II 
VANILLA 
47 
reason they do not visit the flowers, or if they do so, 
fail to fertilise them, and there seems to be scarcely a 
case recorded of natural fertilisation of the plant under 
cultivation. It is, therefore, necessary to fertilise the 
flowers of the plant by hand in order to procure fruit. 
This, though a matter of some delicacy and skill, is by 
no means a difficult operation, and can be easily carried 
out by natives with a little training. 
HAND FERTILISATION 
Vanilla planifolia flowers but once a year, usually 
from September to November, but often beginning as 
early as June and July. Occasionally it flowers in 
March, but this appears to be generally considered as an 
indication of an unhealthy state of the vine. 
V. pompona, according to Macfarlane, gives in Tahiti 
two crops of flowers, with occasionally a few flowers at 
other seasons. The main season begins about the middle 
of J uly, and lasts till September. The second usually 
begins early in the year, in J anuary, running through 
February into March. He suggests that both kinds of 
vanilla should be cultivated on the estate, as they flower 
at different times, and so the estate can be kept working 
most of the year with one or the other kind. 
V. pompona is not as strong a grower as V, plani- 
folia. Indeed, in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where 
the two plants were grown on one tree, planifolia after 
a few years smothered the pompona and killed it out. 
Neither are the pods of pompona very highly valued, 
so that in most places it dropped out of cultivation. 
Still for the reason given above it might be successfully 
grown, and add to the profits of the estate. 
A good strong vanilla plant in full vigour should 
produce as many as 200 bunches or racemes of flowers 
at a time. Each raceme carries from 15 to 20 flowers, 
or even more. Mr. Hart of Trinidad gives as many as 
30 to 40 flowers to a raceme. Thus under good condi- 
tions a plant can give 4000 flowers. 
