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Coffee Plant (Coffea arabica)

KOF-ee-uh uh-RAB-ik-uh
Also Known As Arabica Coffee
Flowering Plants

Coffea arabica is a flowering shrub or small tree of the madder family (Rubiaceae), growing nine to twelve meters in the wild, with opposite elliptic-ovate leaves, clustered white flowers and red or purple two-seeded drupes, coffee cherries, whose seeds are the coffee bean. Its natural populations are restricted to the highland forests of southwestern Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen, an Afromontane range rather than a lowland one. Arabica is believed to be the first coffee species ever cultivated and remains the dominant cultivar, supplying roughly sixty percent of world coffee production. The IUCN lists it as Endangered in the wild, chiefly from climate pressure and deforestation on its narrow native range, a status distinct from the security of the cultivated crop grown across the tropics today. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Classification
Living or Extinct
Yes 1
Derived from this species' own Conservation Status: this atlas's IUCN category list has no Extinct value, so a set conservation-status is itself evidence of living status (w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill).
Scientific Name
Coffea arabica L. 1
Conservation Status
Endangered 1
Connections

In Biome

Source Coffea arabica (Wikipedia)

Open Questions

Source Coffea arabica (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Coffea arabica (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Description; Distribution and habitat; Uses sections
    The natural populations of Coffea arabica are restricted to the forests of South Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Yemen.
  • Taxonomy
  • Conservation status infobox
  • Introduction
  • In Biome: Tropical Rainforest, Distribution and habitat
    Endemic to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia
  • Open Questions: How Large Is the Wild Coffea arabica Population?
View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
How Large Is the Wild Coffea arabica Population?

The IUCN Endangered rating for wild Coffea arabica is built from range decline and climate-suitability modeling rather than a direct wild census with a published number, so how many wild individuals remain in the Ethiopian, South Sudanese and Yemeni highland forests is not established.

What would resolve this A range-wide field census of wild Coffea arabica stands across its native Ethiopian, South Sudanese and Yemeni highland forests.
Conservation botany / field ecologyCoffea arabica (Wikipedia)
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