Is Coffee a Fruit or a Nut? (Solved & Explained!)

Coffee is neither a fruit nor a nut, it’s a stone or seed from a fruit. This fruit, otherwise called a coffee cherry, isn’t necessarily something people eat although it is edible. However, many animals do tend to eat them as part of their daily diet. Regardless, botanically and scientifically speaking, coffee beans are fruit stones.

Likewise, coffee isn’t a legume or a type of bean. But all of this comes based on the botanical definitions of fruits, nuts, berries or legumes. They are, by all technical standards, a drupe. This means coffee cherries share similar characteristics to things like almonds, walnuts, peaches, apricots and avocados.

Is Coffee a Fruit, Like a Berry?

Coffee, in and of itself, is not a fruit. It comes from a fruit, which we refer to as a coffee cherry. Therefore, it isn’t a berry like a strawberry, blueberry, mulberry or blackberry. While coffee cherries are small like a berry – indeed, people labeled them as such for hundreds of years – they are not berries in the botanical sense.

Berries are technically a fleshy fruit with three layers: exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp. The endocarp of a coffee cherry is rather hard, not soft. Therefore it doesn’t fall in the same category as a tomato or grape, for example.

What Are Coffee Fruits?

Coffee fruits, what we often refer to as coffee cherries, are actually more like stone fruits. In this way they share characteristics with avocados, walnuts, peaches, almonds and apricots. A coffee cherry has a seed-bearing body that forms from a flower.

When coffee fruits ripen, they turn to red while some can be purple or yellow. The outer skin is incredibly thin with a thin pulp and a large seed encased within the flesh. Actually, the seed takes up most of the space within the fruit itself.

This means coffee cherries are drupes, which is another name for stone fruit. It doesn’t split to release its seeds. These must undergo physical extraction by breaking open the flesh to obtain the stone. When the fruit’s ripe, the outer fleshy part surrounds a hard shell with the kernel inside.

So, Are Coffee Cherries a Type of Cherry?

No, coffee cherries aren’t actually a type of cherry. That’s just the name referred to them in the industry to distinguish the stone from the fruit. For all intense and purposes, understand that the fruit of a coffee plant is a type of drupe. So, technically speaking, we should call them “coffee drupes.”

What Are the Botanical Parts of a Coffee Cherry?

There are several layers to a coffee cherry. The outer skin of a coffee cherry is the pericarp or exocarp. Then there’s the pulp or mesocarp followed by a layer of pectin. Closer to the stone is the parchment (also known as a hull or endocarp).

Right up next to the stone, or coffee bean, is the silver skin which is the botanical testa or epidermis. Once all of these layers come away, you then get the actual bean which is the endosperm, per botany terminology.

Does Coffee Fruit Flesh Have Any Use or Purpose?

While the skin and flesh of a coffee cherry doesn’t have any real value as a product itself, some farmers have developed some innovative ways to use the skin and flesh. For instance, some put it back into the soil to regenerate and renew the nutrients from a crop.

In other cases, some make a jelly to sell at farmers markets. Yet others dry out the skin and flesh and blend it into teas. There are even some producers that refine the flesh and fruit of the coffee cherry and produce it into things like extracts for the beauty and skin care industries.

Why Isn’t Coffee a Nut?

Coffee beans are not nuts because they don’t share the same botanical family. When nuts develop, they create a hard outer shell that opens only when germinating or forced open by a nutcracker. Plus, nuts only have one fruit inside the shell such as hazelnuts, acorns and pecans.

The only quality that coffee shares with nuts is the fact that both undergo roasting. But, that’s it. They aren’t similar in any other capacity.

Is Coffee a Legume?

Coffee is not a legume. This is because legumes grow in pods, such as peanuts or soybeans. Coffee beans come from the pit of the cherry-like fruit of the coffee tree. When legumes mature, they split open and let their seeds fall. There must be effort behind extracting the stone/seed from the coffee cherry.

Is Coffee a Type of Bean?

No, coffee is not a type of bean. Although we do call it a “coffee bean,” it’s not a bean in the botanical sense. As a general botanical rule, all beans are seeds but not all seeds are beans. Coffee falls into the latter category here.

This is because all beans, as we know them, come from the Fabacaea family which has distinct flowering characteristics. The fruit of the coffee tree does not have or share these genetic traits.

Are Coffee Trees Actual Trees?

Coffee trees are more like bushes. They’re not actually trees in the true sense of the word. They are technically just bushy plants. This is because trees produce some type of wood. Although coffee plants can develop woody growth, it’s not like wood like from a cypress or elm tree.

So, Why Do We Call It Coffee Beans, Trees & Cherries?

The terms we have for the coffee plant are long-time words that people in the industry have used for centuries. We’ve simply carried them over into the modern times because that’s how most will understand them. Also, different languages have various names for the parts of a coffee plant.

So, calling them coffee beans, coffee trees and coffee cherries helps keep everyone on the same page. But, if you want to be technical about your references, they are coffee stones, plants and drupes.