Tree of the Week: Kentucky Coffee Tree

This week seemed like a good time to link to our Tree of the Week list, and what better way than to link directly to one of my favorite trees? I just love the Kentucky Coffee Tree. Not only is it unusual and beautiful, it has a bonus for a plant geek: a really cool Latin name, Gymnocladus dioicus (hear it pronounced here). Legend has it that Native Americans and settlers drank a beverage made from the roasted seeds as a coffee replacement, which led to land developers using the tree as a marketing tool. That didn't last long, as the drink didn't come close to coffee's drink-ability!

Native to the Midwest, KCT has a nice light to medium green leaf color that contrasts really well with the shade that the leaves give, making a very "woodland" feel under the tree. That leaf color turns yellow in the fall and in some years is very striking, then the leaves, which are doubly-compound, come off to leave behind a strong, coarsely-textured outline.




Ok, so what's doubly-compound? Well, the leaf is composed of a stem, which has smaller stems coming off of it. Those smaller stems, in turn, contain leaflets. There are dozens of leaflets per leaf, and the whole structure is about 3' long!




Now for my favorite part of the tree: its fruit. The seeds (on female trees only!) come in a great big, bean-like pod that starts off a lighter green than the leaves, and then as it matures becomes a deep, rich, russet or chestnut color. They hang on the tree most of the winter, breaking off and apart late in the season. The tree only grows a couple here and there while it's young, then as it gets to be a 10-12" trunk diameter or so, you start seeing them pop up around more of the tree's crown. As it grows older, the tree fruits heavily only every 2-3 years.


So, back to Tree of the Week. We feature dozens of species of trees in this listing of good - and not so good - trees to plant in our area. Kentucky Coffee Tree is one of them, and we like to go through the list for a weekly feature. Descriptions are a bit more objective than you see here, but we try to provide a nice overview of how the tree can perform in the landscape. Enjoy!