Coffee Plant (Coffea arabica)

The teaching plate of a world economy. Coffea arabica, pl.189 of Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887): flowering branch, cherries, seed section. Chromolithography makes the medicinal plant readable at a glance — and recalls that botany also illustrates coffee's colonial history.

Plate from the virtual exhibition Wondrous Flora (Trace Museum, 1705-1887).