Jim was playing golf yesterday so I took a walk around Canyon Sands and saw these lovely mimosa trees blooming and they reminded me of the wonderful mimosa forests in Provence. Here they call them acacia but in France they are called mimosa. And then I thought I would look this up as the ones here aren't as big in terms of the tree and also the yellow blossoms as they are in France. This is what I found:
"A large amount of confusion arises when discussing plants named mimosa or acacia. Both are botanical genus names and both names are used colloquially for certain species of trees that produce pink or yellow puffy flowers. The more ornate flowering species of acacia make showy cut flowers, are are commonly called mimosa."
The first time Jim taught in the winter in France (2002) we were driving from Nice to Toulon and saw these amazing bursts of yellow in the forests and wondered what they were. It's an amazing spectacle and one of the things we looked forward to in subsequent visits at that time. In the markets they had wonderful branches of these trees as well.
These photos are ones from Provence that I found in an image search.
