FREE: 5 Kentucky Coffee Tree Seeds

The listing, 5 Kentucky Coffee Tree Seeds has ended.

This auction is for 5 Kentucky Coffee Tree Seeds. I just have no time to make them into jewelry this year like i wish to...

If you wish to plant them, the tree is really cool! They grow 50 to 90 ft tall and live 100 years. Only the females produce pods. It has fragrant purple flowers. The pods form in the fall, hang around all winter, and fall in the spring. It grows well in urban areas.

I love these seeds. They are hard and can be polished and I have used them as beads for jewelry making before by drilling holes in them. They are able to be made into a coffee or chocolate substitute (read up on this before doing it- they are not edible in their raw form!!).

Kentucky coffeetrees do not grow plentifully on their own. The seeds are covered in a hard, impermeable seed coat that prevents or delays germination.

Experts recommend that the seeds be treated with acid by soaking them in water at room temperature for 24 hours. Then the seeds should be soaked in concentrated sulfuric acid for two hours. The treated seeds must be washed with water until all traces of the acid are removed. For smaller quantities of seeds, the hard shell can be filed with a simple hand file, aiding germination.

Lore includes the belief that Native Americans used the seeds for playing dice-like games and in musical instruments. The trees found growing by Native American homelands are believed to have sprouted because of a tendency to play with the seeds which would then scatter them.

The tree gets its name from the fact that its seeds were once used as a coffee substitute. Early settlers planted the Kentucky coffeetree in hopes of establishing an American source for coffee. However, the coffee brewed from the roasted seeds is not all that enticing - the raw seeds can be poisonous as can the leaves and pods. Pioneers allegedly used crumpled leaves in a bowl with water and sugar as a means of killing flies in the house. The flies would be attracted to the mix, drink it and die.