What's a Coffee Plant?
Botanical Classification: Coffea Arabica
About
The Coffee Plant is a type of flowering shrub native to the Ethiopian highlands. It’s best known as the source of coffee beans that are used to make our vital morning coffee. It has a lot of features that make it an attractive house plant, including beautiful white flowers and berries that contain the coffee “beans.” Coffee plants can get quite large when grown outdoors. They will start bearing fruit after three to five years, and can continue to produce fruit for roughly 50 years.
Coffee plants are fairly easy to take care of. They prefer shade and indirect sunlight, as well as temperatures around 70-85 degrees. Because coffee plants are from tropical, humid forests, you should always keep their soil moist and frequently mist their leaves.
Fun Fact
Coffee is native to Ethiopia, but as the name Coffea arabica suggests, it really took off in popularity in Arabia. One of the major ports of coffee trading in antiquity was the city of Mocha in Yemen— it’s from this word that we derive the coffee term “mocha”! Coffee is now grown all around the world, notably Brazil and the island of Java (hence coffee’s nickname, “java”).
Pictured Left:Coffee Plant
