Vanilla
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Vanilla. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a Orchideæ, natives of tropical America and Asia. They are distinguished from most other orchids by their climbing habit; they cling with their aërial roots to the stems of trees or to rocks, attain the height of 20 or 30 feet, and obtain their chief sustenance from the atmosphere. There are about 20 species comprised in the genus. The flowers are color. Vanilla is remarkable among orchids as possessing the only species of the order that has any economical value. From the fruit of several species the vanilla of commerce is obtained, the best being produced by the West Indian species. V. planifolia, which is now cultivated in many tropical countries. The fruit is cylindrical, about a span long, and less than half an inch thick. It is gathered before it is fully ripe, dried in the shade, and steeped in a fixed oil, generally that of the cashew nut. It contains within its tough pericarp a soft black pulp, in which many minute black seeds are imbedded. It has a strong, peculiar, agreeable odor, and a warm, sweetish taste. Benzoic acid is sometimes so abundant in it as to effloresce in fine needles. Vanilla is much used by perfumers, and also for flavoring chocolate, pastry, sweetmeats, ices, and liquors. Balsam of Peru is sometimes used as a substitute for it. When the fruit of vanilla is fully ripe a liquid exudes from it. Vanilla has ripened its fruit in British hothouses, but the flowers are apt to fall off without fruit being produced, unless care is taken to secure it by artificial impregnation. This is, in some measure, the case even in India and in some parts of America itself.