We Have All Heard Of Crop Circles,

which appear overnight,

a little longer in the making there are tree circles, about 50 years as it happens, but before all you conspiracy theorists start, these circles were deliberate, the photograph above photograph, courtesy Sankei News, have recently been spotted in Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture, viewable only from above, they were formed by sugi (Japanese cedar) trees, 

 according to documentation (PDF) from Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, in 1973 an area of land near Nichinan City was designated as “experimental forestry” and one of the experiments was to try and measure the effect of tree spacing on growth, the experiment was carried out by planting trees in 10 degree radial increments forming 10 concentric circles of varying diameters, image courtesy FNN,

part of what makes the crop circles so alluring are their concave shape, which was an unexpected result of the experiment that would suggest tree density does indeed affect growth, the trees are due to be harvested in about 5 years but officials are now considering preserving the crop circles, above is an image courtesy of Google Earth, which is unfortunately a bit dark, for those who are interested, here are the exact coordinates, this is not the first time that trees in a forest have been used to, when grown eventually, show a message, 

back in 1995, to change a piece of history, 68 larch trees were removed from a wooded area of Asterode in Hesse, Germany, to obliterate a number of images that had sinister meanings, for more on this story have a look here about the history behind the Swastika forest.