Vanilla is an important spice plant. It is also widely used in the cosmetics industry and as a medicinal plant. In terms of growth, vanilla is an epiphytic vine that climbs over other plants to gain better access to sunlight. 

The natural pollinator(s) of the vanilla plant is unknown, but some species of Hymenoptera have been observed visiting its flowers. Outside of its natural distribution area, vanillas must therefore be pollinated by hand in order to produce the widely used seedpods. This, in turn, requires a lot of labor and makes vanilla one of the most expensive spices in the world.

Vanilla belongs to the extremely diverse plant family of orchids. Up to 30 000 species of orchids grow in the wild in different parts of the world! Diversity is particularly high in rainforests, where conditions are evenly warm and organisms have many types of habitats available. This allows for steady speciation and the emergence of very specialized species. 

Good examples of speciation are none other than vanillas, of which there are over a hundred other species in addition to the vanilla!