The Kentucky Coffee tree of the American Midwest drops its seeds in large pods that resemble giant pea pods. The Kentucky Coffee tree's pods and the seeds themselves are tough. So tough in fact that they always fail to germinate when they are dropped from the trees today. The seeds evolved alongside some means of dispersal that no longer exists today.
Currently, younger trees are only found naturally along water courses where the seeds are dropped into very damp soils and are subjected to bacterial decay that eats away the tough membranes around the seeds. At one time, it was thought that river banks and wetlands were the only habitat for the Kentucky Coffee tree. Yet, the geologic record shows them to have once been very numerous throughout North America even in dry areas. They are found in the geologic record to have grown prolifically far into Canada - but today they are completely absent from Canada and the Upper Midwest.
The reason for this discrepancy was discovered by paleobotanist Connie Barlow, wife of minister and author Michael Dowd. Dowd is the author of "
Thank God for Evolution." He and Connie travel the county visiting churches where they spread the message that science and faith don't have to conflict. Barlow attributes the dispersal of the Kentucky Coffee tree seeds to the now extinct mega-fauna of North America - creatures like the woolly rhinoceros.
As the various Ice Age glaciations came and went, the animals would move back northward with the retreating glaciers, spreading the digested coffee tree seeds as they migrated. These seeds would sprout and the Kentucky Coffee Tree would be reintroduced to biomes that had been covered by ice for millennia. When the woolly rhinos died out, the means by which the coffee trees spread themselves was lost.
The tree only survives today because the seeds can be "digested" in very damp soils like wetlands and along river courses. This is why the Kentucky Coffee tree is no longer found in dryer areas even though it grows quite well in those conditions. It also is not found naturally in any area that was covered by ice during the last glaciation which coincided with the demise of the woolly rhinoceros.
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