A Hopeful Monster?
This plant mutation is called fasciation.  It's pretty common.  If you
keep your eyes open you can frequently find fasciated dandelions.  

Thanks for finding this page!  This is the first post of my first blog.  The blog is titled A Hopeful Monster, in reference to a concept from evolutionary biology.  Some biologists feel that evolution largely proceeds at a slow and steady pace, with changes from one generation to the next being nearly imperceptible.  Another school of thought typically accepts the imperceptible change bit, but adds onto that the occasional radical mutant that upsets the whole apple cart.  A geneticist named Richard Goldschmidt called these radical mutants the Hopeful Monsters and thought that they might be really important in adaptation and the creation of new species.

I'm not sure my blog will be all that radical, or give rise to any Hopeful Monsters, but at any rate, it's a cute phrase!

I am a evolutionary geneticist and for several years I have kept files and records of things I've learned. My memory is pretty spotty, so once I get a grasp of a concept I usually write up my understanding as a sort of blog post to myself.  I've amassed a decent collection of these materials, and in part to organize this stuff, and perhaps to also help out others who wondered about the same questions, I'm planning to blog these things out.

In addition to that, I'm trying to learn new concepts (this year's task is Bayesian statistics).  I plan to keep tabs on what I've learned by blogging about this stuff as I understand it.