The so-called mimosa (or Silver Watle), of which the cientific name is Acacia farnesiana, is a species of Acacia in the Mimosaceae family, native to southeastern Austrlia. Mimosa has spherrical flowers like the Mimosa Pudica (Sensitive Plant) but they are yellow so these flowers are also called yellow Mimosa.
Yellow Mimosa is a large size, multi-stem thorny shub of 4-7 meter tall. The leaves are bipinnate, glaucous blue-green to slivery grey. The flowers are produced in large racemose inflorescences made up of numerous smaller globose bright yellow flower heads of 13 – 42 individual flowers. According to a medical document by chemist Nguyen Tho Bien (Dalat city, Lam Dong province), yellow Mimosa is used by Cuban and Indian people as a special herb that treats sore throat and red eyes (its fruit), piercing pains in the bones and pimples (its bark). In some parts in America, the bark of this tree is also used to treat diarrhea and hermorrhoids.
At the end of the nineteenth century, yellow Mimosa was brought to Dalat from Australia, and it has been a popular flower on the Hightlands. Moreover, it has become one of the symbols of the city. Nowardays, this kind of flower grows wild almost anywhere possible: we can find it around villas , along the streets, on hill sides, in valleys, in forests or by the lakes. Yellow Mimosa begins to show its yellow flower late in winter and they open till the end of spring. This Australia-originating flower also brings with it such a special lengend that student couples often pick little flowers to fress in their books then axchange to each other as massage of love.
The lengend has it that, once upon a tiem, by the beauiful harbor of Sydney in Australia, there lived a handsome boy who was the son of a fisher man, and a girl, who was a very pretty and noble daughter of an aristocratic family. They were so much in love with each other. Unfortunately, her family forced her to marry to a royal Duke. The boy, having learned about his lover’s wedding, left his fishing life behind for the mountains with an aim to leave his lover a peaceful life. Just when he reached the mountain, there occurred a violent fire. The boy tried his best to save his thr lush forests, but he failed and could not save his own life. On hearing the news of the boy, the girl ran away from her husband in the newly-wed Eve to look for her lover. But in front of the scene, she could not believe in her eyes: her lover got burnt in the slum of ash from the burnt forests. She knelt dow and died beside him. From that time, in the mountainous region of the beautiful country of Australia where the couple died for their love, there emerged a plant with fragrant yellow flowers wich opened throughout spring. Love, there fore, in the massage from these lovely flowers.
