"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in
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"FragileWarrior" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in
"FragileWarrior" wrote in
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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/...hoeris-radicat
a_ Med.jpg.10.html

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

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

Sorry, didn't mean you in particular, I meant on this ng.


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/

Yes, but more so. I counted 13 heads on one Dandelion once. The stem
was an inch across. The other flowers looked like those, though.


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.

It's possible but I know these farmers and I've never seem them doing
anything unusual in the herbicide area but, hey, you never know.