Above: Mimosa flowers on a drying rack.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin)
Perhaps you‘ve seen this otherworldly tree, with its mid-summer pink silk blooms that look straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
This is the “silk tree” Mimosa, or Albizia julibrissin, and this summer I had a chance to forage some of its flowers for the very first time. As the flowers dried in my home, their sweet cucumber-lime scent drifted in the air and they cheerfully winked at me each time I walked by 😉
Mimosa is not hard to come by here in the mid-Atlantic U.S. It’s an opportunistic tree that is considered an invasive species in 8 different mid-Atlantic and southern states. So why did I only just find a tree to harvest from? Safety. Mimosa trees thrive in disturbed soil, especially along highways and in vacant lots, where it would be exposed to heavy metals and other toxins. I finally found one which happens to be in a wooded area 100 meters away from my community garden plot! The bark is widely available in dried and tincture form, but the flowers are not commercially available, thus the need to source my own to use in client tea formulas.
Internal Use
Preparations: Decoction (bark), infusion (flowers), tincture (bark)
Energetics: neutral, sweet
In Chinese, Mimosa is called He Huan Pi/Hua, the “collective happiness bark/flower”, because of its enormous influence on the mood.
Mimosa’s bark, and the flowers to a lesser extent, calm the mind and uplift the mood. It relieves what Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) calls “disturbed heart shen”, shen being the spirit, which can become unsettled by our thoughts or an imbalanced nervous system. It also helps with “liver qi stagnation”. This refers to the Chinese liver, not the western organ, which is the energy responsible for the flow of qi (life force) throughout the body. The qi is very closely linked to the blood, and when the blood stagnates, circulation issues arise that can lead to pain, menstrual issues, and mood disorders. The bark used in a tea (decoction) or tincture formula, or the flowers used in a tea formula, helps to relieve anxiety, depression, and associated insomnia and nervous heart palpitations. It also helps to relieve pain caused by poor blood circulation and inflammation from trauma injuries.
My teacher, Herbalist David Winston, uses Mimosa as part of a formula for chronic grief and post-traumatic stress disorder. He warns that, if using Mimosa in a formula for someone with PTSD, make sure they are in active counseling as Mimosa can intensify catharsis and dreaming. Mimosa can also trigger manic episodes for those with bipolar disorder and should be avoided.
External Use
Preparations: Liniment (bark
For trauma injuries, it can also be part of a topical liniment formula (called a dit da jow in TCM).
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