20 April 2019

When Blooms the Coffee

Forget roses or lilies…. for millions of people around the world these are, perhaps unknowingly, the most important flowers in their lives. Without them mornings would most likely be quite different.  The urge to sleep might not be foiled, the two-glasses-of-wine-too-many pounding at the temples would not be relieved and almost certainly the amount of work-based homicides would rise.  Some people might not manifest any discernible personality at all throughout the entire day.

This is the coffee flower and upon its gentle bloom civilization as we know it depends. Not only that, it’s gorgeous.

Image Chip and Andy

Image flypig
There is a pleasing order to the way the coffee flowers extend in neat rows along the branches of the coffea plant, as if some invisible arranger had been at work or play or both.  Untidy, chaotic nature has cleaned up its act. The glossy green leaves highlight the pure whiteness of the Coffea arabica flowers (globally the most cultivated variety), arrayed in immaculate natural ranks.  These particular white lines are destined to become the morning medication of countless numbers of people.  Yet that is still some way off.  The flowers must inevitably wither, to be replaced by the berries and their seeds which must then undergo a number of processes before they become the familiar roasted coffee of our cupboards, restorer of lucidity, guardian of sanity, keeper of peace.

Image flypig
Yet for a brief period of time these resplendent flowers represent everything that coffee is but give promise, too, of everything it will become.  When blooms the coffee, nations persevere.

Image Coconut Wireless
Image Chip and Andy
Image Thomas CC
Image rooracer
Image mauroguanando
Image counterculturecoffee
Image chip and andy
Image Wikimedia
Image Wikimedia
First Image joj nicdau
Small picture - Michael Allen Smith