Credited to Reunion. Belgian botanist Charles Morren published an account of artificial vanilla pollination in 1837, and French botanist Jean Michel Claude Richard claimed he had shown the method on Réunion a few years before Albius. A 2009 review by Arditti and colleagues concluded there is very little doubt Albius found his method on his own, and it was his practical technique that planters adopted.
How it began
Edmond was born into slavery in 1829 at Sainte-Suzanne on the island of Bourbon, now Réunion. He was sent as a child to work for Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont on the Belle-vue plantation, who taught him horticulture and botany. Bellier-Beaumont had one surviving vanilla vine, about 20 years old, that had never fruited. In 1841, walking in the garden with the 12-year-old, he found two pods on it. Edmond said he had fertilized the flowers by hand. More pods followed within days, and Bellier-Beaumont asked him to demonstrate the technique.
Before it existed
Vanilla planifolia is native to Mexico, where bees pollinate it. After the spice reached Europe in the 16th century, demand grew, but very few plants outside Mexico bore fruit. The flower has male and female parts separated by a membrane that prevents self-pollination, and around 1800 it was unclear how pollination happened. In 1836 the Belgian botanist Charles Morren worked it out and published an account of artificial pollination in 1837, but his method stayed within a small circle of botanists and was fiddly, suited to greenhouses and not to plantation fields.
How it works
The vanilla flower carries both pollen-producing and ovule-producing parts, kept apart by a membrane. Albius used a thin stick or a blade of grass and a simple motion of the thumb to bring the two together, pollinating each flower by hand. Bellier-Beaumont wrote that he had earlier shown the boy how to hand pollinate watermelon, and that Edmond realized the vanilla flower also had male and female elements and worked out for himself how to join them.
How it spread
Within days other planters came to Belle-vue to see the technique, and Edmond was taken around Réunion to demonstrate it to enslaved workers on other plantations. The method then carried the vanilla industry to other French colonies and islands, including Madagascar.
Who pushed back
Several people refused to believe that an enslaved child had made the discovery. The botanist Jean Michel Claude Richard claimed that he had developed the same method three or four years earlier and that Edmond must have watched him demonstrate it on Réunion. Bellier-Beaumont rejected this in writing, asking why a botanist would have taught it only to an eight-year-old and to no planter. Doubts were still raised in the early 20th century.
What changed first
Vanilla production on Réunion boomed. The island shipped 2 tonnes of vanilla beans to France in 1858, 20 tonnes in 1867 and 200 tonnes in 1898, and by the late 19th century it had overtaken Mexico as the largest producer. Edmond gained nothing from it. He was freed around 1848 and given the surname Albius, Bellier-Beaumont's appeals for a state pension for him were ignored, and he died poor at Sainte-Suzanne in 1880.
Where it stands today
The manual method Albius found is still in use, and nearly all vanilla is pollinated by hand. In 2017 Madagascar produced about 40 percent of the world's vanilla, while Mexico, where the plant originates, produced about 6 percent. The Linnean Society describes vanilla as the second most expensive spice after saffron.
