My neighbor's dandelions seem to have all mutated into huge cojoined ones this year. What's going on?

Question

Their lawn is covered with dandelion bushes that have at least 30-40 flowers per bunch, the one in the middle usually a mutant--ten stems, ten heads joined together. It's frightening. What's happening? This is not only going on in her yard, but also sparingly in yards around the city. We live in the midwest. Any explanation?

Answer 1

Are you sure they're dandelions?  A lot of weeds have yellow flowers that look like dandelions but aren't.  

Otherwise, it could be several individual seeds germinating and merging together as they grow.  There are probably plenty of nutrients (from fertilizer) and water available so they have plenty of resources for a bunch of plants to grow together like that without competing for resources.  That would be interesting to see though!