Botanic Info

Coffee is a tropical evergreen bush belonging to the Rubiacee family and to the family of Coffea.

Explorations and botanic research carried out in the last 200 years lead to discovering and studying a large number of wild species. This has made it very difficult and complex to classify all the plants in the Coffea family. However, only two of them are important for commercial use and they are grown by the main growing countries: Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora (Robusta).
The bush can grow between 3m and 10m high, but in cultivation it is kept about 2,5m in order to improve production and to ease harvesting. It produces fruit after 4-5 years and its production cycle lasts 25-30 years, but the plant continues to live for about fifty years, and sometimes even longer. The leaves are a dark green on the top and lighter on the bottom, resembling laurel leaves. They grow in couples and they usually are 12-24 cm long and 5-12 cm wide. The flowers are small and white, they only last a few days and grow in bunches. Their smell is pleasant, similar to jasmine.

The fruit, called cherry, is a green drupe during growth and red or yellow when it is ripe. Inside the pulp there are the seeds, the coffee beans to be. There are two seeds per fruit, they are oblong and flat, convex on the outside and with a longitudinal cut on the inside. The seeds are covered by a thin skin called silver-skin. Once they are completely dry, the seeds loose their germination capacity after 3-4 months.

The plant grows between 35 degrees North and 35 degrees South latitude, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at altitude stretching between sea level and 1800m. The productive cycle of the plant is closely linked to rain falling in the areas where it is cultivated and to the number of rainy seasons. During the dry season the plant grows slowly and does not blossom, but with the first rains the plant resumes its vegetative phase and blossoms. Pollination is naturally carried out by the wind or insects (wild bees) and the fruit grows in 6-8 weeks. Cherries ripen from 6 to 8 weeks after blossoming, depending on the species.

Other important climatic factors are:

• temperature ( 15° - 30°);
• wet and cloudy weather, which helps overcoming the stress of the dry season;
• lack of wind;
• luck of direct sunlight

The plant needs a soft grownd, rich in humus coming from the forest. It has to be deep, permeable, cool, well drained and fertile, composed of 40% sand, 40% slit and 20% clay.