My Garden House is has enough Wild Coffee plants to be a coffee plantation. But I am not planning to go into competition with Starbucks®. Sub-tropical Florida climate makes many tame plants wild. I’d venture to say that it even makes some people wild.
The plant’s Latin name is “psychotria nervosa”. Now…I consider that a wild name for a plant. Looking up the word “psychotria” didn’t tell me it was an hysterical plant or cause hysteria. It didn’t say it had any psychotic episodes when it rains. And the word “nervosa” seems to translate to ‘nervous’. After 20 years of having this plant, I am actually calmer.
What calmed me down is that I found the Wild Coffee plant propagated itself all over my property. Seems it has underground root runners that travel. Other plants in my garden do: the Elderberry tree does, so does the Simpson Stopper. They spread next to each other and this looks different than when birds or squirrels drop individual seeds. I have a few Live Oaks that grew from those kind of seed drops.
The berry of the Crazy Nervous wild coffee plant looks like the bean of the coffee. But they are not related as plants. So no coffee plantation for me.
The Wild Coffee berries in this photo are red. They also come in deeper reds that are nearly browns. The berries are a favorite of birds and animals. There is no doubt that the raccoons love these. Most times when I come across raccoon poopie, the undigested berries are still visible.
The flowers are not dramatic. Many of Florida native plants are the same small petals. That’s how they manage the intense heat, humidity and occasional frost.
The Wild Coffee plant is the best visual and tactile texture. Those puffy stripes are consistent with both the Shiny and Non-Shiny Wild Coffee plants. I pluck those yearly for the student artwork. This wildly crazy nervous coffee plant makes the best printmaking plant.