Heavens Delight - Vanilla :: Botany

Heaven's Delight - Vanilla Commercial vanilla is the fruit (capsule) obtained from several different species of Orchidaceae, namely, Vanilla pompona Schiede (West Indian vanilla), Vanilla tahitiensis J. M. Moore (Tahiti vanilla) and Vanilla planifolia Jackson (Mexican vanilla). The most important is Vanilla planifolia Jackson, from which almost all vanilla fruits come from (Ferrà £o, 1993). The genus Vanilla has about 100 species, and the Orchidaceae family is one of the largest in the Plant Kingdom, with more or less 20,000 species. Etymologically, the word vanilla came from the Spanish vainilla, which means a small pod, due to the great similarity between this fruit and a true pod (Ferrà £o, 1992; Mabberley, 1993). Floriculture is the field that we immediately recall when we think of orchid plants. However, the genus Vanilla is the only one of the family that is of direct economic interest. Some rural societies in Turkey and Greece still use salep, a staple flour made from the tubers of certain orchids, especially those included in the genus Orchis. Although the use of orchids for this purpose is rather localised, it is bringing some species of this genus to the edge of extinction (Baumann, 1996). The vanilla plant is a vine, native from the tropical forests of Central America and some areas of South America. In its natural habitat, it may reach a length of 25 meters, climbing with the help of adventitious roots. The stems are thick and fleshy green; the leaves are alternate, long elliptical, sessile and bright green. The flowers, in clusters, appear in the leaf axils. They live only 8 hours and die if fertilization fails to occur. The plant blooms three years after the cuttings are planted and the yellow greenish fruits many have up to 90,000 seeds, taking five to seven months to mature. The fruit is scentless when harvested, it has a length between 10 to 25 cm and a weight of 5 to 30g (Ferrà £o, 1993). Vanilla was brought to Europe by the Spanish conquerors of the New World. They found it in Mexico, when Montezuma, the last Aztec Emperor, offered them a drink made of chocolate, vanilla, red pepper and honey. Local aristocracy used it to flavor chocolate, a custom still practised today (Brosse et al. 1989). The Dutch introduced vanilla in Java (Indonesia), a former European colony in East Indies, at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the French did the same in the Reunion Island, Mauritius and Madagascar, all located in the Southwest Indian Ocean.