Wild Coffee

Description

Botanical Name:   Psychotria nervosa

Common Name:    Wild Coffee, Shiny-leaf Wild Coffee, Seminole balsamo

Description:    Looking for a short, Florida native shrub with a funky name for the shadier areas of your nativescape? Well, then wild coffee may just be what you need.

Wild coffee’s spring to summer flowers are white to greenish-white and are small and tubular. They are followed by berries that are red, green, and brown. They are ripe when they’re bright red.

Its native habitat is in dry mesic to xeric hammock, high areas in swamps, coastal shell mounds, and pine flatwoods. It grows great in well-drained sand, loam, and lime rock soils that are moderately dry to moist. Can handle occasional flooding (rain gardens!) and occasional drought.  It needs part sun (no afternoon sun), part shade, or shade. Part shade is optimum for lots of blooms and berries. In colder winters, it’ll be deciduous to semi-evergreen. In warmer winters, it is semi-evergreen to evergreen.

A mature plant grows 2 – 6 feet tall x 1 – 3 feet wide. Here in the northern part of the state we should expect it to be on the shorter end of that scale. It has a moderate growth rate.

Wild coffee is a nectar plant for atala, great southern white, julia, Schaus’ swallowtail, and other butterflies. Its flowers also attract bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and other pollinators. Birds like to eat those red, green, and brown berries. Is deer resistant. It readily reseeds itself.

If you have a dog or cat who likes to taste the plants in your garden, you might want to plant this where they can’t get to it because it is toxic to them.

This plant does look similar to the very invasive Ardisia crenata. The easiest way to tell the difference is the leaves of the Ardisia are scalloped, while Wild Coffee leaf edges are smooth.

Has low tolerance to long-term flooding by salt or brackish water. Has moderate tolerance to salty wind but not direct salt spray.

This plant in 1-gallon containers is 5 – 15 inches tall.

Plant Lore:  Just because it’s called “wild coffee” does not mean that you can use its berries to make coffee. Don’t do that cause it apparently goes not taste good. General consensus is it got that name cause the berries look somewhat like coffee berries. The genus Psychotria comes from the Greek psyché, which means “life” or “soul.” It could refer to the medicinal properties of some plants within the genus. The species epithet nervosa is from the Latin nervosus, meaning “sinewy,” and likely refers to the plant’s conspicuous veins.

Florida Hardiness Zones 9 – 11