The coffee tree belongs to the family is rubiacées, and more exactly in the kind coffea about sixty sorts which there are. About ten sort are cultivated among which 3 are the most used: variety coffea arabica, coffea canephora robusta, and coffea liberica.

Native of Ethiopia, the coffea arabica is a shrub has green and gleaming sheets, which could reach about ten metres high.It blooms two or three times a year. Of its attractive flowers short-lived whites and pink, emanates a delicate flavor of jasmine. Looking like cherries, fruits appear 8 months after the bloom. Every "cherry" contains two hemispherical grains of pale green color crossed by a longitudinal furrow.

The coffea canephora Pierre, which gives the robusta, is a shrub resisting well to insects and to diseases (where from its name). Its "cherries" are generally smaller than those of the arabica. Native of tropical western Africa, it blooms at low height. Fruits of the "robusta" give a very strong, inferior, little aromatic jusqu quality coffee à to the bitterness and very caféiné, which we intend mostly for the manufacturing of.

Source : ABCdaire du café – édition flammarion