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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the October 19, 2018 Newsletter with notes from a visit in Mérida, Yucatan, MEXICO
ORNAMENTAL VANILLA ORCHID VINE
On September 28, as I spent the day in Mérida visiting my friends Eric and Mary before taking the overnight bus south to Guatemala, I toured their backyard garden, which is more interesting year by year. A succulent vine creeping up the house's wall with help of braces caught my attention, shown below:
Up closer the leaves were similar to those of many orchids, but the main feature cuing me to the orchid identity was the thick, white aerial roots seen below:
In Mexico when you find a vining orchid you think of the genus Vanilla -- the orchid producing fruiting pods from which vanilla flavor is extracted commercially. Eric's vine wasn't producing flowers, but it did bear a cluster of pods, shown below:
Some of those pods are turning brown, apparently to fall off, and the others are so slender that they don't look as if they will produce seeds. Maybe the flowers wen't visited by the right pollinators.
About 50 species of the genus Vanilla are recognized, all native to tropical regions around the world. Ornamental vanilla-vine cultivars have been developed, so when you find a Vanilla growing in a garden like Eric's, you can never be sure which species you're dealing with. However, the one on Eric and Mary's house is very similar to one we photographed at Yaxunah just south of Chichén Itzá here in the central Yucatan, as you can see at www.backyardnature.net/travel/yaxunah/vanilla.jpg
Our wild species is Vanilla fragrans, distributed from southern Mexico though much of Central America, and it's a good bet that what's growing on Eric and Mary's house is that species.
You can read how vanilla flavoring is making a comeback, and learn about its history, on the TopTropicals.Com Vanilla Page
