 |
| Fasciated (cristate) Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale. Nashenden Down Nature Reserve, 14 April 2012. |
This odd-looking flower is a Dandelion flower whose growing point has been attacked by something, perhaps a virus or a gall wasp, so that instead of growing as a round single stem it has spread out like a fan. The general term for plants affected this way is fasciated, which means formed into a bundle. This fan-like formation is called cristate, meaning crested. It is quite common in cultivated cacti, but I don't see it very often in the wild.
Here is the whole plant, and if you compare this to a normal Dandelion rosette, you can see from this rather confused mass of growth why a name meaning "bundled" was applied.
 |
| Fasciated Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale. Nashenden Down Nature Reserve, 14 April 2012. |
As Gellett Burgess said of the purple cow, I'd rather see than be one. In a sensient mammal this would be rather like a cancer or like being part of incompletely separate quartuplets. Cats born with six toes, especially on the hind paws, are not uncommon.
ReplyDelete