November 5, 2018 - This year's first mimosas on the Herceg Novi Riviera flourished on Topla.
The yellow sun, known as the mimosa flower, is the trademark of the largest town in Boka and it has been honored for almost half a century every year in February, a tourist propaganda event called the Mimosa Feast. Mimosas bloom from November to March.
The Mimosa is an exotic tree belonging to the acacia branch, which seafarers brought from their distant journeys to Herceg Novi. It is believed that the sailor Mićo Lepetić from Topla was the first to bring it to Herceg Novi from Australia, while in Europe it was mentioned for the first time in France, where it was planted around a castle in Cannes in 1860, from where it spread to other Mediterranean countries. There are about 800 species of this yellow flower, whose native land is in India, Africa, America, Australia and other dry, subtropical and tropical parts of the world.
At the end of the 1980s, there were about 5,000 mimosas in the area of the municipality, from which 30 flower wagons could be picked up. It is estimated that now only 10 percent of the trees are left. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, when the mimosa was massively planted, it was a lucrative job. Of the dozens of yellow flower producers, there are only a few left today. The mimosa tree has a short lifespan of up to 40 years. That is why the local government has launched an action of mimosa planting which is the symbol of the town so that it would not disappear completely and thus question the survival of the Mimosa Feast. In the area of the Herceg Novi municipality, 100 mimosa trees are being planted, of which 60 are allocated to the citizens and their private areas, and 40 will be planted on the municipal parcels. Thirty trees were planted before the commencement of the tourist season.
Text by Slavica Kosic, on November 4th, 2018, read more at Vijesti
