{"id":571,"date":"2011-05-21T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/05\/florida-discoveries-12-mimosas-in-bloom-or-so-i-thought.html"},"modified":"2011-05-21T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T02:00:00","slug":"florida-discoveries-12-mimosas-in-bloom-or-so-i-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/05\/florida-discoveries-12-mimosas-in-bloom-or-so-i-thought.html","title":{"rendered":"Florida Discoveries 12: Mimosas in Bloom…or So I Thought…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mimosa trees are starting to bloom….<\/p>\n

…or so I thought…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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I have loved these pretty trees since I was a kid in southeastern Virginia…this one is blooming right up the street.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I’ll take my iPhone along on runs so I can listen to tunes, but about once a week I get distracted so much by the pretty flowers, I stop to take some pictures with the iPhone camera. It does a pretty decent job.<\/p>\n

So I took several pictures of this “mimosa” tree and was all set to write up not just about the tree, but also about the delicious Sunday brunch staple: The Mimosa.  I’ll get to that particular Mimosa in a minute.<\/p>\n

In case you hadn’t noticed after all these years, my posts about pretty flowers, cool trees or curious critters on this blog never lack at least a cursory round of research and web links for you to learn more.  This will be no exception.<\/p>\n

Right away, I learned that these trees I’ve called “mimosas” for decades aren’t really  “mimosas”.  They’re Persian silk trees.  The geneses Mimosa<\/a><\/i> and Albizia<\/a><\/i> are both in the family Fabaceae<\/a>.  Many folks are familiar with the mimosa species whose flowers quickly contract when touched.  You might know it as the “Sensitive Plant”, botanically known as the Mimosa pudica<\/a>, <\/i>seen in this video (you will get the gist of it in the first 10 seconds).<\/p>\n