Papaya seeds abound. Do seeds qualify as fruit? Of course not. The interaction between coffee plants and beans is similar.
Coffee beans grow on magnificent Coffea tropical evergreen bushes. Cherry plants can grow over 30 feet tall and produce red, oblong fruits. The cherry contains green coffee beans.
Peel the red delicious flesh to get the beans. (Since each cherry has two beans, filling a bag of coffee beans is laborious!) Although cherries are fruits, their coffee "beans" are seeds.
Cherry skin protects raw coffee beans, like with other fruits. Most people wouldn't want to eat it, but you can. Despite its mango- or watermelon-like taste, the slimy mesocarp is repulsive.
Some make herbal tea from cascara hulls. Even though it's not edible, the small cherry becomes brilliant red to alert harvesters when the fruit is mature and the coffee bean is ready. The gathered seeds are dried, roasted to a nutty brown, and crushed into coffee.
Coffee beans are fruit seeds. Coffee trees produce red cherries and little pink or white blossoms. These ornaments stand out against the plant's leaves. It can be dark green, purple, or yellow and 1 to 16 inches long.
Cherry-producing baby coffee plants mature after two or three years. Older trees (7-20 years) produce more cherries, although each plant averages 10 pounds (two pounds of raw coffee beans) every year.
Over 40 countries grow coffee. According to the National Coffee Association, there are 25-100 coffea plant species, but only four primary coffee beans with varying caffeine and flavor profiles. Popular varieties are arabica and robusta.
The "Bean Belt," between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, grows Arabica beans, which make up over half of global coffee production. This region grows most of the world's cacao beans, which is why coffee and chocolate go well together.
Brazilian, Indonesian, and African lowlands produce over a third of global robusta beans. Liberica and Excelsa beans are grown in Central and Western Africa, Malaysia, and the Philippines. No matter where they come from, cherry fruit helps deliver seed-beans safely into cups worldwide.