This year, the mimosa harvest is very poor. Late or absent, the small yellow flowers which turn the bouquets yellow have suffered from the heat and rain of autumn.
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“In 100 years, we had never heard of such a harvest! My father has never seen this, it's a disaster“, deplores Benoît Augier, mimosist in Tanneron (Var). “We have 80% losses on the first variety, Mirandole, which flowers at the beginning of December, on the second, it is 100%. In addition, the wind of the last few days has destroyed the few flowers we had.“
The fault of an autumn that was too hot and too rainy. “In October, it was very hot and we had a lot of rain, so the branches grew and the flower fell“, he explains. The little yellow ball forms in June, before flowering between the end of December and the end of February. Over this long period, it must face the vagaries of the weather.
HAS Pégomas (Alpes-Maritimes), Fabien Reynaud notes the same phenomenon. “As it rained a lot in September and October with mild temperatures, the mimosa grew back into vegetation and abandoned some of the flowers which fell.“
But for him, it's the opposite, the first variety, early, was not harvested because there were too few flowers. The second, the Gaulois, began to be cut on December 31. “It's gone very badly“, he explains. He expects a harvest to be halved.
The farmer hopes to be able to harvest on his three hectares until February 20 and, ideally, until Grandmother's Day, March 2.
Also read: Emblem of the Côte d'Azur, the mimosa is a very invasive and flammable plant
The two farmers are now looking towards 2026, Benoît Augier hopes for a good harvest, “otherwise it will be very complicated“, he laments. For the moment, it is still early to quantify the economic losses of his farm.
