Handbook of Vanilla Science and Technology

V mexicana Mill., V. odorata C. Presl, V ovata Rolfe, V palmarum (Salzm. ex Lindl.) Lindl., V. penicillata Garay & Dunst., V. planifolia Andrews, V. porteresiana Veyret & Szlach., V surinamensis Rchb. f., and V wrightii Rchb. f. (Funk et al. 2007). Most of this taxonomy is suspect, and it remains possible that one of the species that was taken by Philibert was V. tahitensis, which could have evolved spontaneously from the hybridization of V. planifolia and V. odorata (Lubinsky et al. 2008b).

In any event, by 1839, the French had also introduced V. pompona from South America to Guadeloupe and Martinique (it would come to be known as “West Indies vanilla”, or “vanillion”) (Purseglove et al. 1981; Weiss 2002). Like V. planifolia, V. pompona is not native to the Antilles, but readily established itself after escaping from cultivation efforts in the late 1800s (Garay and Sweet 1974).

The English too were active in Vanilla dispersals at the time. Around 1800, glazed roof technology led to the proliferation of hot-houses for keeping exotic plants, and in a short time, horticultural societies were established, such as the Society for the Improvement of Horticulture (the forerunner of the Royal Horticultural Society) (Ecott 2004; for a discussion of the origins of American horticulture, see Pauly 2007). Cuttings of V. planifolia were introduced as horticultural rarities into the extensive private collection of George Spencer Churchill, the Marquis de Blandford (later to become the fifth Duke of Marlborough) at his estate, Whiteknights, at Reading. These cuttings would serve as both the lectotype of the species, described in 1808 in Paddington, as well as the genetic material for commercial clonal propagation in the Indian Ocean and Indonesia (Lubinsky 2007; Bory et al. 2008). The popular assumption is that Blandford’s cuttings were shipped from Jamaica, where they could have been relicts of Spanish dominion over the island in the early seventeenth century (V. planifolia is not native to Jamaica). However, this assertion is probably impossible to validate, since Blandford’s personal papers were destroyed (Cooke 1992).

In the early 1800s, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited South America after also having toured through New Spain. In both places, he talked of vanilla. His comments from Venezuela echo Aublet’s assertion that an abundance of native Vanilla could serve to develop an industry. Humboldt further described an aversion to vanilla:

The Spanish, in general, dislike a mixture of vanilla with the cacao, as irritating the nervous system; the fruit, therefore, of that orchideous plant is entirely neglected in the province of Caracas, though abundant crops of it might be gathered on the moist and feverish coast between Porto Cabello and Ocumare; especially at Turiamo... The English and the Anglo-Americans often seek to make purchases of vanilla at the port of La Guayra, but the merchants procure with difficulty a very small quantity. In the valleys that descend from the chain of the coast towards the Caribbean Sea, in the province of Truxillo, as well as in the Missions of Guiana, near the cataracts of the Orinoco, a great quantity of vanilla might be collected; the produce of which would be still more abundant, if, according to the practice of the Mexicans, the plants were disengaged, from time to time, from the creeping plants by which it is entwined and stifled (Humboldt 1819, II:124; 1851, II:63; 1956, III:141).

Humboldt’s claim of Spanish dislike of vanilla could refer either to Spaniards in Venezuela, another colony, or in Spain. At least one subsequent author has interpreted Humboldt’s words as particular to Venezuela (Patino 2002, p. 539). If so, Humboldt is probably correct in attributing part of the failure to develop vanilla cultivation in South America to a cultural/social bias.

8.1.3 III. The Vanilla Revolution, 1850s-1900, “ .. and we've never looked back”

By the mid-nineteenth century, V. planifolia had been identified as “the vanilla of commerce” and was disseminated by cuttings throughout Europe and her Old World colonies, with the result that practically any tropical region, not just Papantla, was able to grow vanilla.