The name Edmond Albius may not be well known to history, yet his contributions to horticulture made it possible for people around the world to enjoy a popular and now-ubiquitous flavor: vanilla.
Native to Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and Colombia (where it is pollinated by bees of the genus Eulaema), the flat-leaved vanilla orchid species Vanilla planifolia was introduced to the French-controlled island of Réunion, located in the Indian Ocean, in the 1820s. However, despite the agreeable climate, vanilla producers struggled there; without native pollinators, the vanilla vines grew beautiful flowers but wouldn’t bear fruit.
This all changed in 1841, thanks to a 12-year-old boy, originally known only as Edmond, who had been born into slavery on Réunion. Edmond had been taught about horticulture and botany and the basics of flower fertilization by his enslaver, Féréol Bellier-Beaumont of Bellevue Plantation, but used his ingenuity to devise a technique for manually pollinating vanilla flowers, possibly inspired by Bellier-Beaumont’s hand-pollination method for watermelons.
Known as “le geste d’Edmond” (Edmond’s gesture) on Réunion, the technique involves lifting the vanilla orchid’s rostellum membrane with a sliver of wood or a blade of grass, then rubbing pollen from the anther (the male part of the plant) over the stigma (the female part). Edmond had been able to fertilize Bellier-Beaumont’s sole vanilla vine by hand, resulting in vanilla pods growing on the vine for the first time in two decades.
Realizing that Edmond’s technique was undeniably successful, Bellier-Beaumont brought him around Réunion to demonstrate it on many other plantations. Thanks to the success of this method, Réunion became the world’s largest producer of vanilla (its output more than tripled between 1860 and 1880), though it was later surpassed by the much larger island of Madagascar, then also a French colony, where over 80% of the world’ vanilla is still grown.
Incredibly, Edmond's method is still the main pollination technique utilized by vanilla producers today. It has never been mechanized but is straightforward enough that a knowledgeable vanilla grower can pollinate around 1,500 flowers per day this way.
The sad fate of Edmond Albius:
- After slavery was outlawed on Réunion in 1848, 19-year-old Edmond Albius became a kitchen servant in a naval captain’s home in Saint-Denis, the island's administrative capital. He adopted the last name Albius, a reference to the white color of the vanilla orchid.
- He was never compensated for his discovery, despite the financial success that it brought to Réunion; even Bellier-Beaumont’s efforts to secure him a state pension were denied.
- Edmond Albius’s life took a tragic turn when he was convicted of stealing jewelry from his employer's house and given a sentence of five years of hard labor, though Réunion’s governor eventually granted him clemency after three years in prison. He died, practically penniless, in St. Suzanne, where he had been born, in 1880, at age 51.
