Collected in the wild by the native tribes of southern Mexico for
thousands of years prior to their domination by the Aztecs, vanilla was
once rare and considered a precious commodity. In fact, of the 35,000 or
more species of the Orchidaceae family, the vanilla orchid is the only
one to produce edible fruit. Another reason for the fruits rarity is
because the flowers are hermaphrodite, meaning that they carry anther
(male) and stigma (female) with a membrane separating the two. Insect
pollination is the work of one special bee thriving only in Mexico. This
made cultivation elsewhere problematic, especially since all attempts to
adapt the bee to other locations failed.
Then, in 1840, the first successful pollination of vanilla orchids by
human hand took place, the method of which is credited to a 12 year-old
boy enslaved on Réunion island east of Madagascar. His simple yet
ingenious solution was to use a beveled sliver of bamboo to fold back
the membrane that separates anther from stigma, then pressing the anther
onto the stigma. Thanks to this child, the timely pollination of the
vanilla orchid led to controlled production of the pod.
