Alexander - Thanks for sticking up for me! Mimosa's are not a problem in CT or elsewhere in New England. I count a total of eight Mimosa's on my 55 mile drive on I-95 to NYC. I have seen Mimosas every few yards on roads in Virgina, and that is what I call invasive.

I will keep my Mimosa another year or two and hope for blooms. I hear they are great hummingbird attractors and at the moment hummingbird activity is at its peak. Thanks for the advice.

I am happy to report that my Mimosa tree has ONE bloom. The bloom is a deep pink (mine is Albizia julibrissin 'Rosea'), and I'm sure next season it will have many more. Despite all of the negative opinions on this tree, it is one of my absolute favorites and will be a big hit with the local hummingbirds. A taste of the tropics, in my Connecticut yard...
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That is gorgeous! Congratulations. The mimosa has got your message.

I have a Albizia julibrissin ÂErnest Wilson seedling. A place not far from here, The Fragrant Path, says this about this tree:

"Silktree, is commonly seen in the South, but is a real pleasure to behold in zone 5. The variety ÂErnest Wilson aka ÂRosea has been blooming all summer long in our gardens for many years. The red powder-puff flowers have a fragrance that reminds me of ripe peaches and are very attractive to Swallowtail and other butterflies. In China it is known as the Happiness Tree and is an important medicinal plant. Zone 5 when established."

""I would not call a few trees in ditches invasive. Here in zone 6, I make an 80 mile drive to New York. I counted 12 mimosas in bloom last time (July).""

That's the way they started here too. You will see more and more as the years go by.

Have you ever been to CT, the place is beautiful. If they want to trash it, let them go right ahead. No sweat off our back.

Tourism is a big industry in new england, let those ghetto palms take over and lets see what the fall color is like then.

>>I am happy to report that my Mimosa tree has ONE bloom.I like the shape of your tree I love the tropical looking leaves. Even if in my zone Mimosa would never flower I would gladly have this tree in my garden. I am looking for any nursery in northern Illinois that have this tree but I also wonder how fast this tree grow from seed? I have three Catalpa trees that I started 4 years ago from seed and one in my front yard is already 12 feet tall...this year my Catalpa for the first time had a lot flowers and I see many long seed pods... if anyone have seeds of mimosa I would love to trade redbud or catalpa seeds for mimosa seed.

JanuszB

Yes, Connecticut is a beautiful state with sugar maples and oaks dominating our rural countryside. There is no way "ghetto palms" will ever become an invasive pest up here. Our winters are simply too cold. Just wait a few years??? Mimosa trees have been grown as ornamentals in Southern New England for many decades and seeing one of these trees by the side of the road is very rare. Save your trash talk for Zone 7+ gardeners and leave us well informed Zone Sixers alone.

JanuzB -

You can find Mimosa seeds online:

www.trees-seeds.com/Seeds_for_growing_Silk_Trees.html

Also, Forest Farm (forestfarm.com) will ship you saplings. This is how I obtained my tree in the above pictures. Forest Farm's online catalog does not show Albiza 'Rosea', but their print catalog has it. If interested in a live tree, give them a call. Good luck.

Is mimosa tree still considered invasive in zone 7?

In my region of North Virginia, many invasive trees continue to thrive on disturbed land. I still see a ton of "trees of heaven" and Japanese honeysuckles alone the road. I hate them. The land-owners are not doing anything to remove them.

However, I only see one mimosa; and it has died naturally this year. Just a couple years ago, there appears to be a large number of them. I think some disease, or their short life-span, has kept them in check.

To alabamatreehugger, and others from the South who have had problems in the past with wildly-spreading mimosas in your backyards :

Don't just think 'automatically' that people in the North have the same issues with Albizia !!

On the contrary, we've grown several species of mimosas over the years... with VERY MINIMAL 'escape' of them into adjacent areas.
...probably has alot to do with our shorter growing seasons, I'd imagine.

But we sort of live 'on the edge' with them in S. Ohio with just cold hardiness issues, alone.

I remember...during the extremely cold winter of '76... that my dad pretty much lost the entire batch of them he'd (illegally) dug up & brought back from a canoe trip our family took in Tennessee, and then planted in our landscape in the very early 70's.
It had gotten down to -25 F at one point the winter of '76 in the Cincy area, with relatively little snow cover for insulating tree roots, if I remember correctly.
That wiped them out.

A lot of Mimosa's here. Many look weak. We have a HUGE one on the path to a local park. It is the thickest Mimosa I've ever seen. I think many are dying off the past couple years b/c of our drought and excessive heat.

(I forgot to mention my original thought !)

I agree completely with lkz5ia that too much 'N' could very well be the problem with swct's mimosa not blooming.

I only give our mimosas relatively sparing amounts of organic tea at times, and /or a yearly composting along with the rest of the landscape and lawn.

I'd imagine high N synthetic ferts could indeed be pushing out too much foliage.

...or too much shade to successfully go to flower.

All mimosas are bisexual...so cross-pollination from one tree to another simply isn't an issue.
Although when they're planted in GROUPS, I've noticed, they do tend to flower better. But this could be because of the 'mutual protection' factor that a copse of trees usually provides, more than anything else.

In all the years I've been growing mimosas I've only lost ONE to wilt disease. Probably 12-15 years ago. I noticed at that time that the somewhat clayish soil had become unusually COMPACTED in and around this tree.
So, since then I've made sure any new ones I plant...are planted in a tilled area where the native clay's been incorporated with quite a bit of SAND and COMPOST made of leaf & manure origin.

Knock on wood....I haven't seen wilt disease since.

markin spring borooh,

I love the chocolate type (purple) Mimosa. They look very interesting. Do you have them?

I'm only one zone down and while they are not widespread they are not well behaved. One of my neighbors had one and I had to continuously pull them out of my yard. And I mean hundreds of them. They are certainly not kudzu but they are just as bad about spreading as privet if not worse.

I love mimosas. I have a few in pots on my screened in back porch that I am going to try to bonsai. I would never plant one in my yard though.

There are 3 of these within about 5 miles of my house (we're pretty serious gardeners and have been up and down every street numerous times...lol).

We lived next door to one (which is where I got seeds years ago) and while I sometimes had to pull a volunteer, it certainly wasn't too big a problem. If a volunteer was left I never noticed one survive a winter, eithout protection or having grown in a pot to get some size first.

They leaf out late here which leaves us wondering each year if they're coming back or not. I have a potted one that comes in and out yearly and it may end up in the yard, or maybe not.

Barring some sort of hardiness mutation, I'm agreeing with the other zone 6ers that this plant is definitely better behaved in the north than it is in the south (and my last 2 winters barely reached zone 6 lows in my yard)

~Chills

snasxs,

I just received some seeds recently.

I started a tray of 10 seeds of Albizia j. Durazz on my windowsill about a month ago, and I've only had 4 seeds emerge. They are all about 4" tall now.

IF I can continue to keep both of our two cats from eating them, they should be OK to transplant outside in the shade in a couple weeks.

I love the aroma of the mimosa blossoms & it is a very pretty smaller light shade tree! BUT, the spent flowers & seeds are a mess (isn't the original poster's photo show it by a swimming pool?!!) & seedlings come up all over here. Still, in the right place I'd love to have one again in the yard.

I have a small young mimosa and it hasn't bloomed , grows nicely, but shouldn't it bloom. Full sun and they are all over the place in my area blooming right now.

markinspringborooh,

Do the seeds come from the pods or the flowers?

It's funny...this topic was on my mind as I drove back from work today, admiring and despising the dozens of mimosa trees lining the ditches here in North Central NC. I noticed that while many were flamboyantly blooming, some that were just as tall and established were not blooming at all. Are mimosas dioecious?

I'm speculating that they are monoecious. There are some blooming now in the Dayton, OH area, specimens i speculate that are at least a couple of miles from another specimen.

They are a gamble in our zone. I planted one last year, died to the roots, now i have a waist high thicket of suckers. Some folks have some multi-trunked trees in bloom, about twenty feet high. (im actually in Zone 5b, ive moved further north since i registered.)

I planted a crape myrtle that did the same thing, died to the roots and sprouted back.

Thompson & Morgan and J.L. Hudson both sell Mimosa (Albizia julibrissen seed.

Trees of all kinds raised from seed may take many years to reach flowering size, vary widely in when that point is reached. Vegetative fractions like grafted or cutting raised plants have the sexual maturity of the parent specimen and are not typical.

If some silk trees are growing wild there then that means there is some potential for a larger problem to develop. Some of the top priority noxious weeds listed in my state are also represented by small infestations at this time. The thinking behind Class A listing for these is to accomplish preemptive strikes.

Pampas grass has been frequently planted here for a long time but I did not see it growing wild until recently. Now I am seeing growing in the edges of highways and where streams back up before entering culverts all over the place.

I brought a mimosa seedling home from visiting relatives in SE MO probably 7 years ago. Every year I insist that I'll shovel prune it if it doesn't bloom that year...but I just can't do it. This is one of the few years that it did not have much if any dieback...so I've got my fingers crossed.

My Ernest Wilson mimosa has started blooming here in Portland for the first time. It's about 15 feet tall at least; only has about 4 blooms on it but sure does look nice. Like singleton's on the NH seacoast it didn't get much dieback this past winter and in fact I didn't even protect it during last winter except to throw snow around the trunk.

Who was trash talking CT? Was a post deleted or something? I'm confused by the defensiveness.

For you guys in New England. How long do Mimosa live there....20-30 years or so? I like the looks of the tree but they just don't live very long down here at all.

>Who was trash talking CT? Was a post deleted or something? I'm confused by
>the defensiveness.

It's an ongoing thing here....most threads about mimosa include someone from the south complaining about what a horrible weed it is and telling us that we shouldn't plant it, and that it will soon take over the Northern states as well.

Have 4 mimosas, 3 straights and 1 rosea. 2 straights planted Dec05 in raised patio are now blooming prolifically for 1st time. Will take pictures and post them. Very beautiful. Elongating branches festooned with fluffy flowers. Rosea planted in same raised patio, young, small, dies back each of last 2 winters, no blooming yet. Straight planted in front 'swimming pool' has a lot of die-back and no blooming, will transplant it this winter. It does not get enough heat and sun to thrive.

It's an ongoing thing here....most threads about mimosa include someone from the south complaining about what a horrible weed it is and telling us that we shouldn't plant it, and that it will soon take over the Northern states as well.

Sorry I just don't see that in this thread at all. Perhaps quirkyq is taking things much too personnaly.

An example in the most recent mimosa thread:

Here is a link that might be useful: mimosa thread

I have a 6 year old Mimosa that hasn't yet bloomed, but am happy to find out that it will bloom eventually.

I started mine from seed .. soaked it in warm water for about 8 hours, then planted it in a small container until it was large enough to be planted outside. It's done quite well and has a beautiful shape.

I am 50 miles west of St. Louis. There are not a large number of Mimosas here.. but if you drive a hundred miles south you'll see them everywhere.

My 2 patio finally-blooming ones, planted Dec05 so in the ground 2 years 7 months when these pictures taken:

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I'm originally from central NJ, and mimosa is definitely LESS prevalent now than it was 15 years ago when I was a kid. We had quite a few larger specimens in my neighborhood back then, but now there are none. The wilt disease took all the large ones back in the 90s. It was horrible to watch, seeing as I really liked the tree. Someone just started growing a young one down at the end of the street... we'll see how long it lasts. There is a mature one about 2 miles away... I thought it would be dead by now, but its still alive and about 20 feet tall. Still, in northern zone 7 and points further north, its definitely NOT invasive, except perhaps in very disturbed lands where quite frankly its nice to see anything grow. It certainly doesn't take over natural areas.

I just planted a bare-root mimosa this summer & it has leafed out nicely. (I was optimistically hoping it'd bloom next year but the above posts make me think I'll need to be more patient!) I'm wondering what all I should do to protect it for winter?? Here in west-central Ohio we've already had several light frosts but the rough stuff isn't far behind. Suggestions??

this message is for tld6255: you might try wrapping your mimosa, the trunk, and some of the branches, in a couple sheets of newspaper and then pressing aluminum foil over that; that seems to have helped mine get through Southern Maine winters, which can drop to -10 to -15 degrees at times. Btw, did you get the hardier type, the Ernest Wilson mimosa? I have one of those now which is about 20 feet tall.

I have two huge Mimosa trees in my back yard, and they dont bloom at all! They drop those horrible pods but no flowers. I live in Colorado, maybe thats why? I know for a fact that they were planted in 1962, everyone tells me they are short lived but mine are rockin on. Why wont they flower?

If your trees have been forming pods then they have been flowering. If you have not noticed the flowers, which are very showy on mimosa, then one possibility is that your trees are not actually mimosas. Locust trees have similar leaf structure as mimosa, do not produce showy flowers, and do drop large pods. Do a google image search for "locust pod" and see if that is what you have.

Alex

Maybe its a male!

I will check out the Lotust tree, thanks for the help.

Ok so I looked up the locust tree, and Yeah looks like my trees. Except, they also flower, pretty white fragrant flowers, and mine dont have any flowers, just lots of pods. So I dont get it?

I planted my mimosa 3 yrs ago. am still waiting on it to bloom. mine doesn't get seed pods yet either... every year, i watch it grow taller and taller, and grow by leeps and bounds, but still no flowers :(

I have a 2yo mimosa that planted itself in my NJ yard & was delighted as it reminds me of my mother who has passed.

It's growing like crazy but no blooms. I'll be patient & appreciable all the comments posted!

I have a mimosa tree that I dug up from my sisters yard. It was approximately 5' tall when it was dug out and now it's over 15' tall. I have it planted in the sun - it gets little to no shade. I do not fertilize at all. My mimosa tree has not bloomed once (and I don't get seed pods). My neighbor who lives less than a quarter mile from me has mimosa trees that are currently in full bloom. How many more years do I give this tree to bloom? I can plant other trees if there's no hope for this one.

Glyphosate or Triclopyr work great for dealing with mimosas. If the tree is large, prune to near ground level and apply either product to the freshly exposed phloem. A single treatment, done right, will probably be enough.

I'm not looking to kill the tree unless there's no hope of it ever blooming.

It's still my recommendation for this type of tree. Here's a link you might find useful: Albizia julibrissin

Mine is now about 12 ft high, but no blooms either 😞

I came across an interesting article by the LA Daily News. The author wrote about a volunteer Mimosa tree growing along the freeway that does not receive any irrigation (in the dry SW). “Mimosa and jacaranda trees are known to bloom more heavily than usual in times of drought. Both are native to drought frequented habitats — Western Asia for mimosa and Argentina for jacaranda — and the way they respond to drought stress is by going into survival mode, which means forming more flowers and thus more seeds than usual.”

Maybe you are watering too much during the blooming period. My first thought was too much shade or nitrogen, but i think this article makes a compelling argument for drought specimens.

https://www.dailynews.com/2015/06/04/mimosa-isnt-just-a-drink-its-a-tropical-exotic-tree/