Anything but plain: inside the Australian push to grow vanilla outside the tropics

Synthetic vanilla now accounts for 99% vanilla products, but demand for the real deal is high and growing

In the humid jungles of Mexico, the melipona bee flits under the canopy’s patchwork light. As it comes across a vine, it pauses at a pale green-yellow flower, an orchid type creature which yawns open its petals for just a few hours a day. Seizing this brief window of opportunity, the melipona’s stinger pierces a thin, nearly invisible membrane separating the male and female parts of the flower allowing the pollen to reach the stigma.

From this tiny act a long, thin green vanilla bean will form. This is the way vanilla has grown for centuries.

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