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Show ABOUT VANILLA. A Plant Esteemed for Its Flavor and Aroma. The vanilla is an orchidaceous, climbing vine, which often reaches over 30 feet in height, and is usually about the thickness of one's little finger. fin-ger. The vine is round, knotted at intervals', in-tervals', and covered with dark green , spear-shaped leaves. It throws out a number of thin arms or aerial roots as it rises, which, attaching themselves to neighboring trees, appear to derive therefrom such nutriment that the vines are little dependent on the soil in fact, often when all other modes of upply are cut off these holdfasts will entirely nourish the plant. Occasional- lv the wilH vinpn r-nmnlprelv cover the branches of the tree, and, running from it into adjacent ones, they will hang in huje festoons and arches so thick that they seriously impede one's progress in the bush. The vines blossom blos-som profusely usually in the spring the- strange and delicate flowers, with their long, straggling and pale yellow petals, springing from the angles where the leaves branch off. After a few days' existence, the flowers wither and fall, and as their chance of fertilization fertili-zation through any of the outside agencies on which they depend is brief one, and precarious at best, it Is not surprising to find that very few of them are succeeded by fruit. This takes the form of a large pod, and, strange to say, although the pods attain at-tain their full growth within fifty days from the fall of the petals, they take fully seven months more to ripen. The pods vary from 5 to 12 inches in length and are about like a banana, but are Better described as resembling a knife sheath; hence the name vanilla, which is a corruption of the Spanish word viinilla a small scab .--. . bard. Eachpod contains a quantity of small black granules, surrounded by a balsamic pulp whose peculiar combination com-bination of oil and acid is supposed to impart to the pods that delicious flavor and powerful aroma for which they are so justly esteemed. Chambers Journal. |