It's kinda hard to explain. How it looks in "real life" is instead of a hen putting out chicks which grow out on stamens, the chicks are all clustered inside the hen forcing the hen to split apart.
I was thinking about it this morning and I've had some fasciated plants (mostly lilies) that sort of resembled these. I looked up fasciation and it was pretty interesting. All hen and chicks are actually ring fasciated plants! Check out this site:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/AdviceS...
Some things I found in this article that support my thinking that these are fasciated are: "shoots that appear to be composed of several fused shoots" and "misshapen flower heads with numerous flowers". Also look in the article for causes.... So, that's my official guess!
