The Nature LibraryEN·ES
iNat·51599SpeciesPlantae13,022 field observations
  1. Plants
  2. ›Vascular Plants
  3. ›flowering plants
  4. ›Dicots
  5. ›Gentians, Dogbanes, Madders, and Allies
  6. ›madder family
  7. ›Rubioideae
  8. ›Psychotrieae
  9. ›Psychotria
Shiny-leaved Wild Coffee
Plate 1 of 1. (c) Mary Keim, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA) · via iNaturalist

Shiny-leaved Wild Coffee

Psychotria nervosa

Psychotria nervosa, also known as Seminole balsamo or wild coffee, is a shade tolerant medium-sized shrub native to Florida as well as the West Indies and Central and South America. It produces a "small, red, ellipsoid fruit" that resembles "the true coffee bean" in shape and attract birds. Its maximum height ranges from approximately 4–10 feet.

Despite its common name of wild coffee, this species is not known to contain any caffeine. In recounting anecdotes from others, the Florida ethnobotanist, Dan Austin, reported that the use of the seeds as a coffee substitute resulted in "only bad taste and terrible headaches." A similar account reported no known usage as a coffee substitute in Jamaica and noted the morphological similarity of its seed to coffee, the more likely reason for its common name being wild coffee. Reports of DMT in this species are also unsubstantiated.

Continue reading on Wikipedia
§·

Where it lives

Recorded sightings

—

geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.

Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.

§·

In the stacks

Searching the stacks…

Every page naming Psychotria nervosa in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →

This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 51599.