I was reading about Edmond Albius, the former slave who learned how to pollinate the vanilla plant (at age 12!), which is why we have commercial vanilla today.
Albius’s manual pollination method is still used today, as nearly all vanilla is pollinated by hand.
That’s only outside their native range. In Mexico, where they’re from, they’re pollinated by the Melipona bee. Mexico is currently 3rd place in vanilla production at 6.5%, so you’re not wrong to say the majority of vanilla plants are pollinated by hand, but they do have a natural pollinator. In theory, you could introduce the Melipona bee to areas where Vanilla has been imported to cut down the labor time/costs.
Thinks makes me wonder if they could make a “closed system” outside the natural range - like a giant greenhouse that includes the plant AND the bee.
Which would then turn into a movie-worthy story about the bees getting out and somehow causing the zombie apocalypse.
OR - it would just be BioDome with Pauly Shore. But with bees.
Ya like jazz?
You should edit the wikipedia entry and include this!
I just looked at the Wikipedia page and I think it’s fine. They’ve cited some sources which detail the debate about which pollinators actually pollinate the plant. Compared to someone who’s got a degree studying plants, I know basically nothing. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard. If they’ve got a list of pollinators and are trying to narrow down the right one, then they’re closer to the truth than I am.
That’s why “Madagascar vanilla” is such a funny marketing term. It’s trying to make it sound exotic, but it’s the biggest source of vanilla. Vanilla pretty much has to come from a super impoverished country to be able to be cultivated with hand pollination. They grow vanilla on hawaii, and a single bean costs $20. It might taste better than $1 madagascan beans, but probably not 20 times better.
Created the entire vanilla industry pretty much single-handedly and died in poverty. Sounds about right.
Horrible that he died in poverty, but he did die a free man, which is a lot more than you can say for most black people on Réunion.
You could make an anime about that
The Time I got Reincarnated as a Professional Plant Wanker in Another World.
It would be a damn isekai
Man, the word “vanilla” has become so ubiquitous with “plain, unaltered, default” that I was really confused at first.
