Coffee is an evergreen plant of the Rubiacee, Coffea Arabica. About sixty species of Coffea Arabica are known, but the most used ones are the Arabica (originating from Arabia) and the Robusta (originating from Africa). The word coffee may come from the Turkish kavhe – that means "exciting drink" – or from the name of a region in Ethiopia, Caffa, from where coffee spread. The first people that valued it used to prepare a concoction of berries and leaves of coffee, or used to eat a paste based on animal fat and coffee berries pounded in a mortar. The pleasure of the palate surely went together with the "effects" of the drink. Coffee acts on nerve centres and gives a sense of general wellness, making us feel more active. And just on this "condition of wellness" the stories were born – more similar to legends – about the discovery of coffee .One of the most famous stories tells about a flock of goats that after having nibbled at an unknown shrub fell in a state of uncommon "excitement". The shepherd told to some monks of the monastery of Chehodet, in Yemen, who prepared an infusion of those berries and leaves, which gave them euphoria and insomnia. With that drink they could prolong their evenings of prayers without feeling sleepy. Also in a tale of the book "The Arabian Nights" there's the character of a camel driver and a shepherd that saw their animals feeling "euphoric" after having eaten leaves and coffee berries. Another legend comes from the town of Moka, in Yemen. The protagonist is a young man called Omar, dispelled by the king whose daughter he wanted to marry; through "the plant that gave relief" he was able to fulfil his love dream. It is likely that the cultivation of coffee started in the fourteenth century; in Arabia. In the sixteenth century it started spreading in Europe and it soon gained the markets all over the world. In Italy, he first historical documentation about the presence of coffee dates back to 1676, a year when the Republic of Venice imposed a tax on the product, among the most consumed by the population in what were, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the first Coffee Shops.