Vanilla is the name of a group of climbing orchids.
The vanilla extract that is used to flavor chocolate, ice cream, pastry, and candy comes from these plants.
The vanilla vine has been cultivated in Mexico for hundreds of years.  This type of vanilla has been introduced into other tropical areas.  Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Reunion produce much of the worlds supply.  Another species grows on the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific.
The vanilla vine has little rootlets by which the plant attaches itself to trees. The cultivated plant lives about 10 years. It produces its first crop after three years.
The plant produces a fruit in the shape of a cylindrical pod, bean, that measures from 13 to 25 centimeters long. The fruit has an oily black pulp that contains many tiny black seeds.
The pods are gathered when they are a yellow-green in color.  Then the curing, or drying, process takes place.  This process shrinks the bean and turns it a rich, chocolate-brown color.  The process also gives the bean the flavor and aroma of vanilla as we know it.
Vanilla extract is prepared by a complicated and expensive process.  The beans are chopped into small pieces and then percolated with alcohol and water. Food scientists have developed artificial vanilla flavors because of the high cost of vanilla.