A coffee bean plant or coffea is a genus of a flowering plant the Rubiaceae Family. There are different parts of this plants namely the fruit, mucilage, parchment and the bean. Coffee beans begin as the seeds of coffee berry (sometimes referred to as a cherry). Once coffee cherries are harvested and cleaned from coffea plants, the first step in processing the bean is to remove the fruit. Once pulped, coffee beans are still coated in an oily layer of mucilage, or parenchyma. This layer cannot be easily cleaned off, but it will dissolve naturally if left to ferment; as such, coffee beans are allowed to ferment for several days before processing continues. Beneath the mucilage, coffee beans wear a layer of parchment, also called an endocarp. This layer is removed by a process called hulling, with excess flecks of parchment removed in a second process called polishing. Once the fruit, mucilage and parchment have been removed, what remains is the coffee bean, although bean is not the agriculturally correct term for it; it really is the interior seed of the coffee cherry, what might otherwise be called a pit. These are the parts of the coffea or coffee plant.
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