Vanilla

a member of the orchid family. There are a score of vanilla plants. Our vanilla extract is obtained from the dried pod of a Mexican plant now raised throughout tropical America and Ceylon. It climbs to a height of twenty or thirty feet, striking root at each joint into the tree on which it climbs. It has fleshy leaves and fine spikes of fragrant flowers. The fruit pod is cylindrical and is four or five inches long. It is filled with numerous minute flat black seeds. These pods are gathered before they are fully ripe, they are dried in the shade, steeped in the oil of the cashew nut, and sent to market like sardines in little boxes and cane leaf packets containing fifty or a hundred pods. Vanilla flavoring is an aromatic oil distilled from these pods. Vanilla bean is a misnomer, due to the resemblance of the fruit to bean-pods.

The vanilla plant is raised for commercial purposes in Mexico and Java. The vanilla, like other orchids, is fertilized by the visits of a honey-seeking insect, but in cultivation the planter finds it necessary to carry the pollen from stamen to stigma. The Aztecs used vanilla to flavor their chocolate. From them the Spaniards learned the value of vanilla oil and introduced its use into Europe.

The Mexican planter first clears his land. He then sets out cuttings at the foot of solitary trees left for the purpose. The vines clamber like grapes, holding to the bark by aerial rootlets. Posts and trellises are used also. A vanilla vine five years old bears from fifteen to fifty pods (beans), worth from four cents to nine cents each. A vine continues to bear for forty years.