Q&A for How to Identify Farm Crops

Canola or rapeseed is a dominant one. Mustard is another one, but it is closely related to canola. You also get sunflowers, which grow as tall as corn.

Sorghum.

This could be peas, beans, soybean, alfalfa, lentils, flax, clover, and a variety of other plants.

Sainfoin is another crop that has bright pink flowers, and it's a legume for livestock feed, and could be the most likely choice. Tulips in the Netherlands (and hyacinth are also quite pink). Dahlias come in pink as well, as do lilies, roses, carnations, cosmos, echinacea (medicinal plant), etc.

Flax, lentils, borage, alfalfa (more purple than blue), hyacinth, etc.

Sorghum. The seed heads are quite reddish in colour, and the plant is very much a grass, only domesticated like corn, wheat, barley, etc.

Standing hay is a grass and legume mix that is let to mature at 3 to 4 feet tall. It's mostly green with some small purple/bluish blossoms mixed in that are alfalfa. Other legumes have different colours; cicer milkvetch has creamy white flowers, birdsfoot trefoil bright yellow, and sainfoin with bright pink flowers.

Possibly you meant flower, not seeds. Legumes have seeds in pods, not bare on the stem. So could be birdsfoot trefoil you're looking at, or black medic (a close relative to alfalfa), or Siiberian alfalfa, which is a yellow-flowered variety of alfalfa. If it's the bright yellow pod, yellow beans or faba/fava beans that haven't dried on the stalk yet could also be a possibility.

Black seed pods indicate possibly cicer milkvetch. The leaves should be made up of many leaflets arranged in opposite fashion on a stem.

It's a vine plant, so stakes need to be put up to allow it to twist around it as it grows. Tendrils stand out that search for a new place for the plant to keep growing on.

Many crops do, including buckwheat, peas, cotton, lupine, dill, onions, and potatoes.

Purple wild proso millet has purplish leaves. It's also a feature in some hybrid species and ornamentals. Plants such as corn or wheat that have purplish leaves may have a nutrient deficiency, like phosphorus. Low phosphorus inhibits sugar movement out of leaves of corn, which causes them to turn purple.

Buckwheat.

Other than marigolds, and without any other more specific descriptions, you could be seeing California poppies, tiger lillies or orange lillies, tulips, chrysanthemums, gerberras, orange African daisies, gazanias, etc. All are short plants that are not marigolds. Without further description, this list is as good as it gets.

Sorghum and millet are two major crops that come to mind. They look like corn, except they're smaller and the seeds they produce aren't along the stem in the form of cobs or ears, but rather as "tassels" at the top. But sugarcane is another possibility, since it grows as tall as corn but doesn't have the tops nor the ears like corn. The leaves, though, are different, not wavy like corn, millet, or sorghum.

Yes, the flowers on potato plants often match the color of the potato's skin.

Flax.

Sounds like buckwheat if it also has arrow-head-shaped leaves and tendrils to climb on. Otherwise, without any leaf description, it could be anything.

The crop could have been millet or sorghum. Their leaves look similar to those of corn, but the plant is shorter and with a finer stem.

A plant with this description could be a garden plant known as Purple Dragon Dead Nettle -- it matches that description almost exactly.

Fields with yellow flowers are canola, primarily.

Without any more identifying features or locale, this sounds like sugarcane. Sugarcane matures taller than corn and is generally harvested 12 to 16 months after it has been seeded.

There are very few crops that are reddish, other than tulips grown in the Netherlands, which come in a wide variety of colours. But, you could have chrysanthemums, dahlias, red sunflowers, carnations, roses, or lilies.

It's still corn; it's just been de-tasseled. De-tasseling is a way to ensure the crop is cross-pollinated properly to get hybrid varieties.

Faba beans, very likely. These plants turn dark brown to black when at full maturity, particularly the pods.

You may have seen dwarf sunflowers, as they grow much lower than "normal" sunflowers. Daisies of various cultivars and species including gazanias and gerberas also look surprisingly like sunflowers, just with more color varieties.

Sorghum, millet, wheat, barley, oats, and rice all have stalks similar to corn but are shorter.

Lettuce (oakleaf, red leaf) and purple proso millet are the most likely possibilities.

It may be a weed called Henbit. It is often confused with Creeping Charlie or ground ivy.

You could have been seeing malabar spinach, or swiss chard.