File:Vanilla culture in Puerto Rico (1948) (20560819412).jpg

Title: Vanilla culture in Puerto Rico
Identifier: CAT31289489 (find matches)
Year: 1948 (1940s)
Authors: Childers, Norman Franklin, 1910-
Subjects: Vanilla; Orchids
Publisher: Washington, D. C. : U. S. Dept. of Agriculture
Contributing Library: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library
Digitizing Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library

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VANILLA CULTURE IN PUERTO RICO 13 throughout the Tropics. Correll (4) gives the following botanical description of V. fragrans : A coarse vine that, in nature, climbs to the tops of tall trees.6 Stem simple or branched, long, flexuous, succulent, green, producing opposite the leaves twin- ing adventitious aerial roots by which it clings to the tree and other supports; leaves succulent, nearly sessile, oblong-elliptic to narrowly lanceolate, acute to acuminate, 9 to 23 cm. "long, 2 to 8 cm. wide; racemes axillary, consisting of as many as 20 or more flowers which are greenish yellow and inconspicuous ; flowers composed of three sepals, three petals, and a central organ known as the column (the united stamen and pistil), with one of the petals modified and enlarged to form the lip; sepals and petals almost linear to oblong-oblanceolate, obtuse to
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Figure 6.—Vanilla fragram (Salisb.) Ames is the only commercial variety of vanilla grown in Puerto Rico. The long narrow beans have superior aroma and quality and bring the best prices on the market. subacute, 4 to 7 cm. long, 1 to 1.5 cm. wide; lip trumpet-shaped, attached almost to the apex of the column which it envelopes, somewhat 3-lobed above, 4 to 5 cm. long, 1.5 to 3 cm. wide at the widest point, with longitudinal verrucose lines or papillae on the disc and a tuft of hairs about the middle of the disc, retuse at the apex and irregularly fringed on the revolute margin; column hairy on the inner surface, about 3 cm. long; fruit a capsule (commercially known as a "bean"), narrowly cylindrical, 1 to 2.5 dm. long, 8 to 14 mm. in diameter. The less important Vanilla pompo?ia (fig. 7) is sometimes called vanillon, West Indian, South American, or pompona vanilla. It is 6 Vanilla has been seen at a height of 50 to 75 feet on trees (Albizzia procera Benth.) in Puerto Rico.

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