Wood, smoke and Mimosa already in flower

The recent good weather (now sadly coming to an end) has brought out many people in the afternoon walking, cycling or exercising their dogs in the unseasonably warm sunshine on the road to Tiglio above Barga. It has almost become the fashionable place to be seen these days. The following images and video were all shot on that road.

The smell that you should be imagining as you look at these images is that of a delicate wood smoke, freshly chopped wood and believe it or not, the Mimosa already in flower. The yellow mimosa is generally in bloom for International Women's Day on the 8th March, finding it way up at Tiglio in the first week in February shows just how strange this winter has been this year.

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Incidentally, we are actually wrong to call it Mimosa as it is not a true Mimosa at all but in fact is from the Acacia dealbata (Silver Wattle) – source

The genus Mimosa has had a tortuous history, having gone through periods of splitting and lumping, ultimately accumulating over 3,000 names, many of which have either been synonymized under other species or transferred to other genera. In part due to these changing circumscriptions, the name "Mimosa" has also been applied to several other related species with similar pinnate or bipinnate leaves but now classified in other genera, most commonly to Albizia julibrissin (Silk Tree) and Acacia dealbata (Silver Wattle)