272 VANILLA PLANIFOLIA 



be artificially effected after first cutting off or raising the upper 

 lip of the stigmatic orifice ; fruit is thus produced without 

 difficulty, and is said to be equal in size and aroma to the best 

 Mexican examples. According to Morren it takes "exactly a 

 year and a day to ripen." 



Vanilla differs so much from Orchidea generally that Lindley 

 at one period considered it the type of a special order, Vanillacea 

 (see Nat. Syst., ed. 2, p. 341). It is the only genus of orchids 

 with the fruit opening by two valves which separate from, one 

 another at the top. The whole structure was figured by Francis 

 Bauer so long ago as 1807, and his fine drawings (now in the 

 British Museum) are indifferently reproduced in the book quoted 

 below (tt. 10, 11). The structure of the secreting hairs which 

 line the angles of the fruit-cavity is shown in Berg and Schmidt's 

 plate before referred to. 



Lindl., Orchid. Plants, p. 435 ; Morren, in Ann. Nat. Hist., iii 

 (1839), p. 1; Bauer and Lindl., Illustr. Orchid. Plants; Lindl., 

 Fl. Med., p. 579. 



Official Part and Name. VANILLA : the prepared unripe fruit 

 of Vanilla aromatica (U. S. P.). It is not official in the British 

 Pharmacopoeia, or the Pharmacopoeia of India. But it was official 

 in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1721. 



Collection and Preparation. The preparation of vanilla seems 

 to vary in different places. The fruits (pods) are collected before 

 they are quite ripe, that is usually, when their green colour begins 

 to disappear. They are then either dried in the shade and after- 

 wards covered with a coating of oil ; or, according to De Vriese, 

 they are dried by exposing them to heat alternately uncovered and 

 wrapped in woollen cloths. They are then tied together in small 

 bundles, and these are afterwards commonly surrounded either by 

 sheet lead or enclosed in small metallic boxes, and thus sent into 

 the market. The object sought to be obtained in their prepara- 

 tion is not alone their preservation, but the full development of 

 their odour, which appears to be due to chemical changes which 

 take place in the fruit during and after its preparation for the 

 market. 



