Mimosa bouquets: the bunch that survives drying out
Most cut flowers end in the bin. Mimosa ends on a shelf, because the fluffy yellow balls keep their shape and most of their colour once the branches dry, and a bunch that has finished its life in water carries on as dry material for months.
What we sell as mimosa is a branch of acacia rather than a single flower on a stem. Tiny pompoms run along its whole length, with narrow feathery leaves between them, and an armful of it weighs almost nothing.
Letting it dry on purpose
Nothing special is needed. Take the branches out of the vase when the water stops helping, stand them dry in the same vase, and keep them out of direct sun.
Colour fades a little and goes duller, closer to old gold than to the fresh yellow of the first day. The balls shrink slightly and stay round. After that the bunch needs nothing at all and sheds slowly, so it can sit on a shelf or over a door frame through the rest of the year.
The one thing dry mimosa dislikes is handling. Every time the branches are moved a few balls come loose, and by the third rearrangement the floor tells you so. Choose the spot once.
While it is still fresh
Mimosa dries out faster than almost anything else in the cooler, and it does so whether you want it to or not. The thin branch loses water across its whole surface, leaves included, and in warm dry air the balls tighten within hours.
That is why the bunch usually travels wrapped in film or paper.
Unwrap it at home and you can read its condition straight away. Fresh mimosa springs back, the balls are firm and do not shed pollen at a touch, and the branch bends rather than snapping. Over-dried stock gives itself away by the shower of loose balls at the bottom of the bag and by a colour that has slipped towards grey-yellow. Re-cut the woody ends, split them a couple of centimetres with a knife, and put the branches in water immediately. Keep the vase away from radiators, air conditioning and direct sun, because it is moving warm air rather than a shortage of water that finishes this flower off.
In water a fresh bunch holds for a few days before the balls begin to drop at the slightest movement.
A short season
Acacia flowers in winter and early spring, and the branches appear in shops for a few weeks around that period. Outside it there is nothing to buy, since greenhouse growing and cold storage do not stretch the season the way they do for roses or chrysanthemums.
Within the season the quality varies, because branches are cut at different stages. A fully open armful looks generous on the day and starts shedding sooner; a branch with some closed balls looks drier and lasts longer.
Mimosa bouquets are nearly always sent with tulips, whose season overlaps and whose solid heads give the yellow something to sit against. A recipient in Tashkent usually opens the paper on that pairing rather than on plain branches, and it is the tulips that go in the bin first.