COLENSO. — On Four Notable Foreign Plants. 339 



merits may afford the most convincing proof that in our own 

 chmate, but in our hothouses, the same circumstances of 

 atmosphere as those which exist under a Mexican sky pro- 

 duce in the vanilla plant all the phenomena of a good and per- 

 fect maturation of the fruit. . . . The Vanilla aromatica 

 of Swartz, introduced into Europe in 1739 by Miller, is not to 

 be found at the present time in England. This species was 

 long believed to be the true vanilla of commerce. But the 

 Vanilla plauifolia of Andrews''' is the same plant which is 

 generally cultivated on the Continent, and has produced at 

 Liege an abundant crop of odorous and delicious fruit. This 

 interesting species was at first cultivated in the Hon. Charles 

 Greville's choice collection of plants at Paddington, near 

 London, where it flowered for the first time ; but then, no 

 artificial fecundation having been performed, no fruit was pro- 

 duced. In 1812 this plant was carried from the gardens of 

 Mr. Greville into those of Belgium, whence it was introduced 

 at Antwerp. The plant grew rapidly there in the Botanic 

 Garden, and slips were sent to all the towns in Belgium and 

 France, but they very rarely flowered, and fruit was never 

 obtained, so that this culture was despaired of. Nevertheless, 

 in 1819 Dr. Somme (the director of the Botanic Garden at 

 Antwerp) sent two plants of vanilla to the curator at Brus- 

 sels that he might send them to the Dutch colonies of Java, 

 where it was said the plant might become valuable by its 

 produce. The history of this migration of the vanilla-plant 

 from America to the East Indies is too interesting not to be 

 made known. Only one of the two roots stood the long 

 passage from Belgium to the East Indies. There at Java, in 

 the Botanic Garden, it prospered well, and flowered, but its 

 flowers bore no fruit. The observations on the necessity of an 

 artificial fecundation in the greater part of the orchideous 

 plants were not known at that time ; and I attribute the 

 flowers of the vanilla not bearing fruit in the East Indies to 

 the absence of the species of insect which nature has doubt- 

 less given to the climate of Mexico to effect there a fecunda- 

 tion which man alone, by a study of the organs, is able to 

 perfect in other countries. It was long after — in 1836 — that, 

 by a peculiar horticultural treatment, we had at Liege, upon 

 one vanilla plant, fifty-four flowers, which, having been fecun- 

 dated by me, produced the same number of pods ; and in 

 1837 a fresh crop of about a hundred pods was obtained upon 

 another plant by the same methods ; so that now there is not 

 the least doubt of the complete success of this new cultivation. 

 "From the works of the illustrious Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt we learn that the Mexicans were already in the habit of 



* Repository, vol. viii., pi. 538. 



