Odd Mexican Hat Flowers

While walking our dogs recently, I noticed a Mexican Hat with an odd flower, beside our road.

It looked like multiple flowers glued together. The plant had several of these, the widest containing about 11 normal flowers. The stem was also wider than normal and looked like a flat ribbon rather than the usual round stem. These photos show this one.

You can see the normal flowers from the same plant. They have a single cone and round stems.

The others I observed had about 3 and 6 conjoined flowers, although counting them is a bit difficult. This photo show these. The 6 conjoined flowers are near the center of the photo and the 3 conjoined flowers are below it, near the edge.

There were other Mexican Hat plants around the one with the odd flowers, but I didn't see any other funny ones.

I did a little searching on the web and found the term fasciation or cresting. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation. Fasciation can be caused by mutation, bacteria, parasites, or chemical damage.

I thought that's what this was, but I'm not a biologist. I posted to our Hays County Master Naturalist Forum to get confirmation from our experts. One of our members, who is a retired biologist, confirmed it and said biologists refer to them as teratologies. Teratology is the study of abnormalities of physiological development.

I can rule out the use of herbicides or pesticides as the cause of this example. We've owned the property for 15 years and have lived on it for 8. The only agricultural activity on the property and in the vicinity is cattle grazing. I think this one falls under the category of random mutation.

It's apparently rare and I've been looking for other examples with no success.

Have you ever seen anything like this? Please let me know if you spot one!