Do you have a Geiger counter? Radiation pollution does some pretty weird things to some plants. These kinds of mutations were pretty common in some places for a couple of years after Fukushima spewed radiation into the air currents.
I don't know how likely it is, but it's possible.
Could just be me at this point.
I grew up outside Yosemite and the entire area is decomposing granite which emits radon gas as a byproduct of the breakdown. The small 25 household water system we were on had a well that tested VERY high for radon. I remember the people in full self contained hazmat suits walking across the field, across the street from my house, to test the well. It turned out to be one of the highest radon counts in the state and the 25 households had drank the water for 10 years.
I then went to the air force and worked on nuclear cruise missiles as a wrench monkey. INRAD is a constant concern and we would get counters occasionally. I have some interesting stories from that time...
So needless to say the concept of radiation hits my head strongly.
The area that is affected is in a line that runs from where the old outhouse used to be towards the cabin that used to be a bar. There was a tree nearby that was cut down a few years back. It just strikes me as odd that that specific strip has the tendency for odd growth habits.
Yeah, that is pretty odd about the strip of ground.
I can just imagine the stories you could tell about your time in the Air Force.
Nothing like irradiating yourself with drinking water, right?
We have a fair amount of radon release in basements in this general area. It's not everywhere, but it is around. This was an iron mining area before WW2, so there's a lot of holes in the ground and a lot of tailing piles. Who knows what's in them. I have a small radiation meter that I bought after Fukushima, the background radiation level here is generally fairly low, we didn't get much "hot" rain in this area, it went south of us.