Yellow glory of Italy's mimosa harvest comes early Workers in northwestern Italy are rushing to harvest millions of bright yellow mimosa flowers, but they say the crop is coming increasingly early because of climate change. The local economy in the low and isolated hills has been largely dependent on the flowers for the last 50 years. They are hand picked, painstakingly packed into boxes and then despatched around Italy, to the rest of Europe and beyond. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES