Coffea liberica

Coffea liberica
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Plantae
Clade:Angiosperms
Clade:Eudicots
Clade:Asterids
Order:Gentianales
Family:Rubiaceae
Genus:Coffea
Species: C. liberica
Binomial name
Coffea liberica
Synonyms[1]
  • Coffea dewevrei De Wild. & T.Durand
  • Coffea dybowskii Pierre ex De Wild.
  • Coffea excelsa A.Chev.

Coffea liberica (or Liberian coffee) is a species of flowering plant in the Rubiaceae family from which coffee is produced. It is native to western and central Africa from Liberia to Uganda and Angola, and has become naturalized in the Philippines, Seychelles, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, French Polynesia, Central America, the West Indies, Venezuela, Colombia, Malaysia and Brazil.[2][3]

Cultivation and use

The Coffea liberica tree grows up to 20 metres in height, producing larger fruits than those found on Coffea arabica trees. It was brought to Indonesia to replace the arabica trees killed by the coffee rust disease at the end of the 19th century. It is still found in parts of Central and East Java today.

Liberica is a small crop in the Philippines. The city of Lipa in the province of Batangas became the country's biggest producer of arabica in the 1880s until that industry collapsed from coffee rust in the 1890s, killing almost all arabica plants in the area and threatening the variety with extinction. As in Indonesia, the liberica bean was brought in to replace it. Today, Batangas and the neighboring province of Cavite are producers of a varietal of liberica known as barako (Spanish: café verraco).

Taxonomy

Coffea dewevrei, Coffea dybowskii and Coffea excelsa were formerly considered as separate species but were reclassified in 2006 as synonyms for Coffea liberica var. dewevrei.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Davis, AP; Govaert R; Bridson DM; Stoffelen P (December 2006). "An annotated taxonomic conspectus of the genus Coffea (Rubiaceae)". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 152 (4): 465–512. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2006.00584.x.
  2. ↑ "World Checklist of Selected Plant Families: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew". apps.kew.org. Retrieved 2017-07-18.
  3. ↑ "Coffees of Malaysia". espressocoffeeguide.com. Retrieved 2018-04-16.
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