Coffee Flowers, Mae Salong, Thailand Spring 2010
At Sweet Mae Salong Cafe this morning I had a great surprise: sometime over the past two days, the hills all around us had all blossomed with white flowers. Now while I’m not usually the kind of girl who gushes about flowers, these white ones are special.
They’re coffee flowers, and they last only a few days before turning into glistening cherries and eventually after roasting and grinding, are transformed into the stimulating drink we know and love.
Northern Thailand has an ideal climate for growing coffee and tea, and these products have – mostly – replaced the opium poppies that you’d have seen around here some years ago.
More about coffee flowers at Illy Caffe’s website.
Neat!! Do they smell like coffee as well?
Y’know I shoud’ve gone over to smell them – but the cafe is on a steep hillside and there are bamboo terraces to keep wanderers out. From the Illy article I gather they have a mild sweet fragrance.
wa!
Glad to know.
Are the all kinds of coffee flowers are white?
Hi Cris, welcome to Travel-Artist.
From my research – that’d be scrolling through Google Images – yep, coffee flowers are all white: functionally beautiful.