--- Photos (one is below the text) by Thomas Hook

With leaves like ferns, beautiful, sweet-smelling pink-puffball flowers and a tropical aesthetic, mimosa trees are moving north with global warming. These fast-growing, messy and rather short-lived trees are becoming increasingly common in southern New England. I think that they’re beautiful, romantic and a bit sadness-producing. And unlike most trees in our region, they bloom into late summer.

They also create a bit of a jungle feeling, which takes a while to get used to in our clime, but then our clime is changing.

Try to ignore their overproduction of seedpods, which means that if you have a mimosa you may soon have a mimosa population explosion.

Get used to those drawbacks and enjoy the spectacle that these immigrants from the South create.

Mr. Hook, a distinguished nature photographer, took these pictures last week on his andhis wife’s forested land in Southbury, Conn.

-- Robert Whitcomb