Coffee plants form white, multi-flowered, cymose inflorescences. Every year, an adult coffee tree produces 30,000–40,000 flowers.
Flowers are typical of the genus Coffea: short corolla tube, long style and exerted stamens. Such morphology would permit natural cross pollination, but nevertheless C. arabica is largely autogamous..
Flowers produced in dense clusters along reproductive branches in the axils of the leaves. White, sweet scented, star-shaped and carried on stout but short peduncles.
Bracteoles united, forming a cup-shaped epicalyx at the base of the flower. There are 5 calyx segments halfway the length, spreading out very widely at the anthesis and 5 stamens inserted in the corolla tube.
Because of collaters, which is produce a glue-like secretion, the flowers protect the plant from dehydration and insects.
Coffee plant flowering consists of two distinct processes: flower bud initiation and flower opening, or anthesis. Flower bud initiation occurs when the serial buds of plagiotropic branches are induced to differentiate into flower buds.
During the first 3–4 days after a water stimulus, meiosis occurs and there is an increase in the levels of endogenous, active, gibberellic acid in the flower buds.
Coffee flowers smell heavenly and also smell a little bit like citrus blossoms – pleasant, sweet, yet mild.
Coffee flower
