* 
AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 
No. 5.] MAY, 1910. [Vol. IX 
COFFEA ROBUSTA. 
An article on this Coffee has recently been published by the 
F.M.S. Government. The plant, correctly known as Coffea Laurentii 
robusta, was introduced to the country by the Botanical Gardens of 
Singapore, in 1900, the plants being received from Kew. Some were 
sent to Selangor a year or two later. We found it very floriferous, 
and a most beautiful ornamental plant, the branches covered with its 
fragrant white flowers, but its fruiting power was not as great, very 
few fruits ‘in proportion to its flowers were produced. This might 
improve, as it often happens that a newly introduced plant does not 
fruit well for its first few years, though eventually becoming a 
more heavy fruiter. It certainly seems to have done better in Java. 
Unfortunately the writer of the article alluded to, Mr. Gallagher, 
does not give any figures as to the return of the plant in the 
peninsula, a most important point in the case of a crop which has 
shown poorly at first at least in our country. 
Coffea robusta came into cultivation here shortly after C steno- 
phylla was introduced, but just at that time Coffee cultivation was 
being dropped. Mr. W. W. Bailey, at Highlands, got both plants 
from the Singapore Gardens as he was keen on new Coffees, and 
from a plant of C stenophylla, one of the first three or four we intro- 
duced, raised a very fine hybrid with C liberica, which Dr. Treub 
declared would revolutionise the coffee industry. It fruited very 
early and cropped well with a very superior class of coffee. What 
became of his little plot of stenophylla hybrids ? * 
No doubt had Coffee cultivation not been dropped almost entirely 
in these years Coffea robusta and the stenophylla hybrids would have 
been long ere this extensively cultivated in the F.M.S. We shall be 
interested to hear if in Selangor C. robusta fruits as well there as it 
does in Java. To this day in Singapore it is a very poor fruiter 
compared with liberica or even Arabica. 
