Vanilla
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Authority
Acevedo-Rodríguez, Pedro & collaborators. 1996. Flora of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 78: 1-581.
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Family
Orchidaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Genus Description - Monopodial, terrestrial and epiphytic vines; roots gray-green, produced at each stem node, slender and glabrous when free, thick and villous on contact with a substrate; stems scandent, branching, naked, cylindrical, thick, fleshy, glabrous. Leaves articulate, distichous, sheathless, fleshy or coriaceous, large and persistent or scale-like and deciduous. Flowers large, showy but ephemeral, produced in succession, resupinate, in racemes or spiked, on short lateral branches; sepals free, spreading; petals free, keeled; lip clawed, adnate to base of column, basally involute, simple or lobed, disk variously ornamented; column elongate, semicylindric, often pubescent below, footless; anther terminal, incumbent, versatile, pollinia 4, soft, mealy, composed of monads, lacking accessory structures, when removed as a unit appearing triangular; stigma lobes confluent, rostellum undeveloped; pedicellate ovary articulate at perianth. Fruit elongate, cylindric to fusiform, indehiscent or tardily partly dehiscent fleshy or leathery; seeds small with a hard seed coat.
Distribution and Ecology - A pantropical genus consisting of about 100 species.