Скачать или смотреть Vanilla bean pollination might look easy, but it took decades before this technique was discovered 💡

Vanilla bean pollination might look easy, but it took decades of trial and error before Edmond Albius, an enslaved Black boy on the island of Réunion, invented this process back in 1841.

Vanilla grows as a vine with orchid flowers that have a complex anatomy. Albius discovered that you could pollinate vanilla by hand if you puncture the slim membrane that separates the male and female parts of the flower and bring them together.

Today Albius’ technique is familiar to all vanilla growers, who continue to pollinate the flowers by hand in a matter of seconds. The example shown here is from The Vanillerie, a small vanilla farm located on the west side of Hawai'i's Big Island.

After fertilization, over the course of a year, a pod of seeds grows from the fertilized orchid, rich in the oils that vanilla its fragrance.

Learn more about Edmond Albius inside Nautilus Magazine.

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