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Open my wish list →Every cup of coffee starts with a plant. Here are three true things about the bush, its fruit and its seeds.
Coffee plants are shrubs or small trees, native to tropical and southern Africa and tropical Asia. When grown in the tropics, coffee usually reaches 3 to 3.5 metres tall.
SourceCoffee plants grow red or purple fruits, often called coffee cherries, and each one holds two seeds called coffee beans. But a coffee cherry is not a true cherry, and a coffee bean is not a true bean.
SourceThere are over 120 species of coffee plant. The coffee trade relies mostly on just two of them, arabica and robusta.
SourceFrom Yemen
Wild coffee plants first grew in Ethiopia, but the drink itself has its roots in Yemen. By the fifteenth century, coffee was being grown in Yemen's highlands. There it was harvested, roasted and brewed by groups of Sufis, who drank it to keep their energy up during prayers at night. Later, coffee was grown on terraced slopes in Yemen's western highlands. Caravans carried the beans to ports on the Red Sea, especially Mocha. Until the end of the seventeenth century, Yemen was the world's main producer of coffee, and the name Mocha came to mean the drink itself. Research published in 2020 showed that most of the world's farmed arabica coffee varieties came from plants domesticated and farmed in Yemen.
SourceCoffee in England
From Yemen, coffee spread to Mecca. By the early sixteenth century it had reached Cairo, Damascus and Istanbul. It came into Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century, through Italy and other lands around the Mediterranean. The first coffeehouse in England opened in Oxford in 1650. The first one in London opened in St Michael's Alley in Cornhill, run by a man called Pasqua Rosée. Another Oxford coffeehouse, on Queen's Lane, began in 1654 and is still there today. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses across England. People gathered in them for deep talks about religion and politics.
SourceCoffea arabica
Arabica is believed to be the first kind of coffee people grew. Wild arabica is found only in forests in South Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen, and wild plants grow 9 to 12 metres tall. It began as a cross between two other coffee species, Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides.
SourceCoffea canephora
Often called robusta, this coffee grows naturally in Western and Central Africa, from Liberia to Tanzania and south to Angola. It grows as a tree or shrub to about 10 metres tall. It was not recognised as a coffee species until 1897, over a hundred years after arabica.
SourceCoffea liberica
Liberian coffee is native to western and central Africa. Its trees are very tall, reaching up to 20 metres high, and the crop is picked using ladders. Its cherries, beans and leaves are among the largest of all coffee varieties.
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