, never hard frost.
- NATIVE
- Australia · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Cambodia · India · Indonesia · Laos · Malaysia · Nepal · Philippines · Thailand · Vietnam
Sources and licences
Govaerts, R. et al. — World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. http://sftp.kew.org/pub/data-repositories/WCVP/ — CC BY 4.0. Aires par pays botanique (WGSRPD niveau 3).
Sources: Almond · Alocasia macrorrhizos · Banana · Black pepper · Brassica oleracea · Camellia sinensis · Cassava · Citrus · Coffea arabica · Corylus avellana · Gossypium hirsutum · Helianthus annuus · Hops · Lavandula · Maize · Nicotiana tabacum · Onion · Oryza sativa · Pineapple · Pistacia vera · Potato · Rapeseed · Saccharum officinarum · Selenicereus undatus · Soybean · Sweet potato · Taro · Turmeric · Vitis vinifera · Wheat