The Lakpura Vanilla Plant is a young vanilla vine, Vanilla planifolia, supplied rooted in a black nursery bag. The plant in the photograph is a slender green stem with a few glossy, pointed leaves set alternately along it and short aerial roots at the nodes, the way a vanilla vine grips its support as it climbs.
Vanilla is an orchid, and the only member of that very large family grown as a food flavouring. It is native to Mexico and Central America. The spice itself is the cured pod, the source of natural vanillin, which is used in confectionery and perfumery.
In Sri Lanka vanilla is mostly a home-garden crop in the mid and low country wet zone, grown by smallholders in districts such as Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya and Kegalle. It is grown in shade, away from direct sunlight, and the vine climbs by clinging to trees or other surfaces with the fleshy aerial roots that grow from its nodes. Sri Lankan growers raise new plants from cuttings rather than seed, and the flowers are pollinated by hand.
The pod only becomes the dark, fragrant bean of the kitchen after a long curing process, during which the green pods lose much of their weight. The second photograph shows cured pods with a vanilla flower for reference; this listing is for the living plant, not the beans.
