← All plantsVanilla
Vanilla planifolia
Also: Vanilla bean, Bourbon vanilla, Tlilxochitl
WarmingNeutral moistureRelaxing
An orchid's scent that calms fear and softens a racing heart.
The cured seed pods of a climbing orchid, picked green and slowly sweated and dried until they turn black and supple and their scent blooms. Vanilla calms anxiety and lifts the mood through scent and taste alike, and it rounds off the harsh edges of other herbs in a formula.
- Energetics
- Warming, neutral, relaxing
- Taste
- Sweet, musky, aromatic
- Family
- Orchidaceae (orchid family)
- Parts used
- Cured seed pods
Medicinal uses 3
The tags sort the evidence behind each use by kind. Members are able to tap a condition to compare every herb for it.
TTraditional useLLab and mechanism studiesCClinical studies
A vanilla-like scent cut anxiety in people undergoing MRI scans in one study, and vanilla aroma calms in everyday life.
Lifts low, flat moods in elixirs and cordials.
A traditional aphrodisiac in warming blends.
Preparations
Pod extracts, elixirs, and vanilla sugar or honey.
Members are able to see the amounts, ratios, and methods for each preparation, search by condition, and match herbs to your constitution.
Cautions
- Most vanilla flavoring is synthetic vanillin; buy pods or pure extract.
- Some imported extracts have been cut with tonka bean, whose coumarin can strain the liver and thin the blood. Buy from a trusted source.
Pregnancy & breastfeeding
PregnancyFood amounts
Vanilla in food is considered compatible with pregnancy; extracts are mostly alcohol, so use them as flavoring.
BreastfeedingFood amounts
Food amounts are considered compatible.
Folklore
The Totonac people of Mexico's Gulf coast first cured vanilla, and the Aztecs, who called it tlilxochitl, black flower, used it to flavor chocolate. For three centuries vanilla planted outside Mexico would not set fruit, because its native pollinators were missing, until in 1841 Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on the island of Réunion, worked out how to pollinate the flowers by hand with a thin stick. Growers still pollinate nearly every flower that way, and each one opens for a single day.
How to grow
A climbing orchid for steady heat, humidity, and filtered light, trained up a tree or post; outside the tropics it is a greenhouse plant. It takes three years or more to flower, and each pod needs about nine months to mature and months more of curing.
In the wild
Native to the forests of southeastern Mexico and Central America. Madagascar now grows most of the world's crop.
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