I know my plant is a celosia cristata of some kind but I have not been able to find any pictures or descriptions that match it. Notes about the pics. The 1st one is when the plant reached about 4.5 feet tall and still had no flowers. The 2nd one is the main flower head on the stalk of the plant. The 3rd and 4th are some of the flowers that came from the side shoots (and there are dozens of them). The last pic is a couple of weeks later when the side shoots started producing these little shoots. I hope this helps. I have many more pics of the different stages of growth and development if needed.
Have a look at this site for Celosia cristata. It is for seeds. They describe the" flower heads as getting rufflier as they develop." Scroll down for 2 pics. http://images.google.com/imgres?img...gb:IE-ContextMenu&rlz=1I7SUNA_en-GB&sa=G&um=1 I believe you may be having problems with finding a match as pic 2 shows a botanical feature which is known as fasciation. It shows the typical flattened very thick stem. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/2006/jun/070701.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation
That's definitely it. Like you said fasciation. If I remember right when the plant was a seedling. The seed coat stuck to the leaves and it looked kind of crumpled up. I actually like the way it looks and want to collect the seeds from it but my guess is that the new plants may not look the same. Also something else is that the side shoots with the smaller flowers have both flattened stems with flat flowers and round stems with the round flowers. Thanks very much for your help.
