Well into the 1800s, vanilla orchids were only cultivated in Mexico. Many countries tried to establish vanilla orchid plantations in their own tropical colonies but they always failed since they didn’t realise how to make the flowers form fruits.
In 1836, Belgian botanist Charles Morren realised why all the vanilla orchids grown outside Mexico refused to produce fruits. In Mexico, you can find the Melipone bee, a tiny bee endemic to this region and present nowhere else in the world. Charles Morren understood that the Melipone bee was the only insect capable of pollinating the vanilla flower. If you want vanilla orchids to bear fruit without using Melipone bees, you have to hand-pollinate every single flower.
