Mimosa

                                          Photograph: Tülay Karayazgan, Mimosa in Istanbul in March

Spherical things make me happy. Round egagropili, colorful marbles, the planets have always interested me visually. Mimosa flowers are also round and I remember feeling good about them as a child.

There were several mimosa trees in the small park across from our house. Mimosa or Acacia dealbata which belongs in the Fabaceae family is a species of Acacia native to southeastern Australia. It is widely introduced in the Mediterranean region.

           
                         November                              January ( Photo: Esra Selamoğlu)                                   March

Acacia dealbata is classified in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae. The subfamily is divided into four tribes. A.dealbata belongs in the Acacieae tribe, yet it has the typical leaf and inflorescence structure of the Mimoiseae tribe. There are other acacia that have this characteristic.

A.dealbata is an evergreen tree or shrub that can grow up to 30 m tall. The leaves are bipinnate which means the leaflets are themselves pinnately compound. A. dealbata leaves are blue-green in color.

“The flowers are produced in large racemose inflorescences made up of numerous smaller globose bright yellow flowerheads of 13–42 individual flowers. The fruit is a flattened pod, 2–11.5 cm long and 6–14 mm broad, containing several seeds. Trees generally do not live longer than 30 to 40 years”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_dealbata)

In the aforementioned park in Aydın there used to be a high band stand in the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. One day a week-it may have been on Saturdays-the city band came to play. The park has been paved and built over since.

                                                   A procession in Sliema, Malta in 2014