"Volfie" wrote in message
...
Has anyone ever seen Dandelions with multiple heads on one stalk?

What the dandelions are doing is something that is called "fascination".
I've seen cactus doing it and found the reference to it in one of my books.
Lately I've noticed multiple flower heads on gerbera daisies that we've
gotten from Canada from Color Point nurseries for Lowes.

This year, my purple loosestrife made twinned flowerstems on one plant
(before the Japanese beetles munched it down to the bones g) and just
today we got in a shipment of Magnus coneflowers, and out of all those pots,
there were three that had triple heads of flowers. If the pots are there
tomorrow, I'm buying it to see if the seeds are viable and make the same
kind of flower next year.

In the
spring I started seeing twins and then suddenly I started seeing one wide
stalk (and inch or so) with multiple heads -- I think I counted 13 on one
stalk.

I've seen lilies do that. the oriental ones, not daylilies. I seem to
recall someone had a lily that had a whole bunch of flowers on one thick
stalk.

I was wondering if that's unusual?
Yes. but not rare.

I also got a nice twinned
Zinnia, too. I'm beginning to wonder if we're living on a chemical dump.

there might actually be something to what you're wondering. You should see
the difference in the ruffled African violets that were grown from seeds
that went up on the space shuttle. HUGE plants! I'd say call your college
agricultural department and ask for someone who knows their botany and can
determine if your plants are influenced by fungus, disease, mutations,
chemicals, or what not. I'm curious as to what they'd have to say about it.
Keep me posted of your findings if you pursue this!

Well, not really, this has been farmland as far back as we can trace it
but
I wondered why I was seeing so much twinning in flowers where I'd never
noticed it before.

It is a ponder. You have to also realize that our enviroment isn't the same
as when your property was a farm. The rain is different. The sunshine is
even different due to the ozone layer and such. My cactus get quite a
sunburn every spring when I put them outside, but this year they suffered
badly. At least they adjusted, but I could tell the sun was harsher than
last year. And I've never browned up quite so quickly as I did this year
and I'm not a brown person. I really have to make sure I put on the
sunscreen, Bullfrog on my hands because I have Viteligio. (loss of
pigmentation like what Michael Jackson has and took the pill to eliminate
all of his pigment when it showed up, apparently it's a genetic trait of
Scot-Irish decendents..g) I neverthought of it until one day I noticed
I'd lost pigment on my upper chest and my patches were red from being
outside in the nursery all day in the sun and heat.

Giselle (or maybe it's simply because I never noticed it before? duh.

not likely. But seriously, don't worry about it too much, but if your still
curious and do contact someone, let me know, ok?
madgardener up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler overlooking a storming
English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

--
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect." Chief Seattle