The coffee flower…these delicate white blooms are not only beautiful but also integral to the coffee plant’s life cycle and important to the development of the beans that turn into the brew in our daily cup.
Coffee flowers grow on the coffee tree and are typically small, white, star-shaped blossoms. The flowers have a jasmine-like fragrance. While they may look delicate, coffee flowers are the reproductive organs of the plant, playing a key role in the development of coffee beans.
The coffee tree, depending on its variety and the climate in which it’s grown, blooms once or twice a year. This blooming period is short, lasting only a couple of weeks, but during this time, the trees can be covered in thousands of flowers, creating a beautiful botanical appearance on the coffee farms. The flowers only bloom at night, they are the “night owls” nocturnal if you will…and are usually pollinated by insects, the most common being bees. They produce a small, green fruit. This fruit is known as the coffee cherry, that will eventually mature and become the beans that we will end up consuming.
The arrival of the coffee flowers is highly important for the entire coffee-growing process. It marks the beginning of the coffee fruit’s development. If the pollination process ends up not successful, there would be no coffee cherries to harvest, which would lead to no coffee beans. Environmental conditions are key and since we are living in times when our environment is at higher risk than ever before, the delicate balance of the coffee flower and it being able to bloom properly is never guaranteed in abundance.
Without them, there is no coffee
In Ethiopia, an origin place for coffee, the flowers are sometimes even incorporated into local rituals or festivals. Coffee flowers may not make it into your morning cup; they are vital to the production of the delicious and savored coffee bean.
