Peak Collins.

GEOS-1050-501.
2/4/2022.

Kentucky Coffeetree Report

The Kentucky Coffeetree is a shade tree originally native to the Midwest specifically the
Chicagoland area though as the name implies it has slowly made its way down south and is now
quite populous down here. The Coffeetree has trouble getting itself out there in terms of
propagation and I’d say the main reason for that is the fact that its seeds are toxic. The usual
fruiting advantage of: tree makes fruit - > fruit falls down - > creature eats fruit - > creature goes
and deposits seeds somewhere else only works if the creature in that journey survives the process
and this is such an issue for the Coffeetree that anywhere you can find info about it tells you up
front to keep cattle and other such animals far away from the ground underneath them. All that
coupled with the relative heft of the Coffeetree seeds, the fact that they are technically better
suited for dry climates and have trouble with flooding, and the fact that its one of the most
commonly harvested trees for the making of fenceposts and other such outdoor woodcrafts has
put the Coffeetree in a bad spot all around its southern grounds.
In the recent past the Coffeetree actually had a lot of help from humans in terms of
getting itself out there. It was used for a couple centuries by Native Americans for various
homeopathic remedy ingredients (bark, sap, and seeds), the seeds were also used as an
improvised way to make frontier coffee (which is where the tree gets its name) though that
process was pretty arduous due to the toxicity. The trees were also commonly used a ornamentals
especially for farmsteads and other buildings built in shade-less plains where the dryness would
stunt the growth of lesser trees. All of these avenues of human assistance have more or less dried
up over the last hundred years and as such the problems that were always there have just gotten a
little bit worse.