"FragileWarrior" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in
"FragileWarrior" wrote in message

I can't get that newsgroup but I wondered if it was one of those
dandelions with multiple heads that I find around here sometimes. No
one ever believes me about them.

There is a plant that many people call a dandelion but it has the
common name of 'flatweed' or 'catsear' - Hypochoeris radicata. It has
dandelion like leaves, dandelion like flowers but multiple stems on
whcih it flowers.
http://web.mit.edu/cfox/www/flowers/...eris-radicata_
Med.jpg.10.html

No, we went through this last time I mentioned them.

Sorry, don't recall being aprt of that discussion.

This is a dandelion
that has mulitple heads like a co-joined human twin does. Not a lot of
heads on different stems but a mishapen mass of heads on one stem. The
stems are wider, too, to match the number of heads. They are Dandelions.

What you are describing sounds like what is known as fasciation.

It can be caused by both herbicide use and from bacterial causes. I've only
ever once seen it in my childhood on one stem on a Euonymous. IIRC, one of
the ingredients used in Agent Orange in particular used to do this. Does it
look like the following?:
http://davesgarden.com/terms/go/1866/

For some reason, in the area where this occured, there sometimes would
pop up other twins -- a Zinnia, for example. And once I found a Black-
eyed Susan with a twin head, too. The Dandelions, however, often had
many, many joined heads. In other flowers, I only ever found twins.
(And this wasn't a nuclear dump site -- it had been a farm as long as
anyone can remember.)

Well a farm where there were a lot of herbicides sprayed around with gay
abandon, or where the neighbours did so, would be a likely place too find
herbicide induced fasciation.