Mimosa Trees Spell Summer in East Texas

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I spied the mimosa tree in bloom as soon as I turned the corner onto our county road. I veered onto the shoulder so I could get out and take a photograph. In nearly four years of living here at Three Geese Farm, I had never noticed this impressive specimen of what is considered in East Texas to be an invasive species. I have driven past this tree at least a few thousand times in our years out here. This time, the sun’s early morning rays highlighted its pink fern blooms just right. So I stopped.

My love of mimosa trees began when we moved to Longview from New Hampshire in the summer of 1968. We first lived with newly widowed Grampa Borders in Greggton for a couple of months. His widower status did not last long. By year’s end, I witnessed his wedding to a lovely woman. It was held at First Baptist Church downtown. The uniqueness of attending my grandfather’s wedding was not lost on me, especially at 13.

Once my dad secured a job as a sign painter with a company contracted to supply signs at what was then called Texas Eastman — the chemical company that remains one of the county’s largest employers — my parents began looking for a home on the south side of town, closer to his work. They soon closed on a ranch-style house on South Twelfth Street, directly behind the campus of what is now LeTourneau University. It would be their home for the next 39 years, until age and infirmity propelled them into assisted living.

Our maternal grandparents came down from New Hampshire the following summer. Grampa Bourque, my mom’s dad, was a skilled carpenter who had built the home in which they lived in rural Hopkinton, a few miles outside of Concord, my birthplace. He and my dad enclosed the carport to create a studio for my dad, where he would spend hundreds of hours drawing and painting when he got off work at Eastman.

Off to the side of that enclosed carport was a mimosa tree. It fascinated me as a kid. If one shook its branches, tiny showers of pink blooms would float to the grass. The seed pods were fun to pop open, like shelling purple hull peas. The tree’s branches were easily climbable, though rather brittle. Long after I had grown up (at least legally) and left South Twelfth Street, my mom had the tree cut down. She was not a fan of the mess it made on her lawn.

Mimosa trees (Albizia julibrissin, also known as silk trees) are considered invasive in East Texas, because they can crowd out native species. Butterflies and bees love the summertime blooms, so I figure mimosas are a fairly benign invasive species. They grow quickly, up to 40 feet high, and spread rapidly along roadside tree lines, largely hidden until they bloom. They have a short life span, about 10 to 20 years.

Like Bradford pear trees, another transplant from Asia that is often planted in the yards of new homes or to meet a city’s requirement to plant trees during commercial construction of a shopping center, the silk tree’s wood is brittle and prone to splitting. Our front pasture has a pair of Bradford pears planted by the home’s original owner. A thunderstorm split one of them nearly in two a few years ago. It survives, just a bit lopsided. I would happily trade it for a mimosa tree

When cooler weather finally returns to East Texas, sometime around Thanksgiving, I plan to stop again at that mimosa tree down on the corner of our county road and gather several seed pods. I will prepare the seeds according to the directions I found online and grow some seedlings inside our greenhouse. When spring comes and the seedlings have grown to 12 inches, I will plant a few of them here at Three Geese Farm. Perhaps in a few years, I can once again admire those silky pink blossoms blanketing the grass below.

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