What do you think of this fact?
Vanilla is in ice cream, custard, cookies, perfume. The pods grow on an orchid, and that orchid doesn’t make things easy. The fact that vanilla is grown all over the world today is thanks to a kid. In 1841, 12-year-old Edmond Albius figured out how to pollinate vanilla flowers by hand.
A flower with a built-in lock
The vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia) comes from southeastern Mexico. According to Smithsonian Gardens, each flower stays open for less than a day: it opens before sunrise, closes by noon, then withers. It can’t pollinate itself, because a flap called the rostellum separates the male and female parts.
In Mexico, certain bees take care of that. European colonial powers did take the plant to other tropical regions, but without the right pollinators it barely produced pods there. According to Nautilus, that left Mexico as practically the only supplier for a long time.
The trick that changed everything
Edmond was enslaved on Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean. At 12 years old, he worked it out: use a thin stick to lift the flap, then press the male and female parts of the flower together. It takes just seconds and is still done exactly this way around the world.
According to Nautilus, his enslaver Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont publicly defended the discovery against botanists who tried to claim it. According to Smithsonian Gardens, Edmond was never paid for it. He only gained his freedom in 1848, when France abolished slavery, and only then did he get a surname. Today, a street, a school and a bronze statue in one of Réunion’s oldest towns honor him.
According to Smithsonian Gardens, about 80 percent of the world’s natural vanilla now comes from Madagascar, Réunion’s neighbor.
Why vanilla is so expensive
Every single flower has to be pollinated by hand, and then the pods need six to nine months before they can be harvested. No wonder vanilla is one of the most expensive spices in the world.
The flavor most people call “plain” rests on a kid’s idea that nobody has improved on since.