Mimosa

Mimosa in this entry is Acacia dealbata, the silver or blue wattle: a shrub or spreading tree of the legume family that can reach thirty metres. It has smooth bark, fern-like, twice-divided leaves of bluish grey or silver, and round heads of yellow to bright yellow flowers, borne from July to November, followed by flat, bluish pods dusted with a white bloom; its species name means whitewashed. It is native to south-eastern mainland Australia, where the Wiradjuri call it giigandul, and it is grown as an ornamental across warm temperate regions, where it has naturalised widely and become an invasive weed in South Africa, Portugal, Spain and California. The Ngunnawal and Wiradjuri peoples made rope from its bark, glue and poultices from its sap, tools from its timber and flour from its seeds. Florists sell its flowering shoots as mimosa, a name not to be confused with the genus Mimosa; in Italy, Albania, Russia and Georgia the flowers are given to women on International Women’s Day, and their essence goes into perfume. In England its flowers were generally thought unlucky to bring indoors, and in some places the tree was unlucky to plant in a house garden. In magical practice it is scattered about a space to purify it, used in love and healing spells, and laid beneath the pillow for prophetic dreams.