Kentucky Coffee Tree Facts

Scientific name: Gymnocladus dioicus
Common names: Kentucky Coffee Tree, Kentucky coffeetree

Tree List

Summer habit - 80 year old tree Kentucky Coffee Tree	bipinnately compound leaves of Kentucky Coffee Tree	winter branches of Kentucky Coffee Tree	bark and accession tag of Kentucky Coffee Tree
greenish-white flowers of Kentucky Coffee Tree, larger photo shows many more flowers	seed pods on Kentucky Coffee Tree on late summer	Winter picture of Kentucky Coffee Tree with rachis remaining on tree	Kentucky coffeetree seed pod split open to display seeds

If you have a high speed connection, view enlargements of all pictures of the Kentucky Coffeetree on a single page.

Another alternative is to choose one of the photos of the Kentucky Coffee tree - Gymnocladus dioicus - above to see an enlargement and description, or choose Next to view the enlargements in sequence.

Most of the pictures were taken on the west side of Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois at parking 18.

I was facinated by the tree at the beginning of the entrance road to the parking lot and took many pictures during the spring and summer. The tree was full of flowers and I waited and watched for the fruit, which never appeared. At the end of summer, I discovered that all of this time I had been parking directly in front of another Kentucky Coffee Tree which DID bear fruit and I had never noticed.

Flowers:

Dioecious (male and female on separate trees), greenish-white with tinges of burgundy. appear in late May to early June.

Leaves:

alternate, binpinnately compound. May reach length of 36". 3-7 pairs of pinnae with 6-14 leaflets each. Lower leaves usually simple. One of the last trees to leaf in Midwest.

Buds:

Terminal is absent. Laterals are small, pubescent and sunken into the twig.

Leaf color:

Fruit:

Reddish brown to dark brown leathery pod. Pulp is green in fall and winter, but those that I opened in Spring had golden pulp. Pods may remain on tree through the winter. The Kentucky Coffee Tree is native to the midwestern and eastern United States.

Classification:
Kingdom Plantae -- Plants
  Subkingdom Tracheobionta -- Vascular plants
   Superdivision Spermatophyta -- Seed plants
    Division Magnoliophyta -- Flowering plants
     Class Magnoliopsida -- Dicotyledons
      Subclass Rosidae
       Order Fabales
        Family Fabaceae -- Pea family
         Genus Gymnocladus Lam. -- coffeetree P
          Species Gymnocladus dioicus (L.) K. Koch -- Kentucky coffeetree P

Source for classification listing: USDA, NRCS. 2004. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.5 (http://plants.usda.gov). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.