Heavens Delight - Vanilla :: Botany

Heavens Delight - vanilla extract commercial message 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 al unmatched vanilla fruits come from (Ferro, 1993). The genus Vanilla has about 100 species, and the Orchidaceae family is unrivalled 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 affinity between this fruit and a true pod (Ferro, 1992 Mabberley, 1993). Floriculture is the celestial sphere that we immediately recall when we think of orchid plants. However, the genus Vanilla is the but one of the family that is of direct economic interest. Some rural societies in Turkey and Greece restrained use salep, a staple flour made from the tubers of certain orchids, curiously those included in the genus Orchis. Although the use of orchids for this purpose is rather localised, it is bringing few species of this genus to the edge of extinction (Baumann, 1996). The vanilla plant is a vine, native from the tropic forests of Central America and some areas of South America. In its natural habitat, it may reach a distance of 25 meters, climbing with the help of extrinsic 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 afterward 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 (Ferro, 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 anaesthetic aristocracy used it to flavor chocolate, a custom still perform today (Brosse et al. 1989). The Dutch introduced vanilla in Java (Indonesia), a cause European colony in East Indies, at the beginning of the 19th century and the French did the same in the Reunion Island, Mauritius and Madagascar, all situated in the Southwest Indian Ocean.