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Species information
Scientific name: Coffea arabica L.
Common name: Arabica coffee or coffee
Conservation status: Vulnerable (provisional assessment)
Habitat: Humid, evergreen forest
Taxonomy
Class: Equisetopsida
Subclass: Magnoliidae
Superorder: Asteranae
Order: Gentianales
Family: Rubiaceae
Genus: Coffea
The Tropical Fruit Garden at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is one of the many gardens within the Gardens at Selby. Established in 1979 by its first curator, Dr. Russell J. Seibert, it was renovated 30 years later thanks to generous support from the community. Today, we are going to explore a little more about the most widely cultivated tropical fruit in the world, which may surprise you. It’s an ancient fruit whose origins are more than one thousand years old!
The botanical name for coffee is Coffea arabica and it’s a woody shrub in the family Rubiaceae. It is native to the understory of east African highlands of Ethiopia and Yemen. It grows best with frequent rains, and in warm, hilly areas 2-4,000 feet above sea level. Today it is cultivated in high tropical regions around the globe, following the equatorial belt, with Brazil being the world’s top producer.
Yields vary from harvest to harvest, but a single coffee tree usually provides about a pound of ground coffee – or 40 cups. Typically taken from a cutting, it takes 3-4 year for a coffee tree to mature. Once mature, a tree typically bears one-two pounds of beans per growing season. In the wild, coffee can grow up to 39’ but cultivated trees are usually kept short to make harvesting easier. Small white flowers which smell like jasmine mature into deep red berries known as “coffee cherries” which are dried, roasted and ground before being steeped into America’s favorite morning beverage.
As the world’s second most tradable commodity after oil, coffee is now a multibillion dollar global industry and growing. The coffee culture that has sprung up over the last few decades has led to an overwhelming increase in demand for this liquid gold. Given that most coffee growing regions are also home to some of the most delicate ecosystems on earth, coffee production can be a threat to the environment and biodiversity.
Americans are the world’s leading coffee consumers with an estimated consumption of 450 million cups a day or 150 billion, with a B, cups per year. Visitors to Selby Gardens enjoy the locally hand-roasted coffee prepared by Local Coffee & Team and served in the Selby House Café. Come by, grab a cup, and take a stroll through the Tropical Fruit Garden to see where it all began .. we look forward to seeing YOU in the Gardens.
David Troxell
Selby Gardens’ Botany Volunteer