Vanilla beans are the most craved culinary spice that comes from the vanilla orchid. These climbing vines are have bagged a rich history due to its creamy, warm, and comforting aroma. It is also called flat-leaved vanilla due to peculiarly flat leaves that are quite long, thick, and dark green in color. Vanilla vines can creep along with the distance of approximately 100 feet.
Vanilla has self-fertile flowers but they require pollinating insects for pollination. To help with it, they have attractive yellow-colored flowers that are pro at inviting the bees and butterflies.
The vanilla bean, that we now call it, was anciently called tlilxochitl or black flower by the inhabitants of the Aztec empire. The name black flower never got much attention, but it was assigned with this weird name due to the blackening of vanilla beans (fruit) after picking it.
Time and again, vanilla beans are employed in the culinary department as a flavoring agent in ice-creams, cakes, cookies, and whatnot. Vanilla beans have also got various medicinal benefits like treating fever, flatulence, and a lot more. This aromatic stimulant sits among the gang of one of the best aphrodisiacs. Apart from the synthetic essences, the real vanilla beans, nowadays, are liable to awaken the passion for real.
Vanilla beans are packed with a compound, Vanillin, which does a stellar job at arresting the proliferation of cancerous cells. It also acts as a potent antioxidant and scavenges ROS (Reactive Oxidative Species) quite rapidly to reduce the oxidative stress and diseases related to it.