Seedlings Cross the Sea

Moving the Trees

For a long time, coffee had to be bought from Yemen. In the late 1600s, the Dutch got coffee trees from India and, in 1699, managed to grow them on the island of Java in Indonesia. In 1706, one tree from Java was sent to a botanical garden in Amsterdam. Its descendants traveled through France to the Caribbean and South America.

Why?European countries did not want to keep paying Yemeni traders high prices. They wanted to plant coffee in their own colonies and make the money themselves. A colony is land that another country has taken over and rules.

Learn moreThis period is full of legends. The stories that "the first seeds reached India when a pilgrim hid seven beans" and that "a governor's wife hid Brazil's first seedlings in a bouquet (1727)" are treated as legends. Even the tale of a French officer who shared his drinking water to keep a seedling alive on the way to Martinique has records that disagree, starting with the year (1720 or 1723).

When

1696 → 1727