WHY IS MANDELIEU THE CAPITAL OF MIMOSA?
FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE TANNER
Originally from Australia, these golden yellow shrubs arrived in Europe thanks to explorers and, as a result, were introduced into botanical gardens.
First in Great Britain, following James Cook's expedition on the Endeavour, during which botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, a student of Linnaeus, collected a number of plants on the east coast of Australia and brought back, in June 1771, acacias and eucalyptus trees to London. They naturally found a place in the greenhouses of the Royal Botanic Gardens.
In France, Nicolas Baudin's circumnavigation expedition aboard the Naturaliste and the Géographe brought back thousands of plants in June 1803 and March 1804, the rarest and most decorative of which soon reached the Château de La Malmaison at the request of Empress Josephine, who commissioned the botanist Etienne-Pierre Ventenat to describe them and the watercolourist Pierre-Joseph Redouté to reproduce them.
This is one of the first times, it seems, that the term mimosa appears under Ventenat's pen. In Linnaeus' classification, in fact, it only refers to shrubs of the genus Acacia, of the Fabaceae family, of the Mimosaceae subfamily characterized in particular by a flowering of cylindrical spikes, or glomeruli. From this time on, their vernacular name therefore becomes mimosa in France. However, it is not thanks to Joséphine de Beauharnais that the mimosa is established on the Côte d'Azur but by the arrival of the English who settle there, building villas and organizing their gardens. It is from there that the mimosa migrates into nature and gradually invades the Tanneron massif.
Soon, in 1830, farmers from the communes of Tanneron, Mandelieu, and Pégomas began cultivating it to sell its cut flowers in the middle of winter. The trend was launched, and all of Europe became fond of it. The race to cultivate mimosa could begin. It would never stop.
As for mimosa festivals, the first known ones have been held annually in Australia since 1910, on National Wattle Day, wattle meaning acacia. Everyone is keen to pin a sprig of Acacia pycnantha to their lapel, which, in 1912, appeared on the Australian coat of arms, joining the red kangaroo and the emu that had appeared there since 1908.
In France, it was on February 16, 1931 that the town of Mandelieu organized its first mimosa festival, which has since become emblematic of the town, with floats and a flower parade.
MIMOSA IN CULTURE
Mandelieu's main business is the cultivation of mimosa, the development of new varieties, its harvesting, forcing and shipping.
Mimosa growers were on the rise from the end of the 23th century. They built forcing rooms heated to 24°-XNUMX°C, and organized the transport of armfuls of flowers, first by donkey or mule cart, then by car to the Mandelieu railway station, from where they organized their shipment to Paris and all of Europe.
This seasonal activity led to the rise of another important craft: basketwork, which was needed to wrap bouquets. The basket makers who settled here at the turn of the 1900s generally came from Italy. They were found in Nice, La Bocca, and, from 1927, in Mandelieu in the Capitou district.
The division of labor is done within families, where everyone contributes. The men cut wicker and reeds on the banks of the Siagne, put them to dry in their workshop, then trim them and split them lengthwise. This is when the women enter the scene. They first tackle the bottom of the basket, weaving the wicker stems and planting stiff branches in them to shape the frame. They then work on weaving the reed canes, which gives the basket its final shape. However, the latter must meet precise size criteria and must ensure a solidity allowing it to hold 3 to 4 kilos of bouquets, which are sold by weight.
In the 1970s, Mandolocian basketry disappeared, reed baskets giving way to cardboard, which was easier to make and much less expensive.
THE MIMOSISTES AT THE HEART OF THE DEVICE
Without the mimosa growers, Mandelieu would not have become what it is today, the French capital of mimosa. They began cultivating the shrub very early on, like horticulturist Clément Narbonnaud. Initially for perfumery, but they quickly sought to create new varieties obtained primarily from the Acacia dealbata, with productive cultivars including the Mirandole, which today represents two-thirds of production, the Rustica with its large, drooping clusters, and the later-flowering, sulfur-yellow Gaulois, which accounts for a good third of the total.
However, if mimosa growers were able to meet the demand for bouquets with a cut flower, it is because they practiced forcing the plant very early on. Here, tradition attributes this discovery, always fortuitous, to one or another mimosa grower, notably Honoré Tournaire. That said, forcing had already existed for ages, practiced in particular by La Quintinie, in charge of the royal vegetable garden at Versailles, who, thanks to it, was able to serve asparagus to Louis XIV, who was so fond of it, in the middle of December. In any case, warm, humid and well-lit forcing rooms were created, mainly in Capitou, until there were around eighty mimosa growers here at the beginning of the 20th century, some of whom have remained renowned in the world of mimosa, such as Albert Armando, creator of Montbrillant, or Louis Brun-Fleurdespois, father of Bon Accueil with its dark green foliage and large glomerules, grown from Acacia decurrens and flowering in January-February. How can I name them all, these Avril, Bareste, Brunel, Cometti, Courrin, Martin, Négrin, Oggero, Paulhan, Pelazza, Perrissol, Rougier… who have worked and for many still work for the glory of the little yellow flower which blooms and gives off its fragrance in the heart of winter.
Its durability was also boosted by the development in 1949 in the Netherlands of a nutrient solution for cut flowers, Chrysal, with a mysterious composition, generally offered for each bouquet of mimosa, ensuring an additional survival of almost a week.
