18 BULLETIN 30, PORTO RICO EXPERIMENT STATION. 
In general appearance Excelsa somewhat resembles Liberian, but 
there are very decided differences in foliage, flower, and fruit. The 
young tree is much more spreading and the leaves are larger, oval, 
and more rounded than those of Liberian, though of similar stiff 
texture. Representative leaves are 8 to 12 inches in length and 4 to 6 
inches in breadth, a typical specimen measuring about 9J by 5 
inches. On laterals representative internodal lengths are 2 to 5 
inches. The large, white flowers have only four to six petals, like 
the Arabian, but are unlike it in blossoming season, heavy blossom- 
ings appearing in summer or autumn when Arabian coffee is not 
in flower, and the trees at times carrying simultaneously buds, 
blossoms, and immature and mature fruit. The fruits are thickly 
clustered, as many as 35 and 40 appearing at a single node. (PL 
VII, fig. 2.) They are much smaller than those of Liberian coffee, 
and appear solid colored. Upon examination, however, there is 
found a fine striping in nopal red to maroon, and in some specimens, 
alternate pale yellow and red. The disk, whicji is very variable in 
size and often only slightly russeted, is not so prominent as is that 
of Liberian coffee, but it is more prominent than is that of Arabian. 
Of the 54 trees set in 1917, 1 died, 2 fruited in 1920, 41 in 1921, 
and 50 in 1922. The major part of the crop has ripened in the three 
months of spring. Since the Arabian crop ripens in the fall, the 
production of both on the same plantation would offer certain ad- 
vantages in regard to labor. Another advantage in planting Excelsa 
is that the cherries, in common with the other members of the Liber- 
ian group, do not fall on ripening. Pickings at the station have 
been made at monthly intervals. The ripening season is shown in 
Table 1, and the yield in Table 6. 
Seven samples were found to contain between 369 and 455 cherries, 
with an average of 410 cherries per liter, showing them to be ma- 
terially smaller than those of the Porto Rican. The pulp is firmer 
than that of Arabian coffee, but unlike Liberian in that it is rather 
thin and therefore pulped with greater ease. Five almuds of freshly 
picked cherries ranged in weight from 28 pounds 3 ounces to 28 
pounds 11 ounces. Two almuds of cherries picked at different times 
in the season checked very closely, weighing when fresh 28 pounds 
10 ounces and 28 pounds 11 ounces, respectively; and giving, after 
pulping and drying,, 4 pounds of cleaned beans each. Each lot 
showed a reduction in weight of 26 per cent on removal of parch- 
ment and a total reduction in weight from cherry to marketable 
bean in the ratio of 7.2 to 1. One thousand moisture-free beans from 
each almud weighed 153 and 154.1 grams, respectively. 
In weight, the bean does not differ greatly from the Porto Rican, 
there being both a greater and a less number per pound than was 
found in the two samples of Porto Rican given in Table 3. A rep- 
resentative size is 9 or 10 millimeters long by 7 or 8 millimeters 
broad. The silver skin is of a pale brownish color and the bean is 
straw-colored or yellow. A considerable portion of the silver skin 
adheres to the beans, giving them a rough and uneven appearance, 
unless they are rapidly dried by artificial heat, and a fragment of 
the parchment is likely to be held in the deep sutures when being 
broken off. Since the appearance of the bean is totally different from 
that of the Porto Rican, the two should not be mixed for marketing. 
